A Lingua Franca View on Swedish Pronunciation – a Review and Pedagogical Implications
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Proceedings from FONETIK 2019 Stockholm, June 10–12, 2019 A Lingua Franca view on Swedish Pronunciation – A review and Pedagogical Implications Bosse Thorén Department of Social and Behavioral Studies, University West, Sweden. [email protected] Abstract mild foreign accent, as long as intelligi- Learners of Swedish as a second lan- ble, does not seem to hamper communi- guage need a meaningful pronunciation cation and integration into a new com- training. To achieve this, teachers need munity. However, an unclear pronuncia- guidelines how to plan and perform tion may do, possibly because it could meaningful teaching. This paper argues impede communication considerably. for a priority ranking among phonologi- For second language speakers using cal and phonetic features for pronuncia- English as a lingua franca, Jenkins tion teaching. The arguments are in- (2000, 2002) has suggested “Lingua spired by the concept of Lingua Franca Franca Phonetic Core”, i.e. phonetic and Phonetic Core for English and is based phonological features that are thought to on studies and experience concerning in- be most crucial for intelligibility. In the telligibility. It highlights Swedish pro- same vein, Brown (1991) and Catford sodic and segmental features on phono- (1987) promote the idea of “Functional logical, acoustical and strategic levels Load” for phoneme contrasts, which is and ventures to outline an agenda for calculated based on the number of possi- Swedish pronunciation teaching, incor- ble minimal pairs as well as how fre- porating the fact that Swedish is used in quent the sounds occur in speech. The all constellations of L1 and L2 speakers central point in the Lingua Franca Pho- from different language backgrounds, netic Core and Functional Load is that plus the fact that adult L2 learners are realizing certain features properly is suf- unlikely to achieve a nativelike L2 pro- ficient for intelligible pronunciation. nunciation. The suggested Swedish pho- This point could be applied to Swe- netic core gives priority to temporal pro- dish as a second language and some re- sodic features over tonal, and conso- search has been carried out in this field, nants over vowels. by e.g. Bannert (1984) and Abelin & Thorén (2015, 2017). This paper dis- Introduction cusses what promotes intelligibility in Language proficiency includes skills in Swedish L2 pronunciation. The reader is listening, speaking, reading, writing and referred to Table 1 for an overview of pragmatics. Competence in pronuncia- Swedish phonology. tion can involve both intelligible speech Swedish as a Lingua Franca and listening with understanding. A for- Swedish does not have the role of a eign accent can affect how other compe- global Lingua Franca like English, but tencies as well as the person’s credibility since inhabitants in Sweden nowadays are judged (Boyd & Bredänge 2013; have more than 150 different mother Lev-Ari & Keysar 2010). According to tongues (Parkvall 2016), Swedish actu- Munro & Derwing (1995), perceived de- ally serves as the means of communica- gree of foreign accent does not correlate tion between L2 and L1 speakers as well strongly with degree of intelligibility. A as between L2 speakers of different lan- guage backgrounds. The Lingua Franca 43 Proceedings from FONETIK 2019 Stockholm, June 10–12, 2019 situation for Swedish in Sweden calls for found by Derwing & Munro (2005) and educational goals that promote commu- Murphy (2014). Teachers lack training nication efficiency, rather than native- for teaching pronunciation and therefore likeness. Moreover, research by Piske, avoid doing it. MacKay & Flege (2001) and Abra- The situation in Sweden can be de- hamsson & Hyltenstam (2009) shows scribed as slowly realizing how L2 pro- that a nativelike pronunciation in an L2 nunciation instruction can be more pri- can be a realistic goal for young learners oritized, more realistic and more focused but a utopia for most adult learners. on intelligibility. Here is not the place to Before the present multilingual situ- grade teaching materials with respect to ation had arisen and before we knew how “good” they are in this respect, but what we know today about realistic ex- it should be pointed out that they often pectations for learners of Swedish as a lack clear guidelines concerning im- second language, at least implicit curric- portant and less important phonetic fea- ula used to have as a main goal that L2 tures. Some features can be presented as speakers should acquire a native-like important because they are “hard to Swedish pronunciation, irrespective of learn”, but not necessarily because they age or L1. If they could not, it was seen are important for intelligibility. For ex- as a failure for teachers and for learners. ample, the Swedish word accents (acute A Lingua Franca view, on the other and grave) and the [ɧ] sound are hard to hand, focuses on mutual intelligibility