MASARYKOVA UNIVERZITA

Pedagogická fakulta

Katedra anglického jazyka a literatury

Diplomová práce

Brno 2009

Bc. Klára Sedláčková

MASARYK UNIVERSITY

Faculty of Education

Department of English Language and Literature

Diploma Thesis

Non-native Acquisition of English Pronunciation in Spanish Speakers

A case study

Brno 2009

Supervisor: Author: PhDr. Jaroslav Ondráček Bc. Klára Sedláčková

Bibliografický záznam

Sedláčková, Klára: Non-native Acquisition of English Pronunciation in Spanish

Speakers: diplomová práce. Brno: Masarykova univerzita, Fakulta pedagogická,

Katedra anglického jazyka a literatury, 2009. Vedoucí diplomové práce PhDr. Jaroslav

Ondráček.

Keywords

phonetics, phonology, English pronunciation, non-native acquisition of English

pronunciation, the English sound system, the Spanish sound system, differences

between the English and the Spanish sound systems, difficulties with English

pronunciation typical of the Spanish

Klí čová slova

fonetika, fonologie, anglická výslovnost, osvojování anglické výslovnosti nerodilými

mluvčími, anglický zvukový systém, španělský zvukový systém, rozdíly v anglickém a

španělském zvukovém systému, potíže s anglickou výslovností typické pro Španěle

Annotation

The diploma thesis “Non-native Acquisition of English Pronunciation in Spanish

Speakers” deals with the question of non-native pronunciation of English. It explores

factors which have an influence on it. Furthermore, it offers a comparison between the

English and the Spanish sound systems. The thesis also illustrates examples of some

difficulties Spanish learners are likely to face in English pronunciation and processes

the results of a case study on six Spanish users of English.

Anotace

Tato diplomová práce „Osvojování anglické výslovnosti se zaměřením na španělské

uživatele tohoto jazyka“ se zabývá anglickou výslovností nerodilých mluvčí a zkoumá

faktory, které ji ovlivňují. Práce dále porovnává rozdíly mezi zvukovým systémem

anglického a španělského jazyka a uvádí příklady výslovnostních chyb, kterým mohou

Španělé v anglickém jazyce čelit. Praktická část práce srhnuje výsledky případové

studie vedené na šesti španělských mluvčích.

DECLARATION

I declare that I wrote the diploma thesis myself and used only the sources mentioned

in the enclosed bibliography.

I agree that the thesis will be deposited in the library of the Faculty of Education of

Masaryk University in Brno and made available for academic purposes.

……………………………………..

Bc. Klára Sedláčková

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would like to express my thanks to my supervisor PhDr. Jaroslav Ondráček for his

help and support he provided me with throughout my thesis.

I would also like to express my appreciation to all the Spanish people who have been

involved in my study and who have devoted their valuable time to my research.

My thanks are also due to my Spanish teacher from Texas, Dr. Paniagua. I appreciated

his invaluable help with Spanish.

I owe my thanks to my friend Z who helped me judge the recordings.

My last, but not least, thanks go to my friend K who helped me find the Spanish

subjects for my study and who provided me with help with the Spanish sound system.

CONTENTS

Introduction...........................................................................................................................7

I. Theoretical part .................................................................................................................9

1. Non-native pronunciation ............................................................................................9

1.1 Factors influencing non-native pronunciation ........................................................10

1.1.1 Learner’s native language................................................................................10

1.1.2 Age of learner ..................................................................................................10

1.1.3 Amount of exposure to English .......................................................................11

1.1.4 Phonetic ability ................................................................................................11

1.1.5 Attitude and identity ........................................................................................12

1.1.6 Motivation and concern for good pronunciation.............................................12

1.2 The difficulties learners may have with English pronunciation .............................13

1.3 The main features of pronunciation ........................................................................14

1.4 Ways of analyzing comfortable intelligibility ........................................................15

2. Sound systems of English and Spanish .....................................................................16

2.1 Phonemic inventories of English and Spanish........................................................17

2.2 English and Spanish alphabets................................................................................17

2.3 Vowel sounds..........................................................................................................18

2.3.1 Vowel classification system.............................................................................18

2.3.2 The English vowel sounds (Roach) .................................................................18

2.3.3 The Spanish vowel sounds (Bartoš).................................................................18

2.3.4 Commonalities and distinctions between English and Spanish vowels ..........19

2.3.5 Possible areas of difficulty with the pronunciation of vowels.........................20

2.4 Consonant sounds ...................................................................................................23

2.4.1 Consonant classification system ......................................................................23

2.4.2 English and Spanish consonant sounds ...........................................................26

2.4.3 Commonalities and distinctions between English and Spanish consonants ....27

2.4.4 Possible areas of difficulty with the pronunciation of consonants ..................29

2.5 Positions of sounds in words ..................................................................................32

2.5.1 Commonalities and distinctions between English and Spanish.......................32

2.5.2 Possible areas of difficulty in the positions of sounds in words......................32

2.5.3 Consonant clusters ...........................................................................................33

2.6 Cognates..................................................................................................................35

2.7 Suprasegmental features .........................................................................................37

2.7.1 Word stress ......................................................................................................37

2.7.2 Potential difficulties in the area of word stress................................................40

2.7.3 Sentence stress .................................................................................................41

2.7.4 Potential difficulties in the area of sentence stress ..........................................41

2.7.5 Intonation .........................................................................................................42

2.7.6 Potential difficulties in the area of intonation..................................................44

2.7.7 Rhythm.............................................................................................................45

2.7.8 Potential difficulties in the area of rhythm ......................................................46

2.7.9 Linking.............................................................................................................46

2.7.10 Potential difficulties in the area of linking.....................................................47

II. Practical part..................................................................................................................49

1. Introduction...................................................................................................................49

2. Methodology.................................................................................................................49

3. Subjects included in the study......................................................................................50

4. Material.........................................................................................................................50

5. Analysis of the questionnaires......................................................................................50

5.1 Description of individual speakers and their language backgrounds .....................51

5.1.1 Speaker no.1.....................................................................................................51

5.1.2 Speaker no. 2....................................................................................................52

5.1.3 Speaker no. 3....................................................................................................52

5.1.4 Speaker no. 4....................................................................................................53

5.1.5 Speaker no. 5....................................................................................................54

5.1.6 Speaker no. 6....................................................................................................54

6. Analysis of speakers´ mistakes.....................................................................................55

6.1 Mistakes in the read aloud text ...............................................................................55

6.1.1 Speaker no. 1....................................................................................................56

6.1.2 Speaker no. 2....................................................................................................57

6.1.3 Speaker no. 3....................................................................................................60

6.1.4 Speaker no. 4....................................................................................................62

6.1.5 Speaker no. 5....................................................................................................63

6.1.6 Speaker no. 6....................................................................................................66

6.2 Summary of results from the read aloud text..........................................................68

6.3 Mistakes in spontaneous speeches..........................................................................69

6.4 Suprasegmental features in the read aloud text and spontaneous speeches............70

6.5 Mistakes in word stress...........................................................................................71

6.6 Mistakes in sentence stress .....................................................................................72

6.7 Mistakes in linking..................................................................................................73

6.8 Mistakes in intonation.............................................................................................74

Conclusion .......................................................................................................................76

Résumé ............................................................................................................................77

Bibliography....................................................................................................................78

Appendices.......................................................................................................................83

7

Introduction It seems that some people can adopt the pronunciation of another language with very

little effort, but other just do not seem to lose their native accent, and no matter how

much they try, they will never sound authentic. The way a person speaks is a sign of

their origin. Even though learning pronunciation has become an integral part of

language learning and the situation in this field has improved recently, still not enough

attention is paid to it.

A lot of pronunciation errors that foreign learners make in English are not haphazard.

The sound system of a foreign language can influence the English pronunciation of its

learners who, due to the transfer of sounds from their native sound system into English,

unintentionally make an English word sound “foreign”, which is how it feels more

natural to them. However, correct pronunciation is very important because serious

weaknesses in it can create communication barriers and thus significantly impair one’s

ability to communicate.

In the diploma thesis, I made an effort to inquire into the problem of non-native

acquisition of English pronunciation and then investigate the matter of non-native

accent in Spanish speakers of English. The thesis provides an outline of difficulties with

English pronunciation typical of Spanish speakers and shows concrete examples of

some common mistakes they are likely to make due to their language background.

I have primarily chosen the topic for my diploma thesis because my bachelor thesis was

concerned with a similar issue. The main difference was the nationality of the research

subjects; whereas in the bachelor thesis I dealt with Portuguese learners of English, the

scope of this diploma thesis is limited to Spanish learners. I considered the fact that

Spanish and Portuguese are both Romance languages belonging to the Indo-European

family and they are therefore closely related to each other and I wondered what the

difference in their influence on English pronunciation would be.

Looking even further back, the main decision for writing my first thesis on this topic

was made in the Netherlands during my Erasmus study stay, where I was part of a

multilingual international class of students. I found it extremely intriguing to observe

8

English pronunciation of different nations´ representatives, and to discover what

particular mistakes they were making. Moreover, my one-semester stay in Texas, where

I had a chance to meet a number of English speakers of Hispanic origin, raised my

interest in the Spanish language and my newly gained knowledge then enabled me to

inquire about the theoretical foundations also in Spanish literature, which has been

enriching and highly beneficial for my research.

The theoretical part of this work is grounded on the study of several sources (both

English and Spanish, and also Czech) and it deals with non-native acquisition of

English1 pronunciation in general. Different factors that have an influence on the

process are examined in this part. Furthermore, it concentrates on basic differences

between the English and the Spanish sound systems in the area of both segmental and

suprasegmental features. It also reveals what the most common pronunciation-related

difficulties are that foreign learners of English have to face when acquiring the

language.

The second part of the thesis is practical and its focus is shifted from the theoretically

oriented foundations to real-life issues. It is concerned with the results of a case study

based on a small research conducted on six Spanish users of English. The case study

aimed at shedding light on some common pronunciation mistakes they tend to make and

on the influences which seem possible to have caused these errors.

1 Throughout the thesis, the use of the word non-native acquisition of English pronunciation is meant as learning pronunciation of a target language, English, in addition to the mother tongue of speakers. It also comprises formal training and personal experience of the speakers. In the thesis, learning and acquisition are used interchangeably.

9

I. Theoretical part

1. Non-native pronunciation

Our diploma thesis draws upon the premise that there are no two people who pronounce

exactly the same way (Jones, 1992: 3). Each person’s performance is unique and there

are multiple reasons for that. One of them is connected to geography - the pronunciation

of a language varies from place to place, depending on how it developed among

speakers in a specific location. It is especially true for English that a “standard” is hard

to find. Some authors even claim that none exists (Jones, 1992: 3). What then appears to

be most important in life is that speakers are able to understand each other, despite their

distinct pronunciation.

In non-native speakers, the occurrence of pronunciation dissimilarities seems accented.

It can generally be said about learning a second language that it often becomes rather

complicated because the learner’s first language tends to influence the process. In the

field of pronunciation, such impact is particularly remarkable. As a result, a non-native

speaker normally develops a personal way of pronouncing English that reflects their

place of origin and the language they acquired in an early age. Hence, the speaker’s

origin can often be relatively easily recognized.

The principal reason for the above stated is the fact that every language employs a set of

sounds that are unique. For some of these sounds we can hardly find an exact equivalent

in a different language. Non-native speakers are therefore sometimes inclined to replace

these sounds, which are unnatural to them, by similar sounds that are part of their

mother tongue - and here we discover the roots of “a foreign accent”.

Nonetheless, the concrete realization of one’s non-native pronunciation - i.e. to what

extent it is driven by their first language and its sound system - largely depends on

many additional factors that need to be considered. Joanne Kenworthy (1987: 4)

provides an account of these factors, which we will explore in the following

subchapters.

10

1.1 Factors influencing non-native pronunciation

1.1.1 Learner’s native language

We have already briefly discussed what appears to be the most important cause of a

distinct non-native pronunciation: a major part is played by the transfer of phonetic

rules from one’s original language into the new one. To some extent, we can foresee the

resulting pronunciation when we compare the sound systems of both languages. It is a

general rule that the more dissimilarities there are between them, the more difficult it is

to learn the other language correctly and the more pronunciation mistakes are made. The

speakers are typically well aware that their accent is somewhat different, but they find

themselves incapable of identifying the particular features that make them sound “non-

native”, neither are they able to weigh the importance of the errors they make2.

1.1.2 Age of learner

The age of a learner is often considered a highly significant contributing factor. It is,

however, not yet completely understood what the exact relationship is between age at

which one starts learning and the ability to pronounce properly.

According to some researchers, the only way a native-like accent can be achieved is that

one commences learning early enough in childhood. They assume that the ability of

sound adoption diminishes after reaching adult age. Oyama (1976: 32) even says: “A

native-like pronunciation in a second language seems as rare in an adult learner as the

ability to run four minute mile”. The theory gives no chance of perfect pronunciation to

any adults, regardless of the time they have spent in the foreign country and even if their

vocabulary is at highest level.

On the other hand, there are linguists who claim otherwise. They argue that there is no

clear evidence supporting the view that the acquisition of proper pronunciation should 2 “For example, a Czech learner of English may have difficulties realizing that the last consonants in English words “let” (allow) and “led” (past tense of lead) should be pronounced voiceless in the first case and voiced in the second case. It is because in Czech the same words ´let´ and ´led´, even though having a different meaning, can both be pronounced voiceless, while the speaker does not have to be afraid of not being understood” (Sedláčková, 2007: 8).

11

only be restricted to learning in childhood. In their research3, youth have shown no

immediate advantage over adults in the matter of foreign sound pronunciation

(Kenworthy, 1987: 5).

1.1.3 Amount of exposure to English

There is no doubt that being frequently confronted with a second language is highly

beneficial for all of its learners, while, of course, in order to succeed in achieving good

pronunciation skills, learners need to be exposed to its spoken form. Also, the more they

practise speaking the language themselves, the closer to their ideal they get. Numerous

language schools take this as a ground to build their programs upon and various

conversation and immersion methods are now commonplace. It is also stressed to

teachers that they should take advantage of every opportunity to communicate with their

students using the target language.

It is certainly a great advantage to live in a country where the second language is

spoken, at least for some time. Nevertheless, great improvements should not be taken

for granted in such cases, since living itself does not provide a guaranteed access to

native speakers and it is not uncommon to find people of one cultural group staying

tight together in the foreign environment, maintaining little contact with the local

population. Sometimes it may even be more helpful for learners when native speakers

are available in their home country, so they can occasionally practise their skills

communicating with them.

1.1.4 Phonetic ability

Essentially, when discussing a person with a better or worse “phonetic ability”, what is

meant is the individual’s disposition for obtaining native-like pronunciation. The core of

the problem seems to lie in “hearing well”. Let us explain: While every human being is

equipped with an inborn ability of sound imitation, some can distinguish between

different phonetic features better than others. Consequently, these people perform better

when copying the sounds they hear, because they are aware of the difference. To

3 Such as the study of Hoefnagel-Höhle

12

exemplify, O’Connor (1989: 6) says: “Students who cannot hear a particular English

contrast have no chance of reproducing it. Until Spanish students can hear the contrast

between boat and vote, they have no chance of making the difference”.

Good news for students is that this skill can be improved quite extensively through

training. Therefore, those who seemed talentless, but have devoted their time and effort

to practice, often achieve better results than those people who appeared naturally

predisposed in the first place and decided to rely on that (Kenworthy, 1987: 7).

1.1.5 Attitude and identity

Some of the factors that affect both the process and the result of obtaining second

language pronunciation are psychological in nature. They can be surprisingly powerful.

An example could be one’s attitude to the foreign language they learn. If their approach

is positive and they have a strong inner motivation to learn, their performance is more

likely to be decent. On the contrary, if their desire of improvement is limited and if the

individual strongly identifies with their native culture, we will generally observe slower

and worse results. The latter is often the case in minority groups who do not welcome

the language of the majority and who thus develop a noticeable accent, sometimes even

hard to understand.

1.1.6 Motivation and concern for good pronunciation

There are people who want their spoken performance to be flawless, or at least best

possible. Comprehensibility is not enough for such speakers, they are concerned with

correctness and good pronunciation is an intrinsic part of that. These people are usually

industrious learners who like to be informed about the mistakes they make, so they

could progress.

Such an approach is appreciated in learners - unless constant worrying about possible

mispronunciations disturbs the flow of speech and hinders conversation, of course. We

generally wish learners to acknowledge the important role of proper pronunciation in

communication. They should be aware that if they mispronounce sounds consistently,

13

they are sometimes extremely hard to be understood by their counterparts, especially if

the other party are native speakers or speakers with a different language background.

Lastly, we should not forget to mention that the way a second language is taught to a

person will influence their pronunciation immensely. Their learning experience

(whether formal or informal) may boost motivation, it can stress the importance of the

subject, teachers can stimulate students’ phonetic skills through including specialized

materials into the educational process and it is also crucial to remember that their

personal pronunciation is likely to be imitated by students, so it should always be taken

great care of.

1.2 The difficulties learners may have with English pronunciation

It has already been suggested that a native language can have a significant role to play

in learning English. It is one of the causes from which learner’s mistakes may stem

from because some aspects of the mother tongue interfere with the target language.

There are certain aspects of English that make attainment of its pronunciation relatively

complicated. One of its characteristic features is the lack of one-to-one equivalence

between spelling and pronunciation. In other words, spoken word does not translate into

its written form according to phonemes and vice versa. The number of English

phonemes is greater than the number of letters in the alphabet: there are 44 different

sounds in spoken English, but there are 26 letters to represent them in the written form.

Learners find this difficult to get accustomed to and they typically start with

memorizing the spoken vocabulary and its written realization separately. It takes time to

discover the underlying rules and even fluent users of English sometimes hesitate about

the correct pronunciation of a word there are not familiar with.

On the other hand, many languages are so-called “phonetic languages”. Spanish is a

good example. It reads the way it is written with little exceptions, which will be

discussed later. There is an almost absolute one-to-one equivalence between letters and

phonemes. The pronunciation rules are very consistent in Spanish. Spanish learners

therefore struggle with English pronunciation, as they have a tendency to apply the

Spanish spelling-to-sound rules to it.

14

Apart from not being phonetic, English poses a challenge to some of its learners by

containing sounds that do not have a close equivalent it their native language. It is often

the case that an amount of training is required from the foreign speaker before they are

able to produce such an “unnatural” sound properly. In the meantime, or if they do not

pay enough attention to practice, they try to solve the problem with substitution -

instead of using the authentic phoneme they search their native phonetic inventory for a

sound that is at least similar to the correct one. This is how, for example, English /θ/

becomes /s/, /t/, or even /f/ in the performance of a foreign speaker.

Suprasegmental features are no less important for good pronunciation. Being

“suprasegmental” means that these features do not relate to segments - i.e. phonemes,

but rather to the other aspects of speech: linking, assimilation, stress, or intonation, to

name a few. A foreign language may have different stress and intonation patterns than

English, for instance, yet, learners should bear in mind that only a slight change in stress

and intonation, such as emphasizing wrong words in an utterance, can lead to a

significant shift of meaning and may cause misunderstanding. According to Celce-

Murcia, more serious misunderstanding can occur when a learner does not use correct

rhythm patterns and does not connect words than when a learner happens to use one

sound instead of another (1996: 131). “If learners use improper information intonation

contours, they can be perceived as abrupt, or even rude; and if the stress and rhythm

patterns are too nonnativelike, the speakers who produce them may not be understood at

all” (Celce-Murcia, 1996: 131).

Certainly, not all pronunciation mistakes necessarily inhibit successful communication.

People often make pronunciation errors which do not get in the way of their message

and the speaker is still understood. We still rightfully consider it a mistake, nonetheless.

1.3 The main features of pronunciation

In order to analyze pronunciation mistakes, it is necessary to be aware of all parts that

an utterance comprises. We need to investigate them individually, so that we can

identify problems precisely. We already briefly discussed these features in the previous

subchapter, so let us now summarize.

15

Two major groups of features can be distinguished:

• Segmental features are sounds that can be further analysed. They have a basis in

the sound system and they are also called segments. They are divided into

consonants and vowels.

• Suprasegmental features include stress (word and sentence stress), intonation

and also other aspects of connected speech such as assimilation, elision, linking,

intrusion, juncture and contraction.

1.4 Ways of analyzing comfortable intelligibility

Whilst gaining an authentic native accent does not seem realistic in many learners of

English, it surely should be their aim to reach at least what Kenworthy calls

“comfortable intelligibility”. Comfortably intelligible speakers not only successfully

communicate a message, their overall speech is also relatively easy to follow and

understand, despite possible imperfections.

Joanne Kenworthy claims there is no need for excessively complicated tests if we want

to assess the intelligibility of non-native speakers. She recommends rather simple

testing methods: reading aloud and spontaneous speech are the main sources and she

also suggests a recorded sample of speech (1987: 20).

However helpful for discovering pronunciation mistakes, both reading aloud and

spontaneous speech have their advantages as well as drawbacks. Reading aloud is

hardly a natural evidence of speaker’s performance, as it is seldom encountered in

everyday situations. The unusual task commonly makes the reader rather nervous and it

is probable that some mistakes would not be made in casual speech.

Utilising spontaneous speech for evaluation brings other pitfalls. Firstly, selection of

suitable topic may be demanding. Offering merely one topic can be perceived restricting

by the examinee. For this reason, it seems better to give speakers a choice of topics and

leave the decision to them, because, as it seems, “learners are more apt to provide a

fluent speech sample on a topic selected from a range of choices” (Celce-Murcia, 1996:

16

346). Secondly, samples of spontaneous speech lack uniformity, which makes them

harder to work with. Some answers may be too short, other strongly emotional and

some may not include the feature needed for confirmation of hypothesis, this all

reducing their value in the research. Celce-Murcia (1996: 346) advises a way of

overcoming this obstacle, which is to provide the speaker with some kind of visual

stimulus, such as a picture, a cartoon story without text, etc. Nevertheless, even such a

step rarely leads to an ideal result.

Recording speech samples is advisory especially when assessing a larger group of

speakers. Each recorded individual should be offered the same reasonable amount of

time to rehearse before reading aloud. This helps to eliminate a number of random

mistakes, as the recorded person uses the time to familiarize with the text they are

supposed to read and has time to think about pronunciation rules that apply. Also,

recordings become a useful tool of the examiner wishing to go in depth, as they can be

played more than once and may thus be listened to and evaluated more carefully.

2. Sound systems of English and Spanish

Both English and Spanish are part of the Indo-European language family, which

consists of a number of branches. Whereas English belongs to the Germanic group of

languages, Spanish is a part of the Romance branch. Therefore, phonological systems of

Spanish and English differ in many aspects, particularly in vowel sounds. Because of

that, Spanish learners may face a list of obstacles on the way to acquire a native English

speaker accent. “European Spanish speakers, in particular, probably find English

pronunciation harder than speakers of any other European language” (Coe in Swan,

2001: 91).

In the following section, we compare sound systems of English and Spanish.

Similarities and differences in consonant and vowel sounds between the two languages

will be examined and finally, sounds that may be responsible for difficulties in

pronunciation of English by Spanish speakers will be explored.

17

2.1 Phonemic inventories of English and Spanish

English sound system

Vowels – 20 vocalic sounds

short 7

long

monophthongs

5

diphthongs 8

Consonants – 24 phonemes

plosives 6

fricatives 9

affricates 2

nasals 3

lateral 1

approximants 3

Spanish sound system

Vowels – 19 vocalic sounds

monophthongs 5

diphthongs 14

Consonants – 19 phonemes plosives 6

fricatives 5

affricates 1

nasals 3

lateral 2

flap 1

trill 1

Chart 1 The English and Spanish sound systems

2.2 English and Spanish alphabets

Both languages use the Latin alphabet. Whereas the English alphabet consists of 26

Roman letters, three more can be found in the Spanish one.

a b c ch d e f g h i j k l ll m n ñ4 o p q r s t u v w x y z Chart 2 Spanish alphabet – the shaded letters are the three additional letters that are not concluded in the English

alphabet

The letters k and w do not appear in Spanish words very often unless they have been

borrowed from other languages. Sometimes, the letter w is not even considered to be a

part of the Spanish alphabet.

4 The little squiggle over the letter n is called a tilde.

18

2.3 Vowel sounds

According to Jones, “vowels, which may be called “pure musical sounds”

unaccompanied by any frictional noise, are continuous voiced sounds produced without

obstruction in the mouth” (1992: 12).

2.3.1 Vowel classification system

It is convenient to classify vowels according to three main phonetic criteria. The first

criterion is the vertical position of the tongue, which refers to the distance between the

tongue and the roof of the mouth. It divides vowels into close, close-mid, open-mid and

open. According to the second criterion, horizontal position of the tongue (the part of

the tongue between front and back), vowels can be front, central and back. Vowel

quality is also largely dependent on the last criterion, lip-rounding, which shows the

movement of lips while pronouncing particular vowels. We distinguish rounded, spread

and neutral vowels.

2.3.2 The English vowel sounds (Roach)

The English vowel sound system includes twenty vocalic sounds. Twelve of them are

pure vowels (seven short / ɪ, e, æ, ʌ , ɒ , ʊ , ǝ /, five long vowels /i:, ɜ:, ɑ:, ɔ:, u:/) and

eight diphthongs /ʊǝ, ɪǝ, eǝ, aɪ, ɔɪ, eɪ, ǝʊ, aʊ/. Roach characterizes diphthongs as

“sounds which consist of a movement or glide from one vowel to another” (2001: 21)

and pure vowels as “sounds which remain constant and do not glide” (2001: 21).

Furthermore, the English sound system also contains five triphthongs.

2.3.3 The Spanish vowel sounds (Bartoš) The Spanish vowel sound system includes nineteen vocalic sounds. Five of them are

pure vowels /a, e, i, o, u/ and the rest are diphthongs /ai, au, ei, eu, oi, ou, ia, ie, io, iu,

ua, ue, uo, ui/. Furthermore, Spanish also contains five triphthongs. Pure vowels can be

further divided into two groups, strong vowels /a, e, o/ and weak vowels /i, u/. “Each

vowel has one pure unvarying sound. It must always be given its full value, whether it

bears the stress or not. The English tendency to diphthongize single vowels must be

strictly avoided” (Harmer, 1969: 1).

19

In Spanish, two successive weak vowels or a combination of a strong vowel and a weak

vowel form a diphthong and it is important to pronounce them on one breath as a single

syllable. Stress is always put on the strong vowel.

Chart 3 English and Spanish monophthongs - the English monopthongs are shaded, the Spanish ones are on a white background

2.3.4 Commonalities and distinctions between English and Spanish vowels

The Spanish system of vowel sounds is much simpler than that of English. It does not

contain any long vowels, as it is the case in English. Therefore, Spanish learners may

find it difficult to produce or even perceive various English vowel sounds. Helman

(2004: 452) in her article describes commonalities and distinctions in the vowel sound

systems of both languages and further concludes possible areas of difficulty in terms of

production of vowels for Spanish learners of English.

Commonalities Vowel sounds listed in Chart 4 are sounds that are pronounced in the same way in both

languages, although they are at times spelled with different letters. “Vowels in Spanish

have relatively the same tongue height and tongue placement as their counterparts in

English, with the exception of /a/, which in Spanish is usually described as a low,

central vowel” (Goldstein, 2001: 55). Producing these sounds should pose no problem

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because they are the same in both languages. “Confusion can arise when the letters used

to represent sounds differ between languages” (Helman, 2004: 455).

English letter Pronunciation of the letter in particular words

Similar vowel sound used in a Spanish word

English translation of the Spanish word

a /e/ - day /deɪ/ e – hermano brother

e /i:/ - clean /kli:n/ i - inglés English

i /aɪ/ - site /saɪt/ ai – aire air

o /ǝʊ/ - cope /kǝʊp/ o – ocho eight

u /ʊ/ - could /kʊd/ u - Usted you

Chart 4 Vowel sounds common to English and Spanish (Helman, 2004: 455)

Distinctions

“With approximately double the number of vowel sounds, the English system is much

more complex than that of Spanish” (Helman, 2004: 455). Compared to English where

length of the vowel plays an important role in distinguishing between the words, length

of the vowel in Spanish is not significant. Spanish vowels are always short and tense

and pronounced clearly even in unstressed syllables. Moreover, they are generally more

close than in English and are pronounced more to the front of the mouth. “They are

never drawn out with a u or i glide as in English: lo ≠ low, de ≠ day” (Knorre, 2009:

12).

In comparison with English, the following short vowels are not present in the Spanish

sound system or their pronunciation differ: /æ/ as in man /mæn/, /e/ as in pen /pen/, /ɪ/ as

in tip /tɪp/, /ʌ/ as in up /ʌp/, /ʊ/ as in could /kʊd/, r-controlled vowels (e.g. in her,

water), the schwa sound /ǝ/ as in away /ǝweɪ/ (Helman, 2004: 455). As a result, in order

to substitute the vowels not occurring in their sound system, Spanish learners try to find

the closest vowel sound.

2.3.5 Possible areas of difficulty with the pronunciation of vowels

We will now look at all English vowel sounds, provide examples of them in an English

and Spanish word (if the sound exists in the language) and try to predict what problems

of major significance can occur with the sounds when being used by Spanish speakers.

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Here, we shall be inspired by Helman (2004: 457), who devoted one of her studies to

this particular issue.

As stated earlier, in general, length of vowels is not a distinctive feature in Spanish.

Consequently, Spanish learners of English will probably tend to make vowels equally

long and will find difficulty in differentiating between vowels where length plays an

important role. Thus, learners may encounter problems with distinguishing words such

as /ɪ/-/i:/ (bit - beat), /a/-/e/ (bat - bet), /ʊ/-/u:/ (book - boot) and /eɪ/-/e/ (ages - edges).

“Typically, at least two English vowels share the “phonetic space” occupied by one

Spanish vowel” (Swan, 2001: 91).

/i:/ - examples: English - mean; this sound, together with /ɪ/, corresponds to Spanish /i/

as in dinero (= money). The difference between kin /kɪn/ and keen /ki:n/ may not

therefore be seen by Spanish speakers, who will most likely pronounce both words

identically like kin /kin/.

/ɪ/ - examples: English - trick; the closest Spanish vowel to this sound is /i/ as in hijo

(= son). Words such as tip /tɪp/ and hit /hɪt/ may be pronounced like teep /ti:p/ and heat

/hi:t/.

/ʊ/ - examples: English - book; the closest Spanish vowel sound is /u/ as in uno (= one).

This short vowel may be replaced by the long vowel /u:/. The word such as pull may be

pronounced like pool.

/u:/ - examples: English - cool; Spanish speakers may substitute /ʊ/ for /u:/ and

pronounce fool /fu:l/ like full /fʊl/.

/e/ - examples: English - men; Spanish - tres (= three). We do not expect any problems

with the production of this sound.

/ǝ/ - examples: English - about; this most common sound in English has no counterpart

in Spanish. Spanish learners will most likely lower schwa to a vowel in close proximity

to it, i.e. /a/. Words such as away may thus change to /a'weɪ/.

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/ɜ:/ - examples: English - bird; r-controlled vowels in words such as bird, curve, curb

will most likely be pronounced as a monophthong vowel (either /i/ or /e/) and the

flapped /ɾ/ (/biɾd, keɾv, keɾb/).

/ɔ:/ - examples: English - more; the closest Spanish vowel sound is /o/ as in ocho (=

eight). Caught /kɔ:t/ may sound like cot /kɒt/.

/æ/ - examples: English - bad; this phoneme, together with /ʌ/ and /ɑ:/, corresponds to

Spanish /a/ as in ajo (= garlic). Thus, words such as hat, hut and heart may be confused

in perception and pronounced like /hat/.

/ʌ/ - examples: English - lucky; this vowel phoneme does not occur in Spanish. Thus, in

their attempt to produce the sound, learners may use /o/, /a/ or /u/ instead. The word

must would then sound like most or mast, the word luck would sound like luke.

/ɑ:/ - examples: English - smart; this phoneme will most likely be pronounced as a

monophthong and the flapped /ɾ/ (heart → /haɾt/).

/ɒ/ - examples: English - watch; this sound, /ǝʊ/ and /ɔ:/ may all be confused and a

vowel intermediate between /ɒ/ and /ɔ:/ may be used for all three sounds.

As far as all English diphthongs are concerned, sources differ rather substantially in

predicting the results of Spanish pronunciation attempts. While some authors claim that

all diphthongs will pose a difficulty for Spanish learners (Helman, 2004: 457), Coe in

Swan (2001: 92) maintains that the following four English diphthongs should not

present difficulties to any of such learners: /aʊ/, /eɪ/, /aɪ/ and /ɔɪ/. According to Helman,

Spanish speakers will most probably simplify the diphthongs and while pronouncing

them they will put more emphasis on the second vowel (2004: 457).

Let us now look and consider each diphthong individually:

/ɪǝ/ - examples: English - here; the diphthong may be replaced by the first vowel of the

diphthong and the Spanish flapped /ɾ/. Speakers might thus pronounce the word here

like /hɪɾ/.

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/ʊǝ/ - examples: English - tour; the diphthong may be replaced by the first vowel of the

diphthong and the Spanish /r/. Speakers might thus pronounce the word tour like /tʊr/.

/eǝ/ - examples: English - hair; the diphthong may be replaced by the vowel and the

Spanish /r/. Speakers may pronounce the word aired like /aɪrd/.

/eɪ/ - examples: English - bay; the diphthong may become a monophthong /e/. Speakers

may thus change the word ages into edges.

/ɔɪ/ - examples: English - boy; the phoneme may become a monophthong /ɒ/. Spanish

speakers might pronounce the word coin /kɔɪn/ like con /kɒn/.

/aɪ/ - examples: English - night; the diphthongs may change into the monophthong /a/

(e.g. mine /maɪn/ → /man/).

/ǝʊ/ - examples: English - road; the sound may not be distinguished from /ɔ:/. The word

coach /kǝʊtʃ/ may be pronounced /kɔ:tʃ/.

/aʊ/ - examples: English - trout; there may be a tendency to make a monophthong and

pronounce only the first letter a (e.g. about /ǝbaʊt/ → /ǝbat/).

2.4 Consonant sounds

“If the tongue is held very close to the roof of the mouth and a voiced airstream of

ordinary force is emitted, a frictional noise is heard in addition to the voice. The sound

is a consonant” (Jones, 1992: 12). Standard British English contains 24 consonant

phonemes and standard European Spanish comprises 19 consonant phonemes.

2.4.1 Consonant classification system

There are three main criteria according to which consonants can be classified. The first

criterion is voicing. Depending on the presence or absence of vibration of vocal chords,

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we can distinguish either voiced or voiceless consonants.5 There are several groups to

which consonants can be divided according to the manner and place of articulation.

According to IPA6, ten groups of consonants can be distinguished according to the

manner of articulation and with regard to the place of articulation, we can divide

consonants into eleven groups. All the possible types needed for the purposes of this

work are shown in the following charts and a simplified description of each group is

provided.

Chart 5 Division of consonants according to the place of articulation (Jones, 1992: 25)

5 Even though we classify consonants as either voiced or voiceless sounds, they can be sometimes voiced for only part of their time. English plosives b, d and g serve as good examples. Although these are normally considered voiced consonants, they can sometimes be pronounced voiceless. When they occupy the initial position in words (e.g. bag, dog and good), the voicing starts only just before the end of the consonant. Conversely, when these consonants appear in the final position in words (e.g. hob, bad and leg), the initial voicing is diminished (Roach, 2001: 20). 6 The International Phonetic Alphabet is the system of transcription used today. 7 The three remaining groups of consonants according to the place of articulation are pharyngeal, retroflex and uvular consonants. We decided not to include them in Chart 15 as they are part of neither the English nor the Spanish sound systems.

Place of articulation7 Characteristics

bilabial articulated by both lips pressed together

labiodental articulated by the lower lip touching the upper front teeth

dental articulated by the tongue tip touching the upper teeth

alveolar articulated by the blade of the tongue touching the alveolar ridge

post-alveolar articulated by the blade (or tip) of the tongue and the area between the alveolar ridge and the hard palate

palatal articulated by the front of the tongue against the hard palate

velar articulated by the back of the tongue against the soft palate

glottal articulated in the glottis; audible friction made by the gap between the vocal cords

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Manner of articulation 8

Characteristics

plosive A complete closure is made in the vocal tract, the soft palate is raised, air is compressed behind the closure and is released at the end. Plosion, a short explosive noise, follows.

fricative Two articulators approach each other but they never touch. The air escapes with difficulty between two articulators and a hissing sound is produced.

affricate An affricate starts as a plosive (a complete closure is made in the mouth, the soft palate is raised) and then the air is released more slowly.

nasal The oral cavity is completely closed (closure is made either by the lips, or by the tongue against the hard palate), the soft palate is lowered and air escapes through the nose.

lateral The blade of the tongue is in close contact with the alveolar ridge and makes a partial closure. Air escapes along the sides of the tongue.

approximant Articulators approach each other, but not much like in the case of fricatives.

tap9 or flap One articulator is quickly thrown against the other (the tongue strikes the roof of the mouth) and the flow of air is therefore interrupted for a short time.

trill Trill is produced by vibration of the articulator in the airstream (in case of the Spanish r, the place of articulation is the alveolar ridge).

Chart 6 Division of consonants according to the manner of articulation (Kelly, 2000: 6)

8 The two remaining groups of consonants according to the manner of articulation are ejective stops and implosives. We decided not to include them in Chart 6 as they are part of neither the English nor the Spanish sound system. 9 “Flap is a very brief speech sound in which the tongue is curled back, then flicked forward against the alveolar ridge” (Roach, 2001: 109).

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2.4.2 English and Spanish consonant sounds

Place of articulation

Front Back

Chart of English consonant phonemes (Roach)

bilabial labiodental dental alveolar post-

alveolar

palatal velar glottal

plosives p b t d k g

fricatives f v θ ð s z ʃ ʒ h

affricates tʃ dʒ

nasals m n ŋ

laterals l

Man

ner

of a

rtic

ulat

ion

approximants w ɹ10 j

Chart 7 English consonants. Voiceless phonemes are shaded, their voiced counterparts are on a white background

Place of articulation

Front Back

Chart of Spanish consonant phonemes (Bartoš)

bilabial labiodental dental alveolar post-

alveolar

palatal velar

plosives p b t d k g

fricatives f θ s j x

affricates tʃ

nasals m n ɲ

laterals l ʎ

flaps ɾ

Man

ner

of a

rtic

ulat

ion

trills r11

Chart 8 Spanish consonants. Voiceless phonemes are shaded and voiced consonants are on a white background

10 In the IPA system, the phonetic symbol /r/ represents the Spanish trill. Although some sources (Roach, 2001: 65; Kelly, 2000: 7) use the same symbol to signify the English realization of r, it should be, according to the IPA system, represented by the symbol /ɹ/. In order to distinguish between these two phonemes in the thesis, the symbol /ɹ/ will be used for the English post-alveolar approximant. 11 This sound, known as rolled r, can also be found in varieties of British and Scottish English.

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2.4.3 Commonalities and distinctions between English and Spanish consonants

Commonalities

A lot of consonant phonemes are shared by both languages. The following English

consonant sounds also exist in Spanish - /p, b, t, d, k, g, m, n, f, s, tʃ, j, l/. Many Spanish

consonants have almost identical pronunciation as the corresponding English sounds.

Distinctions

Although many consonant phonemes are shared by both languages, each of the

languages also contains unfamiliar sounds for the other language. In general, Spanish

consonants are pronounced more clearly, more quickly and they are usually not so

strongly released nor so strongly pronounced as the corresponding ones in English. A

few Spanish consonants do not even have close approximations in English.

Perception and consequent production of sounds that are not part of the phonetic

inventory of one’s native language will most likely cause difficulties. “The phonemes

and clusters present in English and not in Spanish are apt to cause the most problems for

Spanish speakers learning English” (Helman, 2004: 454). Chart 9 shows consonant

phonemes present in English but not included in the Spanish phonetic repertoire. Chart

10 presents letters and letter combinations in Spanish that are the most different from

English.

English sound

/dʒ/ /ɹ/ /v/ /z/ /ʃ/ /ð/ /ʒ/ /ph/12 /th/12 /kh/12 /ŋ/

Sample word

joke rope van zipper shop this measure pen ten Ken hung

Chart 9 Consonant phonemes that occur in English but not in Spanish

12 “Aspiration is a noise produced by the rapid flow of air from the larynx through the vocal tract and is

usually found after the release of plosive consonants” (Roach, 2001: 108). In comparison with English,

the Spanish consonants p, t, k are not accompanied by aspiration.

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Spelling Spanish sample word

English translation

Equivalent English pronunciation

ch mucho a lot, much /tʃ/ in chair ge (gi) Geraldo Gerald soft like h qu que that /k/ in collar (without aspiration) h hola hello always silent gu (ga, go)

gastar spend /g/ in garden

ll me llamo my name is /lj/ in million ñ señor Mr. /nj/ in knew

profesora professor clear trill with the tip of the tongue r13, rr carro, rosa car, rose strong trill (2 - 3 tongue rolls), several

Spanish r’s in a row v vino wine like Spanish b, although not so strongly

released b bueno good not so strongly released like in English,

lips barely touch ce, ci cebolla,

cinéma onion, cinema /θ/ in thin

d dónde where similar to /ð/, pronounced more softly with the tip of the tongue slightly protruding between the teeth

l libro book much more rapid j jugar play similar to the English phoneme /h/ mixed

with the Spanish /x/ z Zaragoza Zaragoza /θ/ in thin Chart 10 Spanish sounds most different from English

By examining Chart 9 for features that are present in English but not in Spanish, we can

project possible phonemic difficulties for Spanish speakers of English and by examining

Chart 10 we can predict what sounds Spanish learners may use as replacements. It is

important to mention that some of the sounds above described as sounds occurring only

in English but not in Spanish may still appear in the phonetic inventories of some

Spanish dialects.

13 “The letter r has two pronunciations in Spanish: the trilled r - /r/ (written as rr between vowels, e.g. guerra = war, or as r at the beginning of a word, e.g. rosa = pink), and the flap r - /ɾ/, which appears in all other positions, e.g. tren, caro). Because mispronunciations can alter the meaning of a word, it is important to distinguish between these two pronunciations of the Spanish r. The flap r is similar to the sound produced by the rapid pronunciation of tt and dd in English” (Sabló-Yates, 2009: 70).

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2.4.4 Possible areas of difficulty with the pronunciation of consonants

In the following section, all English consonants will be looked at in detail and each

consonant will be followed by description of major difficulties Spanish speakers may

encounter while attempting to produce the sounds.

/p/ - examples: English - pen, Spanish - pastilla (= pill). Spanish learners will most

likely pronounce the initial aspirated plosive /ph/ without the puff of air. The phoneme

may therefore sound like /p/, or sometimes it may even approach /b/. It is because

aspiration naturally devoices a plosive, while the lack of it lets some voice into the

utterance.

/b/ - examples: English - book, Spanish - basquetbol (= basketball). In Spanish, this

phoneme is not clearly differentiated from /v/. As a result, it may be replaced by /v/

(especially between vowels, where /b/ is softer and not a stop, but a continuous sound).

At the end of words, learners may use voiceless /p/ (cub /kʌb/ → cup /kʌp/).

/t/ - examples: English - ten, Spanish - tren (= train). This sound is very dental in

Spanish. In addition, in cases where /th/ should be pronounced, the aspiration will most

likely be omitted.

/d/ - examples: English - dog, Spanish - dónde (= where). This phoneme is produced at

the alveolar place of articulation in English, compared with a more dental place of

articulation in Spanish. It may be substituted with /ð/ (e.g. day /deɪ/ → they /ðeɪ/).

However, at the beginning of a word and after n or l, it is pronounced similarly to

English d (Sabló-Yates, 2009: 81). At the end of words, /d/ may become /t/ (sad /sæd/

→ sat /sæt/).

/k/ - examples: English - control, Spanish - Carlos (= Charles). In Spanish, this sound is

most commonly represented by the letter c followed by any vowel except e or i14. Due

to the absence of aspirated /kh/ in Spanish, the initial /k/ will be pronounced without the

puff of air. Besides, /k/ and /g/ may be confused, pronouncing got /gɒt/ as cot /kɒt/ and

14 As already stated above, the pronunciation of the letter c followed by e or i would be /θ/. In Spanish, the sound /k/ may also be represented by the letter k, however, its occurrence is very rare as the letter appears only in borrowed words (e.g. kilómetro = kilometre).

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the reverse. If this sound is to be found in final consonant clusters, it may be deleted

(tank → tan).

/g/ - examples: English - got, Spanish - guerra (= war). This phoneme is likely to be

pronounced as /k/ at the end of words (e.g. smog /smɒg/ → smock /smɒk/).

/f/ - examples: English - fly, Spanish - factoría (= factory). The Spanish sound system

possesses the identical sound. Therefore, no problems are expected.

/v/ - examples: English - very, Spanish - vino (= wine). In Spanish, the letter v at the

beginning of words is pronounced /b/. Learners may carry over this rule into English

and replace /v/ by /b/ (e.g. very /veɹi/ → berry /beɹi/).

/θ/ - examples: English - think, Spanish - cebolla (= onion). The production of this

sound itself will pose no problem. However, its utilisation differs in Spanish (where the

th-cluster is not common at all) and learners may replace it with /t/ in some words.

Therefore, thick /θɪk/ would be pronounced as tick /tɪk/.

/ð/ - examples: English - this. This phoneme may be troublesome because it is absent in

the Spanish sound system. Learners will most likely use /d/ instead.

/s/ - examples: English - site, Spanish - sábado (= Saturday). This sound exists in

Spanish and no problems with it should arise.

/z/ - Examples: English - zipper. Spanish learners may be unfamiliar with the

production of this sound due to its absence in the Spanish sound system. They may use

/s/ instead and as a result confuse words such as zoo /zu:/ and Sue /su:/ or they may

replace the sound with /θ/ as its pronunciation represents also the Spanish letter z (e.g.

Zaragoza /θaɾagoθa/).

/ʃ/ - examples: English - shop. This sound does not occur in Spanish and learners may

use either /tʃ/ or /s/ instead. They may struggle to distinguish between words like she

/ʃi:/ and see /si:/. In case learners know how to produce the sound /ʃ/, they may overuse

it and pronounce cherry /tʃeɹi/ as sherry /ʃeɹi/.

/ʒ/ - examples: English - measure. This phoneme is not present in the Spanish sound

system, the learners may use /tʃ/ or /ʃ/ instead (e.g. pleasure /pleʒǝ/ → /pleʃǝ/).

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/h/ - examples: English - hotel, Spanish - hablar (= to speak). The letter h is never

pronounced in Spanish (e.g. hora /ora/ = hour). It is therefore possible that the sound

will be dropped where it has to be pronounced or it will be pronounced with a hissing

sound.

/tʃ/ - examples: English - chair, Spanish - chico (= boy). Learners may encounter

troubles with distinguishing words such as cheap/sheep/jeep.

/dʒ/ - examples: English - jacket. In Spanish, this phoneme may be confused with /tʃ/,

/tʃ/ being used for both (e.g. joke /dʒǝʊk/ → choke /tʃǝʊk/). Moreover, learners may not

see the difference between joke /dʒǝʊk/ and yoke /jǝʊk/. Therefore, joke may sound like

yoke.

/m/ - examples: English - monster, Spanish - madre (= mother). This sound should pose

no problem unless it appears at the end of a word (e.g. Sam). In Spanish, it never occurs

in final position and may thus be replaced by /ŋ/ or /n/.

/n/ - examples: English - now, Spanish - novia (= girlfriend). No problems are expected

with the production of this sound.

/ŋ/ - examples: English - raining /ɹeɪnɪŋ/. This sound does not occur independently in

Spanish and may be replaced by /n/, / ŋg/ or /nk/ (e.g. thing /θɪŋ/ → thin /θɪn/).

/l/ - examples: English - lonely, Spanish - lavar (= to wash). English recognizes two

types of the consonant l - clear l found before vowels (e.g. slim) and dark ɫ occurring

before consonants (e.g. old) or at the end of words (e.g. tool). Spanish l is always clear.

Learners may have troubles with producing the dark ɫ.

/w/ - examples: English - wing. In Spanish, this phoneme appears only in borrowed

words (e.g. walkman). It may be mispronounced as a /b/, or /g/ may be inserted before

the sound (went - Gwent).

/ɹ/ - examples: English - relax. This phoneme is a continuant in English but in Spanish,

the tip of the tongue trills against the alveolar ridge. Learners may also use w and

pronounce rope as wope.

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/j/ - examples: English - yellow, Spanish - ayer (= yesterday). The phoneme /j/ as in yet,

yes may be replaced by the sound represented by the letter y in Spanish (e.g. ayer =

yesterday where /j/ is a palatal fricative in Spanish). Moreover, Spanish learners may

not see the difference in pronunciation of /j/ in words such as yet /jet/ and jet /dʒet/.

Therefore, yell may sound like gel.

2.5 Positions of sounds in words

Each language has its own rules about positions of consonants and vowels in words -

sounds which can go together, sounds which begin or end words and sounds which may

change according to their placement in a word. Both similarities and differences in

positions of sounds in words can be traced in English and Spanish.

2.5.1 Commonalities and distinctions between English and Spanish

Commonalities

All of the consonant and vowel phonemes can begin a word in both English and Spanish

except the English sound /ŋ/.

Distinctions

Most consonants in English may end a word. On the contrary, only a few consonants

can appear in the final position in Spanish - l, flapped r, d, n and s (inusual = unusual,

bailar = to dance, sed = thirst, función = function, colores = colours). Concerning

vowels, it is the exact opposite. In Spanish, most vowels can have the final position

(except /eu/), while there are five vowels which may never end an English words - short

a, short e, short i, short u and long o. A lot of Spanish words finish by the vowel a.

2.5.2 Possible areas of difficulty in the positions of sounds in words

According to Helman (2004: 454), two possible key areas may cause difficulty:

• Spanish learners may fail to pronounce the final consonants accurately or

strongly enough due to the higher number of consonants which may end words

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in English. Words which end with a consonant not permitted in Spanish may be

problematic - card may be pronounced as cart, bridge as brish, think as thing

and so on.

• Consonant clusters at the end of words (hard, best, curl) can be extremely

troublesome for Spanish speakers. They either omit or substitute the sound with

what seems more natural to them. Consonant clusters will be dealt with in the

following paragraph.

2.5.3 Consonant clusters

Consonant cluster is a group of consonant sounds that appear together without an

intervening vowel in any possible position in a word. According to their position in a

word, consonant clusters can be further divided into three groups:

• Initial consonant clusters occur at the beginning of words. A higher number of

them can be found in English, some of them being permissible only in this

language, but not in Spanish. They are presented, together with a sample word in

Chart 11. Initial consonant clusters shared by both languages include pl, pr, bl,

br, tr, dr, cl, cr, gl, gr, fl and fr (Helman, 2004: 453). Sample words containing

these clusters can be found in Chart 12. As we can notice, the main category of

clusters that are distinct in English are those beginning with the letter s, which

Spanish does not allow. Learners may therefore try to slightly change such

words. The translation of English words beginning with the letter s into Spanish

usually starts with e (school - escuela, student - estudiante, Spain - España,

etc.). Spanish learners may apply this to other words beginning with s-clusters

and exhibit either epenthesis, which is prefixing such words with an /e/ sound or

inserting other vowels (e.g. smile becomes esmile, snake → esnake, school →

eschool and Spain → espain) or cluster reduction, which is simplification of a

cluster by deleting the initial sound (e.g. star → tar). The tendency for

epenthesis can be traced especially in initial clusters - strike → satrike, spring

→ sipring (Rogerson, 1990: 8). Unlike English, which counts several three-letter

initial clusters (split, strike, etc.), Spanish has combinations of no more than two

letters.

• Consonant clusters that occur in the middle position are much less troublesome

for the Spanish, as they are very common in their native language. In Spanish,

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the middle position in words can easily be occupied by consonant clusters

consisting of two or even more phonemes. Examples include words like

aspirador, escribir, transporte, sombra, Alfredo, etc. (= vacuum cleaner, to

write, transport, shade, Alfred, etc.). Four-phoneme consonant clusters exist in

Spanish, although their occurrence is rare (e.g. construcción = construction). A

high number of consonant clusters in the middle position of words can be found

also found in English (e.g. construction, obstacle, etc.).

• Final consonant clusters may be extremely troublesome for Spanish learners of

English as there is no final combination of two or more consonants without an

intervening vowel allowed in Spanish. On the contrary, English offers a wide

range of final consonant clusters. Spanish learners may not cope well with those

ending in /t/ and /d/ (e.g. next, walked) and may simplify them by deleting the

final /t/ or /d/ or by inserting a vowel between the final consonants. This would

result in forms like nex or nexet, walk or walked. Another combination, which

may appear to be problematic, is /s/ + a consonant + /s/ (e.g. tests, risks). The

learners tend to delete one of the s. Norman Coe in Swan suggests other typical

simplifications: breakfast → brefas; cars, carts, cards → cars (2001: 94). The

longest English final consonant cluster consists of four sounds and appears in

the word twelfths /twelfθs/.

Consonant cluster Sample word Consonant cluster Sample word sk/sc scar tw twice sl15 slim qu (kw) quick sm small scr screw sn snore spl splash sp spy spr spring st star str street sw swine squ (skw) square Chart 11 Initial consonant clusters permissible in English but not in Spanish + sample word

15 Although a few words with initial clusters sl, sp, etc. (slalom, spaghetti) can be found in Spanish dictionary, we consider them as examples because they are all borrowed from foreign languages.

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Consonant cluster English sample word

Spanish sample word

English translation of the Spanish word

pl plastic planta plant pr promise prado meadow bl blind blanco white br brother brazo arm tr truth tr abajo work dr drive droga drug cl class claro clear cr crew creer to think gl glue globo balloon gr green Granada Granada fl floods flor flower fr French fr uta fruit Chart 12 Initial consonant clusters shared by English and Spanish

2.6 Cognates

Marty Knorre describes cognates as “related words between two languages that are

similar or identical in form and meaning” (2009: 8). On the one hand, cognates can help

Spanish learners of English enrich their vocabulary as the words are spelled similarly or

even exactly the same and are therefore easy to learn, but on the other hand, they are the

most difficult to pronounce because they are never pronounced exactly like their

Spanish equivalent and they may pose problems to the Spanish.

30-40% of all words in Spanish are cognates of English (Knorre, 2009: 8). Chart 13

brings a few examples of such words. It is important to stress that the chart should not

be perceived as a complete list of all the cognates. We divided them according to the

word classes they belong to.

Word class Final syllables Spanish → English

Spanish examples

English cognate

ción → tion nación nation

ante → ent estudiante student

or → or doctor doctor

nouns

al → al animal animal

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ista → ist optimista optimist

comedia comedy

factoría factory

ia, ía, io → y

diccionario dictionary

dad → ity nacionalidad nationality

ismo → ism optimismo optimism

ncia → nce experiencia experience

ario → ary vocabulario vocabulary

el → el cruel cruel

ante → ant importante important

ente → ent inteligente intelligent

ista → istic optimista optimistic

oso → ous delicioso delicious

ario → ary ordinario ordinary

ido → id esplendido splendid

ble → ble terrible terrible

ivo → ive efectivo effective

ico → ic melancólico melancholic

adjectives

il → ile movil mobile

ar → ate operar operate

exportar export tar, tir → vowel + consonant + t

insistir insist

ar → vowel + consonant + e

invitar invite

verbs

ificar → ify significar signify

adverbs

mente + (omitting or adding a vowel) → ly

exactamente exactly

Chart 13 Examples of cognates

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2.7 Suprasegmental features

2.7.1 Word stress

“Every English word has a definite place for stress and we are not allowed to change it”

(O’Connor, 2004: 90). It is most commonly placed on the first syllable but many words

are stressed on the second syllable. Some words (mostly compounds) even have two

stressed syllables. The placement of stress is English depends on the grammatical

category of the words. Moreover, the weight of the syllable (i.e. whether the vowel is

short or long as well as the number of consonants that follow it) plays an important role

as well (Goldstein, 2001: 59). There is no simple way of predicting which syllable or

syllables must be stressed. Therefore, whenever a foreign speaker learns a new word, it

is advisable to learn it individually with its stress. This information can be found in any

good dictionary of English and foreign learners should pay a large amount of attention

to it because incorrect placement of stress may be a major cause of intelligibility

problems.

Basically, syllables in English are divided into two groups – the strong and weak ones.

Only strong syllables can be stressed. Roach defines them as “syllables that have a

rhyme which either has a syllable peak which is a long vowel or a diphthong, or a vowel

followed by a coda (i.e. one or more consonants) and a weak syllables as syllables that

have a syllable peak which is a short vowel, and no coda unless the syllable peak is the

schwa vowel /ǝ/ or /ɪ/” (2001: 98).

“Unlike English, where words are often phonetically confusing, difficult to sound out,

and contain syllables with varying amount of stress, Spanish words are pronounced

exactly as they are written” (Stein, 1999: 10).

“Stress in Spanish can occur on the last syllable, on the penultimate syllable, or on the

antepenultimate syllable” (Goldstein, 2001: 59). Whereas stress in English is much

more complicated and depends on a number of factors, the rules for stress in Spanish

words are straightforward. Three basic ones need to be followed. Stress is placed:

• on the penultimate syllable if a word ends in a vowel, an n and an s - e.g.

choco'late, e'xamen, 'lenguas (= chocolate, exam, languages).

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• on the last syllable if a word ends in any letter except those mentioned above -

e.g. espa'ñol, doc'tor, natu'ral (= Spanish, doctor, natural).

• where the written accent is placed over the vowel to mark departure from the

rules of stress placement - e.g. bo'lígrafo (= pen).

Whereas Spanish word stress can be decided simply in relation to the syllables of words

and their endings according to the above mentioned rules, placement of stress in English

is a very complex issue and it is therefore very difficult to predict it. Complicated

though the issue is, let us introduce a few rules for placement of stress in English in the

simplest possible form. We have already briefly discussed what needs to be considered

in order to decide correctly on stress placement. Apart from the grammatical category

the word belongs to and a number of syllables it contains, we need to recognise whether

the word is simple or complex.16 Stress rules for simple words are mostly unpredictable

and they are so complex that it seems easier to treat stress placement as an inseparable

part of the word and learn it when the word itself is learnt.

Unlike in English, where stress is most commonly placed on the first syllable, the two

most frequent patterns for stress in Spanish are those on the penultimate and on the last

syllable. Although all Spanish words of more than one syllable have a stressed vowel,

most words do not have a written accent mark because they have the word stress exactly

where native speakers of Spanish would predict it.

Stress placement in complex words

Rules for complex words´ stress placement are much easier than those for simple words.

In order to place stress correctly, it is necessary to understand the difference between

stress neutral, stress shifting suffixes and suffixes that carry primary stress themselves.

In the first group, adding a suffix to the stem does not affect the stress placement of the

word to which the suffix is attached.

16 “Simple words are not composed of more than one grammatical unit” (Roach, 2000: 104). On the contrary, complex words are composed of two or more grammatical units (e.g. hope is a simple word, hopeful and hopeless are complex as well as hopefully and hopefulness). There are two major types of complex words: words containing one or more affixes (e.g. hopefully) and compounds, which are words consisting of more than one stem (e.g. fireman).

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“Suffixes -able, -age, -al, -en, -ful, -ing, -ish, -like, -less, -ly, -ment (noun), -ness, -ous, -

fy, -wise, -y” are examples of stress neutral suffixes (Roach, 2000: 106). The word

wonder is stressed on the first syllable /'wʌndǝ/ and so is the word wonderful /'wʌndǝfl/.

In the second group, suffixes have an influence on the stress placement. Such suffixes

include -eous, -graphy, -ial, -ic, -ion, -ious, -ty, -ive (Roach, 2000: 107). The word

uniform carries the stress on the first syllable /'ju:nɪfɔ:m/ and by adding the suffix –ity,

the primary stress is shifted /ju:nɪ'fɔ:mǝti/.

Suffixes that carry primary stress themselves include the following: -ee, -eer, -ese, -ette

and -esque (Roach, 2001: 106). As far as prefixes are concerned, their effect upon stress

placement is not so regular and predictable like in the case of suffixes. It is therefore

better to learn words with prefixes and their stress placement as an individual item.

Stress placement in compounds

As far as stress in compound words is concerned, there are two possibilities. It is placed

either on the first or on the second constituent word of the compound. The most

common compound pattern in English is composed of two nouns with the stress on the

first noun (e.g. staircase /'steǝkeɪs/). The second noun receives secondary stress. The

following compounds tend to have stress on the last element: heavy-'handed (an

adjective + the -ed morpheme), second-'class (a number + a noun), South-'West

(adverbs), ill-treat (an adverb + a verb). However, a learner may still make a mistake in

stress placement after acquiring these rules as stress placement varies in context - e.g.

'heavy-handed 'sentence (Roach, 2001: 109).

It is important to distinguish noun compounds ('greenhouse = a building made of glass

used for growing plants) from nouns modified by an adjective (green 'house = a house

with a green paint on it). In Spanish, the stress in compound words is either on the

second element (e.g. guarda'bosque = ranger) or different word order is used.

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2.7.2 Potential difficulties in the area of word stress

Neither English nor Spanish have fixed word stress placement. A word can be stressed

on any syllable. However, certain rules for it exist in both languages. In comparison

with Spanish, which possesses more transparent stress placement rules, English rules

are complex and may thus be found confusing by Spanish speakers. Moreover, there are

exceptions to the rules and English, unlike Spanish, does not indicate irregularly placed

stress patters through accent marks.

There are some tendencies in Spanish, which, if carried over into English, may lead to

incorrect stress placement. Particular problems can appear with multisyllabic cognates.

English words ending in -sion and -tion have stress placed on the penultimate syllable

(de'cision, re'lation, ope'ration). In Spanish, the stress would normally fall, according to

the rule, on the same syllable. However, the presence of the written accent over the

letter o postpones it until the last syllable (decisión, relatión, operación). Misplacing

stress may not have to be the case of the cognates ending only in -sion/-tion. More

distinctions are illustrated in Chart 14 that follows.

Word class Stress in English Stress in Spanish

noun 'animal ani'mal

adjective in'telligent inteli'gente

verb in'vite invi'tar

adverb e'xactly exacta'mente

Chart 14 Differences in cognates´ stress placement between English and Spanish

In order to show contrast, Spanish uses word order so learners may be unfamiliar with

the use of stress to sense the distinction between noun compounds and nouns with an

adjective modifier such as 'white house and white 'house, 'blackbird and black 'bird,

'greenhouse and green 'house. In Spanish, phrases such as 'new friend and new 'friend

would be translated using different word order - nuevo amigo and amigo nuevo. As we

have already discussed, Spanish often stresses the second element of compound words.

As a result, Spanish speakers may incorrectly use the same stress pattern in English

compounds (e.g. type'writer would be respectively stressed on the second element).

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2.7.3 Sentence stress

In English, it is up to the speaker to decide what word they want to emphasise and put

more stress on. Any stressed syllable in a sentence can bear the intonation nucleus.

When a word has already been mentioned before, it is given less prominence than a

word which is considered important by the speaker. English sentence stress falls on the

last lexical word in a sentence, i.e. the word that carries the most meaning. Similarly,

Spanish sentence focus is usually on the last stressed syllable. It is enabled by freer

word order when the stressed element is allowed to be moved to the back of the

sentence. If Spanish learners were asked: “What did Mary do?” they would correctly

place the stress on “Mary went to the shop” . However, if they were asked: “Who went

to the shop?” they would pose difficulty in producing the pattern “Mary went to the

shop”.

Sentences with contrastive stress, where the contrasting word is heavily stressed in

English, may present a problem for Spanish speakers because they may put the stress on

the last, not the contrasting word - e.g. With or without sugar? Con o sin azúcar?

instead of With or without sugar?.

2.7.4 Potential difficulties in the area of sentence stress

According to the rules for sentence stress placement in Spanish, the sentence stress falls

on the last word in a sentence no matter what. The stress is retained on the last syllable

even in cases where English would place it elsewhere.

“Many meanings which are conveyed in English through sentence stress are conveyed

in Spanish through particular words” (Kenworthy, 1992: 155). In English, two different

meanings can be expressed by stress placement on the information focus (e.g. I have

some photos versus I have some photos). The speaker emphasises the possession of

photos and nothing else in the first sentence whereas the quantity of photos is the most

important part of the message in the second sentence. Spanish would use two different

words (unos, algunos) to convey these two different meanings and the translation of the

sentences would thus be Tengo unos libros (= I have some photos) and Tengo algunos

libros (= I have some photos).

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2.7.5 Intonation

Intonation is an extremely important feature of connected speech because it can

sometimes change the meaning of an utterance completely.

Intonation patterns employed by English speakers differ from those of Spanish

speakers. To put it metaphorically, “Spanish speakers may feel that English speakers

produce a roller coaster of peaks and valleys in their speech” (Eddington, 2004: 53).

This is due to the fact that English speakers use a much wider range of pitch than the

Spanish. They reach higher highs and lower lows. As a result, Spanish may be

perceived as rather monotone and not so melodic as English.

The two main melodies are rising and falling and they can also be combined (rise-fall,

fall-rise, etc.). As far as the intonation contours for statements, questions and

exclamations are concerned, English and Spanish differ. “In English, utterances begin at

an overall higher pitch than in Spanish and during the utterance itself, there is a large

pitch change on the most emphasized word. In Spanish, utterances begin at an overall

lower pitch and the major pitch change usually takes place on the first stressed syllable”

(Goldstein, 2001: 60). Practically, it would mean that in an English utterance such as I

am going to the shop, the higher pitch used at the beginning would gradually lower until

the end of the utterance, where the word shop would be given the most emphasis. If the

same sentence was pronounced by Spanish speakers, most probably it would begin at a

low pitch, which would then be raised on the first stressed syllable of the sentence (in

the sentence above the word going).

Before looking at individual types of intonation contours used in various types of

utterances, it is important to note that whenever intonation patterns are influenced by

emotions, they become very hard to classify.

Declaratives

Both English and Spanish use a final falling pitch for statements (e.g. Todavía no ha

llegado el tren. = The train has not arrived yet). In Spanish, the first stressed syllable

(toda'vía) is high in pitch and then the unstressed syllables that follow continue the pitch

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of the preceding stressed syllable. At the end, the high pitch descends to a lower pitch

on the last stressed syllable ('tren) followed by a falling contour until the end of the

sentence. We assume that intonation in an English statement does not in essence differ

from the Spanish one, the highest pitch being on the first stressed syllable ('train) and

descending on the last stressed syllable ('yet).

In English, the fall-rise pattern is commonly used. It can be often found in clauses with

two intonation units (e.g. If you find the keys, let me know - the first dependent clause

has a fall-rise pattern, whereas the independent clause uses falling tone).

Interrogatives

English and Spanish intonation contours for questions depend on the type of the

question. We can distinguish three types of questions: yes/no questions, wh-questions

and choice questions.

English yes/no questions end in a rising pitch when the speaker does not know the

answer to the question (e.g. Is he handsome? Do you want some coffee?). In addition to

the rising tone pattern, English also employs a falling tone if the speaker expects

confirmation (e.g. in tag questions - The weather is good, isn’t it?) or if the speakers is

sure that the answer to the question is positive. On the contrary, Spanish never allows

using a final falling pitch in yes/no questions. Such questions always rise at the end

(¿Es el libro interesante? = Is the book interesting?). The pitch is high on the first

stressed syllable, then the trajectory remains the same until the last stressed syllable

where it rises again (e.g. Todavía no ha llegado el tren? Has the train arrived yet? ).

In English, wh-questions have a final falling pitch (e.g. Where did you study English?).

Similarly, intonation pattern for Spanish wh-questions ends in a falling pitch (e.g.

¿Dónde estudiaste inglés?). The pitch is highest on the stressed syllable of the wh-word

and then it falls. Basically, intonation patterns employed for a Spanish statement and a

wh-question do not differ. It is the presence of a question word at the beginning that

signifies that a sentence is a question.

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Both English and Spanish employ identical intonation patterns for a question which

offers a choice between more alternatives (e.g. Do you prefer juice, tea or coffee? =

¿Prefiere usted zumo, té o café?). Each choice carries a rising pitch except the last one,

which has a falling tone.

Exclamations and imperatives

In Spanish, the most common type of intonation in exclamations is that of a statement.

Similarly, English exclamation generally has a falling tone (e.g. Mind your head!).

However, a rise or a rise-fall can occur in Spanish exclamations to convey attitudes such

as surprise, sadness, refusal, etc. (e.g. rise-fall in Se casó. ¡Ah! ¿Se casó? = She got

married. Oh! Did she?). In both languages, imperatives are very hard to classify as their

intonation contours vary according to the intention of the speaker.

Requests

To indicate that a sentence is a request, both English and Spanish have a final falling

contour (e.g. Please, sit down. = Siéntese, por favor.).

2.7.6 Potential difficulties in the area of intonation

Kenworthy (1992: 155) suggests three main problematic areas:

1. “Pitch range. Spanish speakers seem to use too narrow a pitch range. Where

English speakers will start quite high and finish fairly low in their range, perhaps

hitting extreme pitches within a phrase as well, Spanish speakers keep to a much

more restricted pitch movement over a phrase or clause.

2. Final falling pitch movement (for example, on statements or last items in a list).

The final falling pitch may not sound low enough. This may be due to the fact

that Spanish speakers rarely use a slight rise before the final falling pitch, which

makes the final pitch movement sound too flat.

3. The rise-fall seems difficult. This may be because the pitch-reversal itself is

difficult for learners to do, especially on short phrases or one syllable (Oh! or

Wonderful idea!) or because of shyness or self-consciousness.”

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“Problems in areas 1 and 3 may result in learners failing to convey “involvement” or

“interest” in conversations with English speakers, who seem to use wide range and

extreme pitch reversals to signal “interest” or “involvement” in the topic of

conversation” (Kenworthy, 1992: 156).

We expect Spanish learners to face problems maintaining the correct intonation pattern

in English yes/no questions where the speaker expects the answer to be positive. In such

cases, English employs a final falling pitch (e.g. the tag question She is clever, isn’t

she?). Spanish, in this case, would use a rising tone as a rule (e.g. ¿Es lista, verdad?).

2.7.7 Rhythm

The rhythm of an utterance is created by combining two suprasegmental features, word

stress and sentence stress. Languages fall into one of two distinct rhythmic groups -

stress-timed languages or syllable-timed languages.17 Whereas Spanish belongs to the

latter group, English represents the former group. When Spanish speakers transfer the

intonation patterns of their mother tongue into English, the result can be barely

comprehensible to native English speakers. This is because the meaning or information

usually conveyed in English by the combination of stress, pitch and rhythm in a

sentence is flattened by the Spanish learner and it may sound to English speakers as if

there was not a difference in prominence between unstressed and stressed syllables.

English has a characteristic rhythm. The syllables of the language are not of the same

length and “there is an alternation of stressed and unstressed syllables, with stressed

syllables coming at regular intervals and the unstressed syllables being squeezed in

between them to maintain the regular beat” (Rogerson, 1990: 21). By contrast, Spanish

syllables are of approximately the same length and the length of a sentence depends on

their number. As a result, a sentence with twelve syllables (e.g. Elena es más alta que

su hermana = Elena is taller than her sister) will be twice as long as a sentence with six

syllables (e.g. Elena es alta = Elena is tall).

17 In a stress-timed language, syllables are stressed at roughly regular intervals, which are achieved by shortening and weakening unstressed syllables (typically articles, prepositions, etc.). In a syllable-timed language, there is no strong pattern of stress; syllables maintain their length and vowels their quality and the length of an utterance depends on the number of syllables. Certain syllables are still stressed, but not according to a regular pattern (Kelly, 2000: 70).

46

English rhythm is based on sentence emphasis effects. “There is a tendency in English

for the strong beats to fall on nouns, verbs, adjectives and adverbs (i.e. words that carry

meaning) and for the weak beats to fall on prepositions, articles and pronouns (words

with grammatical function)” (Kenworthy 1987: 10).

“English and Spanish behave very similarly in terms of sentence emphasis but there is a

difference at the level of syllable timing which gives a difference in the rhythmic

impression of the two languages” (Rogerson, 1990: 21).

2.7.8 Potential difficulties in the area of rhythm

Spanish is a syllable-timed language and rhythm is “a function of the number of

syllables in a given phrase, not the number of stressed elements” (Celce-Murcia, 1996:

153). Spanish learners may therefore find it difficult to reduce and squeeze unstressed

syllables in between stressed syllables. They will most likely stress syllables in English

more equally and insufficient stress will be put on the main words (e.g. in Joe is older

than Peter, is and than may bear the same prominence as old). Sufficient reduction of

unstressed syllables may also cause difficulties.

2.7.9 Linking

“Linking is connecting of the final sound of one word or syllable to the initial sound of

the next” (Celce-Murcia, 1996: 158). Words are not separate units in connected speech.

They are linked together and are always combined to form phrases, clauses and

sentences. While learning English pronunciation, it is important not to make gaps

between them. According to Rogerson (1990: 31), “non-native speakers of English do

significantly less linking than native speakers. Furthermore, linking is a major source of

intelligibility problems for learners of English”. Nevertheless, as far as linking in

Spanish is concerned, very similar rules are applied like in English and learners find it

natural to link words in a sentence. Furthermore, it is often difficult to hear where one

word ends and another begins in Spanish. However, the context makes it clear where

the word boundary comes.

The most common case of linking in English is the use of linking r. In the BBC accent,

r occurring in a word in the final position is not pronounced. However, when the

47

following word begins with a vowel, the r is pronounced (such as there are). Intrusive r

is sometimes used to link a word ending in a vowel with another word beginning a

vowel. “Some English speakers and teachers still regard this as incorrect or sub-

standard pronunciation, but it is undoubtedly widespread” (Roach, 2000:144).

In both English and Spanish, words in a sentence are linked together based on the

following rules:

• If a word ending in a consonant is followed by a word beginning with a vowel,

the consonant is linked to the initial vowel and its pronunciation is transferred to

the beginning of the second word. Examples include sentences like He had ̮ a

black ̮ and white shirt and Mis ̮ amigos regresan ̮ a ̮ casa muy tarde a veces (=

My friends sometimes return home very late).

• If a word or a syllable ends in a vowel and the next word begins with a different

vowel, they are linked into a single syllable or linking with a glide (either /y/

glides or /w/ glides) occurs both in English and Spanish (e.g. be ̮yable; voy ̮ya

venir = I will come; blue ̮wink; ruido - r ̮

wido = noise; muchacho ̮ antipático =

unpleasant boy).

• If two or more same vowels appear next to each other in a phrase or a syllable,

they blend together and are pronounced as a single sound (e.g. ¿Qué es esto?

/kes esto/ = What is it?; cooperar /koperar/, busca a Ana /buskana/ - to look for

Ann). Conversely, the two same vowels are pronounced separately in English

(e.g. cooperate /kǝʊɒpǝɹeɪt/).

• If a word ends in a consonant and the following word begins with the same

consonant, the consonant is pronounced only once in Spanish (e.g. al lado de

/alado de/ = next to).

2.7.10 Potential difficulties in the area of linking

As we have already mentioned, only five consonants may end a word in Spanish. The

majority of words end with a vowel sound. As a result, Spanish learners may have a

tendency to move any consonant in the final position to the following word in order to

obtain words beginning with a consonant and ending with a vowel.

48

Another feature which Spanish learners may encounter difficulties with is closely

related to consonant clusters. If a word ending in a consonant or a consonant cluster

appears next to a word beginning with a different consonant or a consonant cluster,

speakers will be tempted to either insert a vowel sound in between the consonants or

delete one element of the consonants cluster (next year → nex year; I live in Spain → I

live in espain).

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II. Practical part

1. Introduction

The practical part of the thesis focuses on the practical point of view of non-native

acquisition of English pronunciation. A case study was carried out on six Spanish

speakers of English and this part of the thesis provides a detailed analysis of the results

obtained from the study, which sought to investigate pronunciation-related difficulties

with English in Spanish speakers.

2. Methodology

The case study was divided into three parts. Firstly, data about the individual speakers´

language background with the emphasis on English pronunciation learning were

collected using a questionnaire created for this purpose. The main goal of the

questionnaire was to find out more about the instruction in pronunciation the speakers

have gone through in their lives. Moreover, it helped to reveal other influences on

English pronunciation of the particular speaker.

Secondly, the subjects were recorded while reading aloud a short piece of text entitled

“My favourite sport”. The sample was shown to them on beforehand in order to provide

them with a chance to rehearse until they felt comfortable reading it. The text was

identical for all the speakers. Therefore, it enabled to compare the individuals´ speaking

performances. Moreover, it contained all or most of the segmental and suprasegmental

features of English so they could be accurately diagnosed. On the other hand, reading

aloud is unnatural and may make the speakers nervous and evoke mistakes which they

would not normally make while speaking. Therefore, it was essential to obtain and

incorporate a short spontaneous speech into the study. Reading was followed by

recording spontaneous speeches. Subjects were given one or two minutes to prepare

their spontaneous speech on a topic chosen in advance (“Which activity or sport do you

enjoy?”). By recording the read aloud text reading and spontaneous speeches, the

learners were asked to produce samples of both controlled and uncontrolled speech, in

which typical common phonological difficulties could be exemplified. In addition, the

50

text for reading was carefully chosen in order to indicate as many areas of difficulty

Spanish speakers may have.

Finally, the subjects were asked to read aloud a set of tasks which contained exercises

examining word stress, sentence stress, linking and intonation.

All the speakers were tested individually in quiet areas with no visual or auditory

distractions and the whole testing lasted approximately 30 minutes per speaker.

3. Subjects included in the study

The research described in the thesis is a case study of six Spanish speakers. All of them

come from various parts of Spain. The test subjects range from age 23 to 27 and their

command of English pronunciation varies; mostly in relation to the opportunities each

of them has had to spend some time in English-speaking countries or interact with

native speakers. They have been taught British English in their schools. We had one

short previous contact with the speakers to be assessed in order to arrange the

recordings. Moreover, we did not want to limit the value of subsequent judgments by

becoming accustomed to their speech and voice.

4. Material

All materials which were used for the recordings are included in appendices. The

questionnaire can be found in Appendix 1 and the read aloud text is included in

Appendix 2. Appendix 3 offers exercises aimed at examining word stress, sentence

stress, linking and intonation. The accompanying CD, which is attached to this work,

includes recordings of the Spanish speakers referred to in the thesis.

5. Analysis of the questionnaires

The initial task was written. The questionnaires provided further insight into the

speakers´ language backgrounds. The respondents were asked to comment on twelve

questions, which concerned their former English education, their English pronunciation

51

and other issues related to the English language. They were asked to evaluate their

English pronunciation on a scale of 1-10 (one was the best, 10 the worst).

5.1 Description of individual speakers and their language backgrounds

5.1.1 Speaker no.1

The first subject, a 27-year-old male, started to learn English at the age of 10 and

studied it for 8 years. The need for English and intelligible pronunciation is relatively

high since this speaker’s work involves frequent use of English as a means of

communication both with English speakers and non-natives from various parts of the

world. His recent stay in the Czech Republic is not his first experience with living in a

foreign country.

His passion for travelling also contributes to frequent interaction with speakers from

various foreign countries. The person stayed several times in both English speaking

countries and countries where he had to use English regularly. He spent two years in

Sweden and one year in Japan. “I also lived in Edinburgh for one year, in New Orleans

for three months and in London for three months as well.”

Non-native friends and teachers of this speaker are believed to negatively influence his

English pronunciation. On the contrary, watching films, listening to music and talking

to native-speakers were mentioned as the most significant factors which contributed by

a great deal to the development of his English pronunciation.

The subject ascribes a lot of importance to his pronunciation no matter who the listener

is. However, he feels more relaxed when talking to non-native speakers. When being

questioned about his awareness of difficulties with English pronunciation, he admits

encountering problems with some vowels. “There are more vowels in English than in

Spanish, they are not read exactly as they are written and I sometimes pronounce them

incorrectly (for example cut/cat, hat/hut) but I am aware of it and it does not usually

happen.”

52

5.1.2 Speaker no. 2

This speaker is a 24-year-old female who stopped systematic studying of English 6

years ago. She admits having no pronunciation practice ever. Unlike the other speakers,

she has never been abroad for a longer period of time. The stay in the Czech Republic is

her first experience.

When being questioned about what she considers to be difficult in English

pronunciation, the speaker replied: “I don’t know the correct pronunciation so I make

the same mistakes again and again. And also the movements in my mouth are really

different from Spanish.”

Talking on the telephone in English and giving presentations in front of many people

make this subject extremely nervous. The subject’s level of Czech is still low and

sometimes, the only way to make friends among the Czech is to speak English. She

revealed: “I keep telling them not to call me on the telephone because I don’t like to talk

English when I am, for example, on the bus. I prefer receiving and sending messages

instead.” However, the subject does not avoid the presence of English speaking friends.

5.1.3 Speaker no. 3

This speaker is a 26-year-old male. He recalls all the teachers of English from primary

and secondary education. He remembers that not much attention was paid to English

pronunciation training. The situation improved during attending Official School of

Languages (EOI)18 where pronunciation became an integral element of the language

course. Later, the speaker could practice English even more thanks to the scholarships

from the Spanish government. “I was six weeks in Ireland and six weeks in England.”

Moreover, the subject was also exposed to English on a 5-month business stay in

Slovenia. In addition, he has been living in the Czech Republic for ten months and

therefore needs English for communication with people around him.

18 EOI (Escuela Oficial de Idiomas) is a Spanish network of schools specialized in the learning of foreign languages.

53

The speaker stresses the importance of pronunciation. However, his main goal is to be

understandable and able to maintain a conversation. “I think pronunciation is really

important but as long as I am understandable, I am happy with my Spanish accent. I

would rather have a real strong Spanish accent than a fake British accent.” The speaker

pays more attention when talking to native speakers then to non-native speakers because

he assumes native-speakers would have more difficulties understanding him in case he

does not pronounce well.

The subject finds talking to native speakers of English or people with good

pronunciation to be the most efficient way to help him improve his pronunciation skills.

“Native voices serve as good models,“ he wrote. Moreover, the positive influence of his

teacher from the language school increased the enthusiasm for good pronunciation of

this speaker. The speaker assumes that imitating sounds from series and films on TV

also positively influenced his pronunciation. On the contrary, he regrets not taking

learning English seriously before the age of 23.

The vowel system of English seems overwhelming for this speaker. He admits

encountering problems with weak vowels and sounds that are not present in the Spanish

vowel sound system.

5.1.4 Speaker no. 4

The speaker is a 24-year-old male who has been studying English for 15 years. As long

as he could remember, all his non-native English teachers gave more importance to

grammar than practising pronunciation.

The subject later started to attend English evening classes in a language school. He

considers his pronunciation to be very important, especially when talking to native

speakers. He explains: “I always want to pronounce well but sometimes I am too lazy to

pay attention to it. When I talk to native speakers, I have more respect and I try harder,

whereas when I talk to non-native speakers, I don’t care so much and I make a lot of

mistakes.”

54

The subject has been working in the Czech Republic for 6 months. He needs English

both for business communication and everyday life in this country. This learner admits

having difficulties some sounds in English that make him feel confused. As an example,

he mentions the words dear/there.

Like the other research subjects, this one also assumes that watching movies has the

biggest influence on his English pronunciation.

5.1.5 Speaker no. 5

The speaker is a 26-year-old Spanish speaking male living in the Czech Republic for

two years and using English in everyday life as a means of communication. His prior

English language exposure includes English as a school subject, English courses in

language schools and a one-month-stay in the United States of America.

Attention to pronunciation was integrated into the language practice at school. The

subject still has a strong motivation to have good pronunciation as he claims: “I try to

do my best in all cases, with native speakers as well as with non-native speakers.” More

than by his English teachers and studying from books, this person believes to have been

positively influenced by watching movies and TV series.

According to this speaker, the difficulties with English pronunciation for Spanish

learners can be attributed to the lack of rules in English. He wrote: “In English, one

letter can have different pronunciation in different words.”

5.1.6 Speaker no. 6

This research subject is a 27-year-old male. Interestingly, nearly all of the participants

reported experiencing living abroad for a certain period of time. The subject presents no

exception. His one-month stay in Wales with other Spanish people did not bring great

improvements in English. However, eight months in Ireland made a valuable

contribution to improvement of his English pronunciation.

55

According to this subject, pronunciation is by a great deal influenced by television and

music. He regrets not having had a chance to watch English and American films with

their original sound. He adds: “I wish I could have watched American films when I was

younger but all foreign films are dubbed into Spanish in my country.” Apart from TV,

this subject reckons that his native language has an influence on his English

pronunciation. “Long and short vowels in English confuse me. Sometimes, I don’t see

the difference between them. And I think I am lazy to pronounce plurals of English

words, I very often omit -s or -es at the end of words.”

Besides having English as a school subject, he attended private lessons in language

school where the emphasis was placed not only on grammar and vocabulary but also on

pronunciation.

The speaker tries to pronounce better when talking to native speakers. “My

pronunciation is not good and I try to speak more clearly to native speakers so that they

understand me.” The subject gets anxious whenever he has to speak English publicly.

“When I have to speak English, my voice starts trembling. The only time when I am not

nervous when I speak English is in the pub.”

6. Analysis of speakers´ mistakes

6.1 Mistakes in the read aloud text

The read aloud text was chosen so as to contain as many sounds which were thought to

cause difficulties as possible. Finally, we opted for a sample from the student’s book of

intermediate level, New Headway Intermediate. Each speakers´ mistakes in the

production of vowels and consonants are described in the following subchapters. It is

important to stress that we concentrated on one mistake at a time in the transcriptions of

mispronounced words. Therefore, one word may be analysed more times, each time for

a different pronunciation mistake.

56

6.1.1 Speaker no. 1

Mistakes in the production of vowels

- there was a strong tendency to use the Spanish /a/ as a replacement for the English

phoneme /æ/. Difficulties occurred in the words absolutely, practice, matching,

tracksuit, fact and matter, which were pronounced as /absǝlu:tli, pɹaktɪs, matʃɪŋ,

tɹaksu:t, fakt, matǝ/.

- the absence of /ǝ/ in the Spanish sound system caused the subject to use the Spanish

/o/ and /ɾ/ in the word colours /kʌloɾz/.

- the long vowel /ɑ:/ in the word after was shortened and pronounced /ʌftǝ/. Similarly,

the long vowel /i:/ was pronounced shortly in the word week /wɪk/.

- the long vowel /ɔ:/ in the word course became the short vowel /o/ and a flapped /ɾ/,

pronounced as /koɾs/ respectively.

- the pronunciation of the cognates special and colours (especial and colores in

Spanish) implies the influence of Spanish. The English vowel sounds were replaced by

the Spanish ones and the words were thus pronounced /speʃial, koloɾz/.

Mistakes in the production of consonants

- using voiceless phonemes instead of their voiced counterparts at the end of the words

caused wrong pronunciation in the following examples: love, years, evenings, mornings,

matches, colours, always, comes, lose, etc. /lʌf, jɪǝs, i:vnɪŋks, mɔ:nɪŋks, mætʃɪs, kʌlǝs,

ɔ:lweɪs, kʌms, lu:s/.

- /ŋ/ was pronounced correctly in some of the words. However, swallowing of the final -

ing or using /n/ or /nk/ instead was observed in the words raining, mornings, winning,

etc. /ɹeɪnɪn, mɔ:nɪnks, wɪnɪn/.

57

- the subject proved to have troubles with the production of the sound /dʒ/ in the word

just, which sounded like /ʒʌst/.

- devoicing of the consonant sound /z/ in the middle position and using its voiceless

counterpart /s/ instead occurred in the word doesn’t /dʌsnt/.

- the English sound /ɹ/ was replaced by the Spanish /r/ or /ɾ/ in the majority of words

containing the /ɹ/ sound. A few examples include: favourite, practice, brilliant, course,

protection, pronounced as /feɪvǝrɪt, praktɪs, brɪlɪǝnt, kɔ:ɾs/.

- the subject did not pay attention to the correct pronunciation of the /ð/ sound. It was

pronounced as /d/ instead and the words the and that sounded like /dǝ/ and /dǝt/.

- /ph/, /th/, /kh / - the subject failed to accompany the sounds /p/, /t/ and /k/ with the puff

of air. The lack of aspiration was noticeable in the words play, practice, coaching, kit,

team, etc. They were pronounced as /pleɪ, pɹæktɪs, kǝʊtʃɪŋ, kɪt, ti:m/.

6.1.2 Speaker no. 2

Mistakes in the production of vowels

- the subject encountered difficulties with the sound /æ/, which was substituted by the

Spanish /a/ or /e/ in the words matches, practice, back, pads, tracksuit, fact and matter

/matʃɪz, pɹaktɪs, bek, pedz, tɹaksu:t, fakt, matǝ/.

- the diphthong /ǝʊ/ in the word coach was changed to the long monophthong /ɔ:/ -

/kɔ:tʃ/ or the short monophthong /ɒ/ in the word don’t - /dɒnt/.

- the diphthong /eǝ/ in the word care was changed to the monophthong /ɑ:/ and the

flapped /ɾ/ - /kɑ:ɾ/.

- the long diphthong /ɜ:/ in shirt was pronounced as the monophthong vowel /i/ and the

flapped /ɾ/ - /ʃiɾt/.

58

- the subject seemed to see no difference in long and short vowel sounds /i:/ and /ɪ/. The

long vowel /i:/ was shortened in week and evenings - /wɪk, ɪvnɪŋz/ and the short vowel

/ɪ/ was lengthened in pitch - /pi:tʃ/. Similarly, the long vowel /u:/ was shortened to /ʊ/ in

the word boots /bʊts/.

- the word football was once heard to be pronounced /fɒtbʌl/.

- the Spanish pronunciation of the cognates ´specially, special and colours projected

into the English pronunciation. Words sounded like /espesǝli, spesial, koloɾz/.

- the words always was mispronounced as /elwes/, even as /ɪven/.

- the diphthong /ɪǝ/ in the word nearly was replaced by the vowel sound /ɜ:/ and the

Spanish flapped /ɾ/ → /nɜ:ɾli/.

- the Spanish vowel /a/ was inserted between the sounds /k/ and /l/ in the word local

/lǝʊkal/ and in the same word, the diphthong /ǝʊ/ was replaced by Spanish sounds /o/

and /u/ - /loukal/.

- vowels were insufficiently reduced where it was necessary. The sound /ǝ/ was replaced

by the Spanish /e/ in the words about, that, etc. /ebaʊt, ðet/.

Mistakes in the production of consonants

- the learner did not cope well with consonant clusters beginning with the letter s (skills

and stuff). An attempt to slightly change such words resulted in the following

pronunciation of the words - /eskɪlz, estʌf/. Moreover, the subject also tended to insert a

vowel between the words our football /aʊǝ efʊtbɔ:l/.

- final consonant clusters were found problematic by this subject. Simplification of

consonant clusters ending in /t/ by deleting the final /t/ was evident in right and just /ɹaɪ,

dʒʌs/.

59

- the consonant combination in the phrase nine years was simplified and pronounced as

/naɪjɪǝz/.

- the voiced post-alveolar fricative /ʒ/ not present in the Spanish sound system caused

the learner to use /ʃ/ instead. It can be clearly heard in the word pleasure pronounced as

/pleʃǝ/.

- devoicing of the consonant sound /z/ in the middle position and using its voiceless

counterpart /s/ instead occurred in words doesn’t and isn’t /dʌsnt/ and /ɪsnt/.

- devoicing at the end of words occurred in love, years, matches, evenings, mornings,

pads, always, lose and other words. They were pronounced as /lʌf, jɪǝs, mætʃɪs,

i:vnɪŋks, mɔ:nɪŋks, pæts, ɔ:lweɪs, lu:s/.

- pronunciation of the sound /dʒ/ was confused with /j/. Examples include enjoy and just

pronounced as /ɪnjɔɪ, jʌst/.

- /n/ was used as a substitute for /ŋ/. Examples include the words watching, playing,

coaching, raining, etc. /wɒtʃɪn, pleɪɪn, kǝʊtʃɪn, ɹeɪnɪn/.

- the initial /s/ in support was replaced by /ʃ/ - /ʃǝpɔ:t/.

- /t/ was replaced by its voiced counterpart /d/ in matter /mædǝ/.

- the subject struggled with the production of /w/ sound. This sound, present only in

borrowed words in Spanish, was prefixed with /g/. The word when was pronounced

/gwen/.19

- the word mum was mispronounced as /nʌm/, the word twice as /twɪs/.

- the lack of aspiration was evident in most words containing the sounds /ph, th, kh/. A

few examples include play, team, pitch, kit /pleɪ, ti:m, pɪtʃ, kɪt/.

19 The same mistake occurred in this subject´s spontaneous speech. Words as when, was, what were pronounced as /gwen, gwɒz, gwɒt/.

60

- the production of the English /ɹ/ was problematic. The sound was substituted by the

Spanish trill /r/ in the words practice, brilliant, etc. /præktɪs, brɪlɪǝnt/.

- the sound /ð/ became /d/ in the words the and that /dǝ, dǝt/.

6.1.3 Speaker no. 3

Mistakes in the production of vowels

- the vowel /æ/ seemed to cause problems. It was often replaced by a sound

corresponding to the Spanish /a/, or by /e/. Wrong pronunciation appeared in words

matches, have, practice, back, matching, pads, fact, tracksuit, matter /matʃɪz, hav,

pɹaktɪs, bek, matʃɪŋ, pedz, fakt, tɹaksu:t, matǝ/.

- the subject had difficulties to pronounce short /ɪ/ in words pitch, this and shin. The

long counterpart /i:/ used instead made the words sound like peach, these and sheen -

/pi:tʃ, ði:z/ and /ʃi:n/.

- the production of /ǝ/ showed to be problematic in the following examples: about

/ebaʊt/, support /sʌpɔ:t/ and and /end/.

- the pronunciation of the cognates special, brilliant, colours and local was influenced

by the Spanish pronunciation of the words /speʃial, briliant, kolors, loukal/.

- the diphthong /ɪǝ/ in the word nearly was replaced by the vowel sound /ɜ:/ and the

Spanish flapped /ɾ/ → /nɜ:ɾli/.

- the subject had a difficulty to discriminate between the sounds /ʌ/ and Spanish /o/.

Examples can be heard in the words love /lov/, colours /kolǝrz/.

- the diphthong /aʊ/ was used instead of /ǝʊ/ in the word coaching pronounced

incorrectly as /kaʊtʃɪŋ/.

- the diphthong /ǝʊ/ was reduced to the monophthong /ɔ:/ in the word also /ɔ:lsɔ:/.

61

- the diphthong /ɔ:/ was substituted with the Spanish /o/ and /ɾ/ in the word support.

Mistakes in the production of consonants

- the subject kept replacing the English voiced post-alveolar approximant /ɹ/ with the

Spanish trilled /r/ or flapped /ɾ/. It can be observed in almost all the words containing /ɹ/

in the text. Some examples include crazy, years, protection and others - /kreɪzi, jɪǝɾz,

prɒtekʃn/.

- difficulty with the consonant sound /dʒ/, which was replaced by /j/ sound (enjoy was

pronounced as /ɪnjɔɪ/, just as /jʌst/).

- the production of /ʒ/ appeared to be problematic for this speaker. The phoneme /ʃ/ was

used instead of it - pleasure was pronounced as /pleʃǝ/.

- prefixing of the initial consonant cluster -sp clearly indicates Spanish language

interference. Examples include: ´specially /espeʃǝli/, skills /eskɪlz/, after school /ɑ:ftǝ

esku:l/.

- devoicing of the consonant sound /z/ in the middle position and using its voiceless

counterpart /s/ instead occurred in words doesn’t and isn’t /dʌsnt/ and /ɪsnt/.

- substitution of /ŋ/ for /n/ can be heard in the words watching, playing, coaching,

matching, training, winning, etc. - /wɒtʃɪn, pleɪɪn, kǝʊtʃɪn, mætʃɪn, tɹeɪnɪn, wɪnɪn/

respectively. The phonemes /k/ + /s/ were added to the words mornings and evenings -

/mɔ:nɪnks, i:vnɪnks/.

- devoicing of the consonants in final positions can be noticed in many words from the

sample. Examples include love, years, matches, skills, have, colours, pads, always, lose,

and - /lʌf, jɪǝs, mætʃɪs, skɪls, hæf, kʌlǝs, pæts, ɔ:lweɪs, lu:s, ǝnt/ respectively.

- /ð/ in the definite article the was pronounced /d/.

62

- the phoneme /θ/ was pronounced correctly in the words with and think (the first think

in the text). However, the word think was used repeatedly in the sample and the second

time it was used, the subject pronounced the phoneme /t/ instead.

- devoicing of the consonant /b/ in the word absolutely /ʌpsɒltli/ (the subject also

omitted the phoneme /u:/ in the word).

- the subject used /d/ in the word matter and together with the replacement of /æ/ for /a/,

the word resembled more to the word mother.

- pronunciation of the words ´specially, local, special, brilliant, colours were

immensely influenced by their Spanish pronunciation /espesiali, loukal, spesial, briliant,

kolors/.

- the lack of aspiration was observed in the majority of words containing / ph, th, kh/. It

could be heard in pads, practice, team, kit, pleasure, etc. /pædz, pɹæktɪs, ti:m, kɪt,

pleʒǝ/.

6.1.4 Speaker no. 4

Mistakes in the production of vowels

- the learner also found it difficult to pronounce /æ/. He used the Spanish /a/ or /e/

instead in matches, practice and pads /matʃɪz, pɹaktɪs, pedz/.

- the diphthong /ǝʊ/ contained in the word local was reduced into the monophthong /ɒ/ -

/lɒkl/.

- /ɒ/ was replaced by /ʌ/ in the word socks and it thus sounded like the word sucks

/sʌks/.

- the subject had a tendency to use the short vowel /ɪ/ instead of the long vowel /i:/. The

mistake was obvious in the word evenings /ɪvnɪŋz/.

63

Mistakes in the production of consonants

- the voiced bilabial plosive /b/ was exchanged for its voiceless counterpart /p/ in the

word absolutely /ʌpsɒlu:tli/.

- problems with the production of /ʒ/ appeared in the word pleasure read as /pleʃǝ/.

- some of the consonants in the final position were devoiced. Examples: love, years,

pads, lose /lʌf, jɪǝs, pæts, lu:s/.

- the sound occurring in the word this /ðɪs/ seemed to be troublesome and was

pronounced /dɪs/.

- the learner often substituted /n/ for /ŋ/. Examples include the words evenings,

mornings, coaching, raining /i:vnɪns, mɔ:nɪns, kǝʊtʃɪn, ɹeɪnɪn/.

- /t/ was replaced by its voiced counterpart /d/ in matter /mædǝ/ and /s/ by its voiced

counterpart /z/ in twice /twaɪz/.

- lack of aspiration can be spotted mainly in the words containing /th/ - team, taking.

Conversely, aspiration was correctly used in some of the words containing /kh/ - coach.

- the Spanish pronunciation of the cognate ´specially (especialmente) was reflected in

the subject’s pronunciation of the word /espeʃli/.

- /ɹ/ was sometimes replaced by the Spanish sound /r/. However, this subject’s r was not

strongly pronounced as it was in case of other speakers.

6.1.5 Speaker no. 5

Mistakes in the production of vowels

- the monophthong /u:/ was changed into the monophthong /ɔ:/ in boots /bɔ:ts/.

64

- the speaker’s replacement of the /æ/ sound with the Spanish /a/ or /e/ sounds was

evident. The words matches, practice, back, matching, tracksuit, fact and matter were

thus pronounced /matʃɪz, pɹaktɪs, bek, matʃɪŋ, tɹeksu:t, fakt, matǝ/.

- length of vowels posed difficulties to this speaker. Whereas some long vowels were

shortened, some short vowels were lengthened - shin, pitch /ʃi:n, pi:tʃ/.

- the long vowel /ɜ:/ in the word shirt was pronounced as the monophthong vowel /i/

and the flapped /ɾ/ - /ʃiɾt/.

- pronunciation of the words ´specially, special, brilliant, colours and local, which have

a very similar or identical form in Spanish (especialmente, especial, brilliante, colores

and local) was strongly influenced by their Spanish pronunciation /espeʃiali, speʃial,

briliant, kolors, loukal/.

- the subject had a strong tendency to replace the English phoneme /ʌ/ with either /ʊ/ or

/ɒ/. The following words were thus mispronounced: just, lucky, stuff, us /dʒʊst, lɒkɪ,

stɒf, ɒs/.

- the long monophthong /i:/ in the words even and evenings was replaced by the vowel

/e/ - /evǝn, evnɪŋz/.

- the diphthong /ǝʊ/ in the word don’t was changed to the short monophthong /ɒ/ -

/dɒnt/.

Mistakes in the production of consonants

- a few consonant sounds in both middle and final positions were substituted by their

voiceless counterparts (e.g. absolutely, love, crazy, years, matches, isn’t, always, good,

doesn’t /ʌpsɒlu:tli, lʌf, cɹeɪsɪ, jɪǝs, mætʃɪs, ɪsnt, ɔ:lweɪs, gʊt, dʌsnt/).

- the subject encountered difficulties with the production of the consonant sound /tʃ/

occurring in the middle position of the following words: watching, matches, coaching

and matching. The subject kept replacing it by the voiceless counterpart /ʃ/ - /wɒʃɪŋ,

65

mæʃɪz, kǝʊʃɪŋ, mæʃɪŋ/. Nevertheless, no mistakes were detected in the production of the

same sound appearing in the final position of the words pitch and coach /pɪtʃ, kǝʊtʃ/.

- the production of /ʒ/ caused troubles; /ʃ/ was used instead in the word pleasure /pleʃǝ/.

- the speaker had a tendency to use /t/ instead of /θ/ in the words think /tɪnk/ (occurring

twice in the sample) and Thursday /tɜ:zdeɪ/.

- no difference was seen between /ð/ and /d/ in the definite article the /dǝ/ and the

pronoun this /dɪz/.

- after prefixing the initial consonant clusters beginning with -s, the words skills became

/eskɪlz/.

- final consonant cluster with /t/ was simplified by deleting the final letter in the word

just /dʒʌs/ and don´t /dǝʊn/.

- substitution of /n/ or the combination of the sounds /n/ and /k/ for /ŋ/ was another

problematic feature of this learner. This phenomenon can be noticed in the following

words: coaching, evenings, raining and winning - /kǝʊtʃɪn, i:vnɪnks, ɹeɪnɪnk, wɪnɪn/.

- Tuesday was wrongly pronounced /tu:zdeɪ/ instead of /tju:zdeɪ/.

- the sounds /p, t, k/ were not accompanied by aspiration in the words play, pitch,

coaching, kit, taking, etc.

- the subject kept replacing the English /ɹ/ with the Spanish /r/ - e.g. in practice,

brilliant , etc.

- the word twice was mispronounced as /twɪs/.

- pronunciation of the words ´specially, special, brilliant, colours and local was

influenced by their Spanish pronunciation /espeʃiali, speʃial, briliant, kolors, loukal/.

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6.1.6 Speaker no. 6

Mistakes in the production of vowels

- like the other speakers, this subject proved to have problems with the /æ/ sound.

Replacing it by the Spanish /a/ or /e/ was spotted in these words: matches, practice,

matching, have, tracksuit, fact, matter which were thus pronounced /matʃɪz, pɹaktɪs,

matʃɪŋ, hev, tɹeksu:t, fakt, matǝ/.

- the subject had problems with long and short vowels, which were either shortened or

lengthened. The words week, shin, this and after were pronounced /wɪk, ʃ i:n, ði:z, ʌftǝ/.

- the subject’s pronunciation of cognates was also influenced by their Spanish

pronunciation /feivourit, espesiali, speʃial, briliant, kolors, loukal/.

- the diphthong /ǝʊ/ was reduced to the monophthong /ɔ:/ in the words old and also

/ɔ:ld, ɔ:lsɔ:/.

- the diphthong /eǝ/ in the word care was reduced to a monopthong /e/ and the Spanish

/ɾ/ was added to it - /keɾ/.

Mistakes in the production of consonants

- due to the absence of the sound /ʒ/ in the Spanish sounds system, the subject chose /ʃ/

instead. The word pleasure was thus pronounced /pleʃǝ/.

- the sound /dʒ/ caused troubles in the word just. The subject used /j/ instead resulting in

/jʌst/.

- the sound /z/ occurring in the intervocalic position in the word crazy was substituted

by /s/ - /cɹeɪsɪ/ respectively. The same problem appeared with the sound /z/ in the

position between a vowel and a consonant in the words isn’t /ɪsnt/ and doesn’t /dʌsnt/.

67

- the speaker found difficulty in differentiating between the consonant sounds /b/ and

/v/. The pronunciation of very /beri/ equalled the pronunciation of berry. Similarly, /b/

in the word brilliant was replaced by /v/ and therefore sounded /vɹɪlɪǝnt/.

- initial consonant clusters starting with -s were problematic. The words sport, school,

skills and stuff were prefixed with -e /espɔ:t, esku:l, eskɪlz, estʌf/.

- voiced consonants at the end of words were often devoiced. Apart from this, plural

endings -s and the third person singular -s are often omitted. The words love, years,

evenings, mornings, have, comes, lose were thus pronounced /lʌf, jɪǝs, i:vnɪŋ, mɔ:nɪŋ,

hǝf, kʌm, lu:s/.

- /ŋ/, not occurring in the Spanish sound system, was replaced by /nk/ or /n/ in the words

watching, evenings, matching, training, raining /wɒtʃɪn, i:vnɪns, mætʃɪnk, tɹeɪnɪn,

ɹeɪnɪn/. The word think /θɪnk/, where the final /k/ was supposed to be pronounced,

sounded like thin /θɪn/.

- the final consonant cluster /ld/ in the word old was simplified by deleting the final /d/

sound /ǝʊl/.

- most of the aspirated initial plosives /ph, th, kh/ were not accompanied by the puff of

air. A few examples include the words play, pitch, training, team, coach, care, taking,

counts, etc.

- the sound /d/ occurred instead of the sound /ð/ in the words the, this.

- in many words, /r/ was used instead of /ɹ/ - e.g. in favourite, practice, etc.

- Spanish pronunciation of the cognates favourite, ´specially, practice, special was

reflected in the English pronunciation /feɪvʊɹɪte, espeʃɪʌlɪ, praktɪs, speʃɪʌl/.

68

6.2 Summary of results from the read aloud text

Chart 15 offers a list of sounds that caused most difficulties in the read aloud text.

Furthermore, it mentions sounds which were most commonly used as a replacement. It

also shows the occurrence of a mistake, i.e. the number of speakers facing the mistake.

We decided to include only mistakes that were found in the reading of two and more

speakers.

English sound/feature Replaced by Occurrence Examples of most commonly mispronounced words

/i:/ /ɪ/ 4 week, evenings

/ɪ/ /i:/ 4 pitch, shin, this

/u:/ /ʊ/ 3 boots

/ǝ/ /e/ 4 about, and, at, a

/ɜ:/ /ir/ 3 shirt

/æ/ /a/ 6 play, matches, practice, matching, tracksuit, fact, matter

/æ/ /e/ 6 back, pads, have

/ɑ:/ /ʌ/ 2 after

/ɪǝ/ /iɾ/, /ɜ:ɾ/ 4 nearly

/ǝʊ/ /ɒ/, /ɔ:/ 4 don’t, also, coach, coaching

/θ/ /t/, /s/ 3 think

/ð/ /d/ 6 the, that

/z/- intervocalic position

/s/ 4 crazy, isn’t, doesn’t

/ʒ/ /ʃ/ 5 pleasure

/tʃ/ /ʃ/ 2 watching, matches, match

/dʒ/ /j/, /ʒ/ 4 enjoy, just

/ŋ/ /n/, /nk/ 6 watching, playing, evenings, mornings, coaching, matching, etc.

/ɹ/ /r/, /ɾ/ 6 crazy, practice, brilliant, course,

/ph/ /p/ 5 play, pitch, practice, pads, part, pleasure

/th/ /t/ 6 team, protection, Tuesday, training, taking

69

Chart 15 Sounds most commonly mispronounced in the read aloud text

6.3 Mistakes in spontaneous speeches

The speakers were recorded while talking about the sport or activity they enjoy. In order

not to put them under stress, we did not give them any time limit. As a result, the

speeches differed in duration. If the speech was too short, an additional question was

prepared for the speakers.

Assessing the spontaneous speeches of individual speakers, we focused on troublesome

areas in the production of individual sounds. Furthermore, some suprasegmental

features of the language were also considered.

We gave the speakers a topic to talk about freely, which resulted in six individual

speeches. Therefore, the performances could hardly be compared. Nevertheless, it was

noticed that all the speakers repeatedly struggled with the pronunciation of the same

sounds as in the read aloud text. Therefore, we decided to present only the mistakes that

appeared in the spontaneous speeches and did not occur in the read aloud text. Also, if a

mistake in the read aloud text was found in only a small number of speakers and it

proved to be problematic for more of them in the spontaneous speeches, it will be

mentioned here.

/kh/ /k/ 5 crazy, kit, colours, course, comes, coach, counts

/z/, /v/ - final position /s/, /f/ 6 love, years, matches, have, evenings, mornings, skills, pads, always, comes, lose

cognates influence of Spanish pron.

6 favourite, ´specially, local, practice, brilliant, special, colours, fact

initial /sp, st, sk/

prefixed with /e/

5 sport, ´specially, school, skills, special, stuff

between 2 words

a sound inserted in between the words/deletion

3 nine years, love football

cons. clusters

final simplification 3 just, don’t, old

70

4 speakers out of 6 did not differentiate between long /u:/ and short /ʊ/. 3 speakers out

of 6 replaced /ɔ:/ with /oɾ/ (e.g. sport, anymore, before). The production of the

diphthong /ǝʊ/ was found difficult by 5 speakers (e.g. so, also, don’t, know). More

speakers seemed to encounter problems with the /s/ sound. In two cases, it was replaced

by /ʃ/ (e.g. support, so). The production of /ʃ/ was found difficult by the speaker 6 who

constantly used /s/ instead (e.g. should). He also replaced this sound with /s/ in the word

special and with /t/ in the word actually.

The speakers were immensely influenced by the pronunciation of Spanish cognates

(especial, actually, active, different, favourite and selection etc.).

6.4 Suprasegmental features in the read aloud text and spontaneous

speeches

As far as suprasegmental features are concerned, we detected no major mistakes in the

placement of word stress in the subjects´ spontaneous speeches except the following:

some'times, any'one, any'more, some'thing (speaker 3). In the read aloud sample, stress

in the word even twice fell on the last syllable e'ven (speakers 2, 5).

Regarding the intonation of the speeches, we noticed more enthusiasm in spontaneous

speeches than in the read aloud sample. However, speeches of the speakers 4 and 5 in

both sounded very monotonous in both performances. The subject 2 had evident

difficulty with a falling intonation pattern at the end of statements. She had a tendency

to use a rising tone instead.

As it was stated in the theory, Spanish belongs to another rhythmic category of

languages than English. This fact was projected into the performances of all speakers. A

strong tendency to give syllables approximately equal stress was evident in both reading

and spontaneous speeches of all speakers. Moreover, no sufficient reduction of

unstressed syllables was observed. Strong forms (e.g. in for, to, would, have) were used

instead.

71

6.5 Mistakes in word stress

Assessment of placement of word stress consisted of one task, in which the speakers

were asked to read nineteen words. Among them, we have decided to include several

cognates (e.g. chocolate, future, famous, delicious, station, engineer, decision,

television, occupation - Spanish translations: chocolate, futuro, famoso, delicioso,

estación, ingeniero, decisión, televisión, ocupación) that were expected to cause

difficulties due to their different position of stress in Spanish. Whereas stress falls on

the penultimate syllable in the Spanish words chocolate, futuro, famoso, delicioso,

ingeniero, it is placed on the first syllable of the equivalent English cognates chocolate,

future, famous, on the penultimate syllable in the word delicious and on the last syllable

in the word engineer. Stress in the rest of cognates in Spanish falls on the last syllable

due to the written accent (i.e. in estación, decisión, televisión, ocupación), whereas

English stresses the first syllable of station and the penultimate syllable of television,

decision and occupation.

No mistakes with stress placement in the words and phrases station, famous, bedroom,

chocolate, delicious, crazily, together, decision, beautiful, it’s over, you’re joking,

television and occupation were detected in any of the speakers. Conversely, difficulties

were encountered with the rest of the words or phrases, which will be looked at in

details in Chart 16. Pronunciation mistakes were not taken into account in this task.

English word/phrase Incorrect stress placement No. of the speaker

future - on the last syllable speaker 2

engineer - on the penultimate syllable speaker 2

give her one - on the word give speakers 1, 5

departure - on the first syllable speaker 2

can’t believe it - on the word can’t speakers 5, 6

it’s in the paper - on the word it’s speaker 5

Chart 16 Mistakes in the area of word stress

72

Although we expected the subjects to make more mistakes in this area (especially while

stressing the cognates), none of the speakers was believed to have major difficulties in

the area of word stress.

6.6 Mistakes in sentence stress

The subjects were given two short texts to read and their task was to pay attention to

sentence stress and place it correctly. The first text was taken from Rogerson (1990: 3)

and the second text from Cunningham (1990: 27).

While assessing this task, we concentrated on sentence stress placement (underlined

words).

A: What’s the matter?

B: I’ve lost my hat.

A: What kind of hat?

B: It was a rain hat.

A: What colour rain hat?

B: It was white. White with stripes.

A: There was a white hat with stripes in the car.

B: Which car?

A: The one I sold!

Two out of six speakers (number 2, 6) proved to have difficulties with the correct

placement of sentence stress which they constantly put on the last word in a sentence.

Moreover, speaker 2 did not stress the word stripes. The stress placement on the last

word in a sentence clearly shows the influence of Spanish where the stress would be

placed likewise. Speakers 1, 3, 4 and 5 had no difficulties with the first exercise.

A: I’m going to meet Ann, grandfather.

B: You’re going to meet Sam? Who’s Sam?

A: No Sam – Ann. We’re going to play tennis.

B: You’re going to play with Dennis? And who’s Dennis?

73

A: Not Dennis. Tennis. We’re going to play tennis in the park.

In the second set of tasks, speakers 1, 3, 4 and 5 did not encounter major difficulties. On

the contrary, a few mistakes were made in the performances of speakers number 2 and 6

who did not put any prominence to the words Ann in the sentence No Sam - Ann. In

addition to this mistake, speaker 6 did not stress tennis in Not Dennis. Tennis.

6.7 Mistakes in linking

The learners were recorded reading a short passage borrowed from Celce-Murcia (1996:

355). They were asked to focus on linking between words within the sentences and they

had an opportunity to rehearse before recording. No major difficulties with this feature

were expected as linking is based on almost identical, above described rules.

Linking between these words has been observed:

June ̮ and Bill ̮ are classmates ̮ in ̮ an ̮ Italian conversation course. This ̮ afternoon they ̮

are having ̮ a drink together ̮ at ̮ an ̮ outdoor café near the school. They ̮ are talking ̮

about how much they would like to go ̮ on ̮ a trip to ̮ Italy next ̮ year.

The following mistakes occurred in the area of linking:

- June ̮ and Bill - 2 speakers did not link the consonant sound /n/ to the following

vowel a (speakers 4, 5).

- Bill ̮ are - 1 speaker did not link the final l to the initial a (speaker 2).

- this ̮ afternoon - all the speakers correctly linked the consonant to the following

vowel, however, all of them pronounced it as /ðɪs/ instead of

/ðɪz/.

- together ̮ at̮ - none of the speakers linked these two words together.

- go ̮ on - 2 speakers separated these two words (speakers 3, 5).

As expected, the results have proved that the learners did not have major problems with

linking between words.

74

6.8 Mistakes in intonation

In order to find out about speakers´ usage of correct intonation patterns, we chose two

short samples, the first of which was taken from Cunningham (1997: 10) and the second

from Taylor (1993: 166). The samples included declarative sentences and various types

of questions (yes/no questions, wh-questions and choice questions).

Assessing the test focused on intonation turned to be one of the most demanding tasks

for the evaluator. The principal reason was that each speaker’s performance was highly

individual - each of them read the same utterance in a very different, personal way. It

appeared as if most of them were confused and uncertain and were neither lead by the

intonation rules of English, nor were they transferring many Spanish patterns, as we

expected.

After being given a mix of various questions and statements to read, all the subjects

showed a tendency to distinguish between a question and a statement by applying some

pitch change. In their effort, however, most of them failed to identify the right moment

for the high pitch to be positioned. Since in some sentences each of them put it in a

different place, it was almost impossible to find a rule by which they were guided.

Speaker 2 transferred Spanish patterns into her English the most. She seemed, for

example, to always put a great amount of stress on the word like. We extrapolated that

she might have been “translating” the sentence into Spanish, where its equivalent gusta

would equally be stressed (first stressed syllable). Such a rule was difficult to find in

other speakers, nevertheless.

Despite all difficulties, some typically Spanish features could be observed. Most

generally, the speakers were not employing much of a pitch range, compared to what

would be normal in native English speakers. The overall impression of their speech was

quite monotonous. An uninformed English listener might therefore “accuse” them of

not showing enough enthusiasm (That’s perfect, thank you), or wonder about what the

actual point of interest in some of their questions was. On this account, however, it

should also be born in mind that the speakers were only reading the text, and not all of

75

them perhaps were great actors. We believe that some acting talent is necessary in order

to succeed in such a challenging exercise requiring a lot of imagination and empathy.

The initial pitch position was rather low in most speakers. They had a tendency to stress

the last element in the sentence, which was most noticeable in the sentence How about

this one, Sir?, where the majority of them distinguished the word one.

Some speakers struggled when differentiating between yes/no questions and wh-

questions. They applied the same melody to both (Speakers 2 and 5).

Falling intonation pattern at the end of declarative sentences posed least problems to the

speakers and managing the melody in choice questions was not problematic either -

most of the speakers sounded natural. This is in accordance with the theory.

76

Conclusion

In the thesis, we have discussed the problem of non-native acquisition of English

pronunciation and shed light on some common mistakes Spanish speakers are likely to

make in English pronunciation. Our study, based on a small research conducted on six

Spanish speakers of English, was intended to measure the speakers´ command of

segmental and suprasegmental features of the English language. A comparison of the

English and the Spanish sound systems has been made and it has shown that English

contains a lot of sounds that cannot be found in the Spanish sound system. Our study

have also found out that, in addition to these elusive sounds, suprasegmental features of

the English sound system presented obstacles for Spanish learners to overcome.

It is important to stress that the mistakes found in the performances of the research

subjects might not apply to every Spanish speaker of English as many mistakes of these

speakers might have remained unnoticed. Further investigations are planned to be

attempted in the near future.

It can also be concluded from the results that not only the presence or absence of certain

sounds plays a role in English pronunciation of the speakers, but also individual

speakers´ language backgrounds. As expected, exposure to English during their stays

abroad seemed to positively affect particular speakers´ English pronunciation.

We hope that working with Spanish learners of English during the recordings for our

research was an interesting experience for them, as it was for us. The author of the

thesis also believes that the work will be of some help to the subjects of the study and to

all those who are interested in English pronunciation and its acquisition by foreign

learners.

77

Résumé (EN)

The diploma thesis deals with the question of non-native pronunciation of English and

is particularly concerned with Spanish speakers. The author’s goal is to find out what

English pronunciation mistakes are typical of Spanish users of the language. The thesis

has two major parts, a theoretical and a practical one. Its theoretical part presents the

problem of non-native acquisition of English pronunciation in general. Furthermore, by

comparing the sound systems of English and Spanish in the areas of both segmental and

suprasegmental features, the author of the work predicts some pronunciation-related

difficulties Spanish learners of English might encounter.

The practical part of the thesis processes the results of a case study conducted on six

Spanish speakers whose performances were recorded and mistakes in English

pronunciation later analyzed.

Resumé (CZ)

Tato diplomová práce se zabývá anglickou výslovností u nerodilých mluvčí a je

konkrétně zaměřena na španělské uživatele tohoto jazyka. Autor si klade za cíl

proukoumat výslovnostní chyby v anglickém jazyce, jakých se Španělé nejčastěji

dopouštějí. Práce je rozdělena na dvě části, teoretickou a praktickou. Teoretická část

popisuje osvojování anglické výslovnosti nerodilými mluvčími. Dále porovnává rozdíly

mezi zvukovými systémy anglického a španělského jazyka a na jejich základě autor

vypisuje příklady potíží, se kterými se Španělé mohou běžně setkávat.

Praktická část práce shrnuje výsledky případové studie vedené na šesti španělských

mluvčích, jejichž anglická výslovnost byla nahrána a chyby v ní následně rozebrány.

78

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Appendices

Appendix no. 1 - Questionnaire

Appendix no. 2 - My favourite sport (read-aloud text)

Appendix no. 3 - Tasks on suprasegmental features

Appendix no. 4 - Compact disc with recordings of the Spanish research subjects

Appendix no. 1

Questionnaire

1) What is your name and how old are you?

2) How long have you been studying English?

3) Do you remember the teachers you had at school?

4) Have your previous English teachers taught you pronunciation? If so, can you give

some details?

5) What do you think about your English pronunciation? Is it important for you when

talking to non-native speakers? Does it differ when talking to native-speakers?

6) Have you ever been to an English speaking country for a longer period? Have you

ever stayed in a foreign country where you had to use English regularly? What country

and for how long?

7) Who and what do you think influences your pronunciation (both positively and

negatively - e.g. native language, friends, teachers, watching TV, music etc.)?

8) What do you find difficult about English pronunciation?

9) Are you aware of some mistakes you make?

10) How would you rank your English pronunciation on a scale from 1-10? (1 – best, 10

– worst)?

11) Is there a particular situation that makes you nervous about your English

pronunciation (e.g. on the telephone, at the bank, in front of friends, adults, classmates,

teacher, when giving presentations, etc.)?

12) On the contrary, in which situation do you feel comfortable speaking English?

Appendix no. 2

My favourite sport

I absolutely love football. I’m crazy about it. It’s the best! I love watching it but I

´specially enjoy playing it. I am nine years old and I play for the local team at my

school’s football pitch. I play matches twice a week – on Thursday evenings after

school and on Sunday mornings. And we also have coaching on Tuesday evenings

when we just practice all our football skills. It’s brilliant! