Hanyong Park
Speech Research Laboratory
Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences,
Indiana University
hanypark@indiana.edu
 
Kennth de Jong
Department of Linguistics,
Indiana University
kdejong@indiana.edu
 
Isabelle Darcy
Department of Second Language Studies,
Indiana University
idarcy@indiana.edu

Popular version of paper number 5aSC4
"The amount of information needed for listeners to detect a foreign accent"
Presented at 9:00 a.m. on Friday, November 14, 2008
156th Meeting of the Acoustical Society of America, Miami, FL

Can you tell whether a talker is a native speaker of American English from hearing a single word? You certainly can if the talker has a strong foreign accent. For example, Korean learners of English often have difficulty in pronouncing the English "r." If you know that the word you are expecting to hear is rice (e.g., in eating a bowl of rice) but you hear the word more similar to lice, you can tell that the talker is not a native speaker of English. However, what if the talker is a bilingual who came to the U.S. at a young age and has lived in the U.S. for several years? This talker may have a native-like command of English and, as such, will not make any apparent “errors” such as saying lice instead of rice. Can you tell whether this talker is a native or non-native speaker of American English from hearing one word?

This question was investigated in the experiment. We had four Korean-English bilinguals (two male and two female) and two native speakers of American English (one male and one female) pronounce a list of short English words such as pay, ray, lay, paid, fade, etc., as well as the vowel ‘a’ (e.g., the vowel in pot), and recorded their productions. All these bilinguals came to the U.S. at a relatively young age (i.e., between 4 and 14 years) and had lived in the U.S. for at least 5 years; thus, we can presume that their English is pretty good. These recordings were then presented to 8 college students who are native speakers of American English. They were asked to decide whether each word was produced by a native or non-native speaker of American English.

The following are the examples of words:

LISTEN: Example 1 (ray): Native -- Non-native

LISTEN: Example 2 (lay): Native -- Non-native

LISTEN: Example 3 (pay): Native -- Non-native

LISTEN: Example 4 (paid): Native -- Non-native

LISTEN: Example 5 (a): Native -- Non-native

The results show that most listeners could detect a foreign accent even from hearing a single word. Detailed analysis further suggests that the listeners could better detect a foreign accent in some words compared to others. For example, the foreign accent was detected in English words beginning with ‘f’, ‘v’, and ‘r’ more accurately than in those beginning with ‘p’, ‘b’, and ‘l’. The listeners also detected a foreign accent more often in English words ending with ‘d’. These results seem to be related to the fact that the Korean language does not have the ‘f’, ‘v’, and ‘r’ sounds and words ending with ‘d’. A more surprising result is that not all but some listeners (5 out of 8) could reliably detect a foreign accent from hearing the single vowel ‘a’.

Our study is one of numerous studies showing a well-known fact on foreign accent: the talker’s native language has a lot of influence on the pronunciation of a second language and this influence is almost impossible to get rid of. However, our study has demonstrated how sensitive a native speaker is to a foreign accent; if you are a native speaker of American English, you are likely to notice a foreign accent regardless of how slight it is. You may notice a foreign accent even from hearing a single vowel spoken by a bilingual speaker who grew up in the United States.