The acoustic characteristics of non-native American English vowels

This study aims at discussing the phonetic property of vowel quality in English, as exercised by both native speakers of General American English (AE) and non-native speakers of General American English of Serbian language background, all residents of the United States. Ten Serbian male speakers and four native male speakers of AE are recorded in separate experiments and their speech analyzed acoustically for any significant phonetic differences, looking into a set of monosyllabic English words representing nine vowels of AE. The general aim of the experiments is to evaluate the phonetic characteristics of AE vowels, with particular attention to F1 and F2 values, investigate which vowels differ most in the two groups of participants, and provide some explanations for these variations. A single most important observation that is the result of this vowel study is an evident merger of three pairs of vowels in the non-native speech: /i ɪ/, /u ʊ/, and /ɛ æ/.

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Intelligibility of American English Vowels and Consonants Spoken by International Students in the United States

Journal of Speech Language and Hearing Research ◽

10.1044/2014_jslhr-h-13-0047 ◽

2014 ◽

Vol 57 (2) ◽

pp. 583-596 ◽

Cited By ~ 7

Author(s):

Su-Hyun Jin ◽

Chang Liu

Keyword(s):

United States ◽

Foreign Students ◽

Native Speakers ◽

American English ◽

Nonnative Speakers ◽

The United States ◽

Training Methods ◽

Vowel Space ◽

English Vowels ◽

Nonnative Speakers Of English

Purpose The purpose of this study was to examine the intelligibility of English consonants and vowels produced by Chinese-native (CN), and Korean-native (KN) students enrolled in American universities. Method 16 English-native (EN), 32 CN, and 32 KN speakers participated in this study. The intelligibility of 16 American English consonants and 16 vowels spoken by native and nonnative speakers of English was evaluated by EN listeners. All nonnative speakers also completed a survey of their language backgrounds. Results Although the intelligibility of consonants and diphthongs for nonnative speakers was comparable to that of native speakers, the intelligibility of monophthongs was significantly lower for CN and KN speakers than for EN speakers. Sociolinguistic factors such as the age of arrival in the United States and daily use of English, as well as a linguistic factor, difference in vowel space between native (L1) and nonnative (L2) language, partially contributed to vowel intelligibility for CN and KN groups. There was no significant correlation between the length of U.S. residency and phoneme intelligibility. Conclusion Results indicated that the major difficulty in phonemic production in English for Chinese and Korean speakers is with vowels rather than consonants. This might be useful for developing training methods to improve English intelligibility for foreign students in the United States.

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Transfer and developmental processes in adult foreign language speech production

Applied Psycholinguistics ◽

10.1017/s014271640000521x ◽

1984 ◽

Vol 5 (4) ◽

pp. 323-347 ◽

Cited By ~ 58

Author(s):

James Emil Flege ◽

Richard D. Davidian

Keyword(s):

United States ◽

Foreign Language ◽

Speech Production ◽

Native Speakers ◽

The United States ◽

English Learning ◽

Developmental Processes ◽

Language Background ◽

Transfer Processes ◽

L1 Acquisition

ABSTRACTThis study tested the hypothesis that factors that shape children’s production of their native language (L1) will also influence adults’ pronunciation of sounds in a foreign language (L2). The final stops in CVC English words produced by 12 adult native speakers each of English, Polish, Spanish, and Chinese were phonetically transcribed. The frequency with which these stops were devoiced, deleted, or fricativized was tabulated. The Spanish subjects (unlike the Chinese or Poles) showed the effect of a transfer process, producing word-final /b, d, g/as fricatives. Subjects in all three non-native groups (but not the native English subjects) resembled English-learning children in devoicing word-final /b, d, g/. Subjects whose L1 does not have word-final stops (i.e., the native speakers of Chinese and Spanish) showed another process commonly observed in English L1 acquisition: final stop deletion. A number of language background variables (e.g., age of arrival in the United States) were found not to be significantly correlated with the accuracy of final stop production. These findings suggest that, in addition to transfer processes arising from L1/L2 phonetic and phonological differences, developmental processes similar to those affecting child L1 speech production also influence adult L2 speech production.

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Intelligibility of American English vowels of native and non-native speakers in quiet and speech-shaped noise

Bilingualism Language and Cognition ◽

10.1017/s136672891200051x ◽

2012 ◽

Vol 16 (1) ◽

pp. 206-218 ◽

Cited By ~ 5

Author(s):

CHANG LIU ◽

SU-HYUN JIN

Keyword(s):

Processing Time ◽

Native Speakers ◽

American English ◽

Noise Background ◽

English Vowels ◽

Native Speech

This study examined intelligibility of twelve American English vowels produced by English, Chinese, and Korean native speakers in quiet and speech-shaped noise in which vowels were presented at six sensation levels from 0 dB to 10 dB. The slopes of vowel intelligibility functions and the processing time for listeners to identify vowels were dependent on speakers’ language backgrounds and non-native speakers’ vowel intelligibility in quiet. These results indicated that noise background affected non-native speakers’ vowel intelligibility more greatly than native speakers, possibly due to the acoustic deviations in non-native speech and lack of listeners’ experience to non-native produced speech.

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HOW TO TEACH AMERICAN ACCENT// International Journal of Educational and Scientific Research 4(12), 2021/ Chief Editor K. Kumpulainen /OEAPS OU - Tallinn, Estonia (Open European Academy of Public Sciences). Vienna, Austria 30.04.2021: OEAPS OU., 2021. P. 9-12.

10.31219/osf.io/fd7b2 ◽

2021 ◽

Author(s):

Rano Mukhtarovna Parkhatova ◽

Zhanna Borisovna Erzhanova

Keyword(s):

Native American ◽

Foreign Language ◽

Native Speakers ◽

American English ◽

The United States ◽

Chief Editor ◽

English Speakers ◽

European Academy ◽

The North ◽

American English Speakers

It is no secret that people intuitively understand the level of English proficiency by the accent, and this happens in the first seconds of a conversation. Each dialect of English has its own unique pronunciation – from British to Australian. And in countries where the dialect is spoken, having an appropriate accent will help you sound more natural. Do you want to feel more confident speaking English without a foreign accent in the United States? One way to do this is to speak with an American accent, although this is by no means easy. Just as having a British accent will help you fit in better in England, an American accent will help you communicate fluently with native American English speakers. The North American English accent is one of the most popular among students of English as a foreign language, and there are a huge number of resources that will help you master it. Here are several steps to help you improve your American accent and sound like native speakers.

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BOOK REVIEW: Edited by Nancy F. Cott. YOUNG OXFORD HISTORY OF WOMEN IN THE UNITED STATES and John Demos. THE TRIED AND THE TRUE: NATIVE AMERICAN WOMEN CONFRONTING COLONIZATION and Jane Kamensky. THE COLONIAL MOSAIC: AMERICAN WOMEN 1600-1760 and Marylynn Salmon THE LIMITS OF INDEPENDENCE: AMERICAN WOMEN 1760-1800 and Michael Goldberg. BREAKING NEW GROUND: AMERICAN WOMEN 1800-1848 and Harriet Sigerman. AN UNFINISHED BATTLE: AMERICAN WOMEN 1848-1865 and Harriet Sigerman. LABORERS FOR LIBERTY: AMERICAN WOMEN 1865-1890 and Karen Manners Smith. NEW PATHS TO POWER: AMERICAN WOMEN 1890-1920 and Sarah Jane Deutsch. FROM BALLOTS TO BREADLINES: AMERICAN WOMEN 1920-1940 and Elaine Tyler May. PUSHING THE LIMITS: AMERICAN WOMEN 1940-1961 and William H. Chafe. THE ROAD TO EQUALITY: AMERICAN WOMEN SINCE 1962 and Harriet Sigerman. BIOGRAPHICAL SUPPLEMENT AND INDEX

NWSA Journal ◽

10.2979/nws.1999.11.2.207 ◽

1999 ◽

Vol 11 (2) ◽

pp. 207-210

Author(s):

April Spencer

Keyword(s):

United States ◽

Native American ◽

The United States ◽

Native American Women ◽

American Women ◽

The Road ◽

History Of

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The limits of extended naturalistic exposure on the perceptual mastery of English /r/ and /l/ by adult Japanese learners of English

Applied Psycholinguistics ◽

10.1017/s0142716400066005 ◽

1995 ◽

Vol 16 (4) ◽

pp. 380-406 ◽

Cited By ~ 17

Author(s):

Naoyuki Takagi ◽

Virginia Mann

Keyword(s):

United States ◽

Native Speakers ◽

The United States ◽

Identification Accuracy ◽

Spoken English ◽

Japanese Learners Of English ◽

Native Speakers Of English ◽

Japanese Learners ◽

One Year ◽

Adult Exposure

AbstractTo evaluate the effect of extended adult exposure to authentic spoken English on the perceptual mastery of English /r/ and /l/, we tested 12 native speakers of English (A), 12 experienced Japanese (EJ) who had spent 12 or more years in the United States, and 12 less experienced Japanese (LJ) who had spent less than one year in the United States. The tests included the forced-choice identification of naturally produced /r/s and /1/s and the labeling of word-initial synthetic tokens that varied F2 and F3 to form an /r/-/l/-/w/ continuum. The F.Js’ mean performance in both tasks was closer to that of the As than the LJs, but nonetheless fell short. Extended exposure may improve /r/-/l/ identification accuracy; it does not ensure perfect perceptual mastery.

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Policing Native American Lands in the United States

Policing and Minority Communities ◽

10.1007/978-3-030-19182-5_11 ◽

2019 ◽

pp. 181-193

Author(s):

Robert Morin ◽

Colleen Morin

Keyword(s):

United States ◽

Native American ◽

The United States

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Establishing a South African Honour Society of Nursing under auspices of Sigma Theta Tau International (Inc.)

Curationis ◽

10.4102/curationis.v21i4.687 ◽

1998 ◽

Vol 21 (4) ◽

Author(s):

D. Van der Wal

Keyword(s):

United States ◽

South African ◽

American English ◽

The United States ◽

Standard English ◽

The Us

The information on Sigma Theta Tau International (Inc.) which follows is reproduced from official STTI documentation with permission from the STTI Chapter Manager. This section should thus be read with the United States context in mind as certain words and concepts have different meanings in the US and SA contexts, eg under graduate, graduate, college and the like. In addition, certain words are also spelled differently in American English and standard English.

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