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Differences in the Pronunciation of English in Switzerland MATURAPAPER Differences in the Pronunciation of English in Switzerland The differences in the pronunciation of English by non-native speakers in different cantons and its possible connection to their native dialect Submitted by: Lukas Tribelhorn, 4bW Supervised by: Michael Bühler 06.12.2013 Kantonsschule Wil Table of Contents Preface 1. Introduction ..................................................................................................................................... 1 2. Aims of this Paper ........................................................................................................................... 1 3. Phonetics and Phonology ................................................................................................................ 2 3.1. The International Phonetic Alphabet .......................................................................................... 2 4. Dialectology ..................................................................................................................................... 3 4.1. What is a language, what is a dialect and what is an accent ...................................................... 3 4.2. Received Pronunciation .............................................................................................................. 4 4.2.1. Vowels ............................................................................................................................ 5 4.2.2. Consonants ..................................................................................................................... 6 4.3. Different dialects of Swiss German ............................................................................................. 6 4.3.1. Basel German ................................................................................................................. 6 4.3.2. Grisons German .............................................................................................................. 7 4.3.3. Zurich German ................................................................................................................ 7 4.4. The International Dialects of English Archive ............................................................................. 9 5. Method .......................................................................................................................................... 10 6. Results ............................................................................................................................................ 12 6.1. Basel .......................................................................................................................................... 12 6.2. Chur ........................................................................................................................................... 15 6.3. Zurich ......................................................................................................................................... 18 7. Discussion of the Results ............................................................................................................... 21 7.1. Different pronunciations appearing in the results .................................................................... 21 7.2. Possible causes for the differences in pronunciation in the recordings from Zurich ............... 30 7.2.1. Substitution of non-existent vowels and consonants .................................................. 30 7.2.2. Missing knowledge or concentration ........................................................................... 31 8. Conclusion ..................................................................................................................................... 33 Bibliography........................................................................................................................................... 34 Appendix – Field Recording Guide ........................................................................................................... I Declaration of Authenticity .................................................................................................................... IV Preface Nearly four years ago, when I had to fill out the registration form for the Kantonsschule, I decided pretty soon that I wanted to be in a bilingual class. I saw this as a big chance and I looked forward to it, as I liked the English language and was excited to have my first lessons totally in English. Approaching the end of my years at the Kantonsschule Wil, I finally had to start thinking about what I want to study later. Not surprisingly I thought about studying English together with a second subject. Yet, this will maybe not be my final choice. In search of a topic for my matura paper, I went through all my interests, passions and hobbies and thought of doing something linguistic as this would also be a big help to distinguish what I want to study later. As I wanted to write a paper with a practical part, I soon thought of the idea to compare the differences in the pronunciation of people from different cantons and to find a connection to their native dialect. During the work on this paper the topic changed slightly, yet it still gave me a very good insight into phonetic work, which will definitely help me chose the subject I want to study later. I want to thank multiple persons for their contribution to this paper. First I want to thank my supervisor Mr. Bühler, who helped me with all my questions, provided me with some very good books as resource for the phonetic work and was a very helpful and supporting supervisor. Then I would especially like to thank Ms. Petra Stadler from the Kantonsschule Kirschgarten in Basel, Ms. Franziska Jaeger from the Bündner Kantonsschule in Chur and Mr. Ralph Kilchenmann from the Kantonsschule Hottingen in Zurich, together with their students who gave me their time and the possibility to record them. Without them I would have no recordings to analyse and compare. I would also like to thank Mr. Paul Meier, the Founder and Director of the International Dialects of English Archive, who helped me with my questions concerning phonetic transcription and who provided a complete phonetic transcription of an RP recording which helped me a lot during the analysis of my recordings. Last but not least I would like to thank Mr. Reto Linder, Ms. Patricia Tribelhorn, Ms. Avril Graham, my mother and my brother, who did a great job as proofreaders, for the time they invested into this paper. Lukas Tribelhorn 1 1. Introduction From daily life we know that every person pronounces a word a little differently. Sometimes we talk about an accent or a dialect in this context. What is the difference and is there one? Especially when speaking foreign languages, people say that we have a strong accent. Could this accent be influenced by the native language or dialect? For this project, several people from different cantons of Switzerland have been given the same text to read, then the recordings have been translated into phonetic language and analysed in order to be compared. The results from the recordings from Zurich have then been compared to their native dialect and a connection between these has been sought. This research will focus on students, who are born and grew up in either the canton of Zurich, Basel or Grisons. These three cantons have been chosen because they promised the best chance to get valuable recordings as they speak three fairly different dialects, with a different pronunciation each, which should provide very good resources for analysing and comparing. 2. Aims of this Paper The aims of this paper are to find and present differences and similarities between the pronunciations of English of students from three different cantons of Switzerland. Furthermore for the recordings from Zurich it is also an aim to investigate if there could possibly be a connection to the native dialect of a person and if more detailed researches about this topic would be worthwhile. Lukas Tribelhorn 2 3. Phonetics and Phonology As this paper is about phonetics, a definition of phonetics as well as of phonology is needed to understand the following topics. Therefore this chapter will present some relevant aspects of phonetics and phonology and the connection between these. Phonetics, as well as phonology, is a very important branch of linguistics. It describes the sounds of human speech, or alternatively in sign language, the corresponding aspects of sign. Specifically, it is articulatory phonetics which deals with how speech sounds are made using the articulatory and vocal tract, auditory phonetics which describes how they are perceived by the listener and acoustic phonetics which deals with the physics involved during the transmission form the speaker to the listener. So phonetics is the same for every language which can be spoken as well as for all sign languages (Davenport und Hannahs 2-3). Phonology, on the other hand, deals with how these speech sounds are systematically organised into abstract systems of sounds for the individual varieties; for example how they can be combined and how they affect each other. It also studies the relationships between the sounds within a language or between different languages and the prosodic features, as for example pitch, loudness, tempo and rhythm (Davenport und Hannahs 2-3); (Wikimedia Foundation par. 1-2). A distinction which will be important for the following chapters is the one between
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