learn but not important for intelligibility. and does not see the foreign accent per The Swedish phonologic features’ re- se as a problem. spective influence on intelligibility Today’s situation with respect to pro- Earlier, Bannert (1980) suggested that nunciation teaching for learners of some contrasts and other phonological Swedish as an L2. properties in Swedish should be given My impression gained from being more higher priority than others, based on as- than 40 years in the field is that pronun- sumed importance for intelligibility. Alt- ciation teaching gets lower priority than hough this was suggested on an intuitive grammar and vocabulary training. More basis, it was anyhow an important step than 10 years of teacher training in three into promoting intelligibility rather than Swedish universities has given the im- nativelikeness as an acceptable and de- pression that both in-service and pre-ser- sirable learning outcome. vice teacher students know more about Prosody vs segments basic grammar concepts than they do about basic phonetics and phonology. In various teaching materials, e.g. Kjel- Zetterholm (2018) found that among lin (1978), prosodic features in general 92 teachers of Swedish as a second lan- are assumed to be more important for in- guage, prioritized learning goals were telligibility than segmental features. “communication, reading, writing, Prosody is compared to syntax as a grammar and vocabulary” (p. 81), and macro level and segmental properties are pronunciation was seldom taught explic- compared to morphology and defined as itly. The teachers in the study generally micro level. The macro level is assumed thought that a listener-friendly and intel- to be generally more important than the ligible pronunciation is important, and micro level, for intelligible speech. It the reason given for not teaching pro- may be true, but to my knowledge, there nunciation explicitly was mainly lacking are no studies supporting that view. knowledge of phonetics and competence There are a couple of studies (Abelin & in pronunciation teaching. Her result Thorén 2015, 2017) that show signifi- agrees with the situation for English, as cantly higher perceptual weight for the 44 Proceedings from FONETIK 2019 Stockholm, June 10–12, 2019 Figure 1. Overview of Swedish phonology prosodic contrasts of stress and quantity, Vowels vs consonants compared to the tonal word accent con- By looking at the numbers of vowel and trast. Furthermore, the latter has at least consonant phonemes; 9 and 18 respec- five different tonal patterns in different tively, plus the possibility for conso- regions (Gårding 1977), plus non-exist- nants to appear in clusters, we can as- ent in a couple of regional varieties. This sume that consonants carry more cues to means that we know something about in- meaning than vowels by virtue of their telligibility within the prosodic field but number. Some anecdotal evidence for not between prosody and segments.Fur- this assumption is that you can replace thermore, a comparison between pros- vowel letters in a written text by hyphens ody and segments with respect to per- or asterisks and still read it with a fairly ceptual importance would be compli- good understanding, while doing the cated since the three prosodic phonemic same thing with consonant letters causes contrasts can be naturally dichotomized, more struggling and guessing. Further- allowing experimental distortions in a more, there are “secret languages” often consistent way to test intelligibility: Tro- used by children, that distort the lan- chaic stress pattern as opposed to iam- guage in different but regular ways. One bic, /VːC/ as opposed to /VCː/ and ac- of those is “I-sprikit” (the I-language), cent 1 as opposed to accent 2 (Abelin & where all vowels are replaced by /i/ and Thorén 2017). The phonemes on the still rendering intelligible speech to at other hand cannot be divided that way. least a native Swedish listener who has More correctly, every vowel can be con- had some training. The latter example is trasted to every other vowel phoneme assumed to be more relevant to spoken and every consonant phoneme can, with language than the former, but the former a few exceptions, be contrasted to every illustrates the fact that there are over all other consonant phoneme. more consonant than vowel sounds in Swedish speech. 45 Proceedings from FONETIK 2019 Stockholm, June 10–12, 2019 Phonotactics closed in others. In the province of Väs- Swedish phonotactics allow word initial tergötland, where I currently live, I hear consonant clusters of three consonants lots of [ʝøːrɐ] and [ɕøːrɐ]. and up to five consonants in word final In a similar way, much effort has position. Allowing that heavy consonant been put into teaching and learning the clusters is unusual in a universal per- “very Swedish and exotic” [ɧ] allophone spective. In medial position, in com- as the only acceptable variant of a /ɧ/ʃ/ʂ/ pounds, there can be at least up to six phoneme. One allophone of the same consonants in a sequence, e.g.