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Germanic and Slavic Accents of English Bachelor's Diploma Thesis

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Germanic and Slavic Accents of English Bachelor's Diploma Thesis Masaryk University Faculty of Arts Department of English and American Studies English Language and Literature Martina Slámová Germanic and Slavic Accents of English Bachelor's Diploma Thesis Supervisor: PhDr. Kateřina Tomková, Ph.D. 2018 I declare that I have worked on this thesis independently, g only the primary and secondary sources listed in the bibliography. Author's signature Acknowledgments I would like to thank my supervisor, PhDr. Kateřina Tomková, PhD., for the kind guidance, help and valuable advice she offered me. Moreover, I would like to thank the speakers who kindly prepared the recordings for this thesis as well as the respondents who listened to them and answered the questionnaire. Finally, I would like to thank my family for their patience and support. Contents 1 Introduction 8 2 Theoretical Section 11 2.1 The English Sound System 11 2.1.1 Vowels 12 2.1.1.1 Monophthongs 13 2.1.1.2 Diphthongs and triphthongs 15 2.1.2 Consonants 17 2.2 Slavic languages 22 2.2.1 Mispronounced Vowels 22 2.2.1.1 Mispronunciation of Isel 25 2.2.1.2 Mispronunciation of h:l 25 2.2.1.3 Mispronunciation of 25 2.2.1.4 Mispronunciation of lal 25 2.2.1.5 Mispronunciation of IBVI 26 2.2.2 Mispronounced Consonants 26 2.2.2.1 Devoicing of final consonants 29 2.2.2.2 Lack of aspiration 30 2.2.2.3 Dental fricatives 30 2.2.2.4 Confusion between /w/ and Nl 30 2.2.2.5 Mispronunciation of/rj/ 31 2.2.2.6 Mispronunciation of/h/ 32 2.3 Germanic languages 32 2.3.1 Mispronounced vowels 35 2.3.1.1 Mispronunciation of /ae/ 36 2.3.1.2 Mispronunciation of IBVI 36 2.3.1.3 Mispronunciation of leil 37 2.3.1.4 Incorrect vowel length 37 2.3.2 Mispronounced consonants 38 2.3.2.1 Devoicing of final consonants 38 2.3.2.2 Mispronunciation of 161 and /G7 39 2.3.2.3 Mispronunciation of /w/ 39 2.3.2.4 Mispronunciation of/j/ 39 2.3.2.5 Mispronunciation of iy and Afc/ 40 2.4 Suprasegmentals 40 2.4.1 Stress in English 40 2.4.1.1 Reduction 41 2.4.1.2 Liaison 42 2.4.2 Stress in Czech and Polish 43 2.4.3 Stress in Dutch and German 43 2.4.4 Rhythm in English 44 2.4.5 Rhythm in Czech and Polish 44 2.4.6 Rhythm in Dutch and German 45 2.4.7 Intonation in English 45 2.4.8 Intonation in Czech and Polish 46 2.4.9 Intonation in Dutch and German 47 3 Practical Research 48 3.1 Methodology 48 3.2 Analysis of the recordings 52 3.2.1 Speaker 1 54 3.2.2 Speaker 2 58 3.2.3 Speaker 3 61 3.2.4 Speaker 4 63 3.3 Comparison 65 3.4 Assessors' evaluation of the recordings 68 3.5 Research Results 71 4 Conclusion 74 5 Bibliography 77 Summary 79 Shrnuti 80 Appendix 81 List of tables Table 1: Description of English consonants; Cruttenden revised, created by the author 20 Table 2: Table 2: Comparison of consonants in English, Czech and Polish (Karas & Madejowa, 1977), (Karczmarczuk, 2012), (Krčmová, 2010), (Palátová, 2016), (lnternationalPhoneticAlphabet.org) 28 Table 3: Comparison of consonants in Dutch, English and German. (Collins & Mees, 2003, (Fluent Forever - Learn Any Language, 2016, 2014),(Swan and Smith, 2001) 35 Table 4: Questionnaire Template; (created by the author) 50 Table 5: Model transcription of text 1 in GenAm 52 Table 6: Speaker 1 - speech transcription 53 Table 7: Model transcription of text 2 in GenAm 56 Table 8: Speaker 2 - speech transcription 57 Table 9: Speaker 3 - speech transcription 60 Table 10: Speaker 4 - speech transcript 62 Table 11: Q1 - Which of the speakers sounds most pleasant to your ear? 68 Table 12: Q2 - On scale 1-5, rate the speakers' intelligibility 68 Table 13: Q2.1. - Can you explain why? 68 Table 14: Q3 - Rate the speakers' accents' comparability to a native speaker's; 69 Table 15: Which of the speakers has made most mistakes in their pronunciation of sounds and in their stress, rhythm and intonation? 69 Table 16: Q4.1. - Can you be more specific about the mistakes? 69 6 Table 17: Q5 - If you were to give advice to each of the speakers, what would you recommend to work on to improve their pronunciation? 70 Table 18: Q6 - Based on the speakers' accents and the table below, can you guess their countries of origin? 70 7 1 Introduction Pronunciation is one of the key elements in verbal communication. Unarguably, it is a criterion according to which speakers are judged and evaluated. It represents an essential component of speaking performance which shapes and influences an impression of the speaker's individuality. Nevertheless, in process of learning the foreign language, a primary focus on vocabulary and grammar tends to prevail over the acquisition of accurate pronunciation. However, a good grasp of grammar and extensive vocabulary do not guarantee mutual intelligibility among speakers unless correct pronunciation comparable to a native speaker's level is mastered. It should, therefore, be of a primary interest of all English learners to acquire pronunciation proficiency in order to ensure smoothness and ease of communication free from obscurities which impede the comprehension. Many works have been written on the pronunciation errors of non-native speakers of English. Some have also been aimed at different accents of English focusing on segmental and suprasegmental mistakes. This thesis focuses on Germanic and Slavic varieties of English, particularly those spoken in Europe. It is concerned with both segmental and suprasegmental1 mistakes and with perceptions of the foreign accents by native speakers. It has been particularly the author's interest in various accents of learners of English as well as curiosity about how speech performances of non-native speakers of English are perceived which have led her to choose this topic for the thesis. Its primary goal 1 These include prosodic features such as stress, rhythm and intonation which apply not solely to single phonemes but also syllables, words and sentences. 8 is to analyse, compare and contrast pronunciation errors of two language groups, namely Slavic and Germanic; and to find out whether the speaker's first language represents any decisive factor in their aptitude for mastering English pronunciation. It is expected that the speakers from the Germanic language group will demonstrate better speech performance than the Slavic speakers given the fact that Dutch and German belong to the Germanic language group as English. These languages have similar sound systems to English in comparison with others such as Czech or Polish which come from a different language background. Moreover, according to EF Proficiency Index, the Netherlands is in the lead and Germany in top ten countries among eighty others in the world ranked by skills at speaking English (ef-australia.com.au). Therefore, it is assumed that German and Dutch speech will contain fewer pronunciation mistakes and will achieve a better evaluation. For analysing the data in a practical research, it is necessary to provide a theoretical background first. This thesis has found the biggest source of inspiration in Tichy's Pronunciation of English by Non-native Speakers (2016) where he compares and contrasts pronunciation errors made by politicians from three language groups. The theory will provide brief definitions of sound systems of the languages concerned and compare them to that of the English language. For this purpose, works such as The phonetics of English and Dutch (2003) by Beverley Collins and Inger Mees, Polish reference grammar (1975) by M. Z. Brooks, The phonology of German (2000) by Richard Wiese will provide a great contribution as they all describe sound systems of the languages. Gimson's Pronunciation of English (2014) by Alan Cruttenden will be an essential source for clarification of English speech sounds including the 9 English vowels and consonants. Lastly, the theory will present the most common errors made by the non-native speakers. This will be gained from books Teaching English Pronunciation (1990) by Joanne Kenworthy and Learner English: A Teacher's Guide to Interference and Other Problems (2001) by Michael Swan and Bernard Smith, which list the most frequent mistakes in pronunciation made by learners of English as a second language. The research section will consist of spoken data collection which will be further processed and analysed. The first part will include recordings of the non- native speakers where each of them will be reading a short text. In the second part, the recordings will be assessed by native speakers of English. The listeners' evaluation will be based on the representative's intelligibility, degree of comparability to a native's speaker's speech, perception of the accent, and last but not least, they will guesstimate participant's origin. Native speakers' assessment should also help draw some conclusions on whether segmental and suprasegmental mistakes are strikingly noticeable and hinder speakers' intelligibility or whether they are hardly perceptible. The research will demonstrate which of the two selected language families displays a higher occurrence of errors and will analyse what type of mistakes appears more often. Subsequently, conclusions will be drawn based on similarities and contrasts of the pronunciation errors. Based on the listeners' comments and observations on speech performances, the proposed hypothesis that participants from Germanic language family will deliver a better speaking performance than the others will be proved or disproved. 10 2 Theoretical Section Languages such as Czech, Polish, Dutch and German are all members of the Indo-European language family.
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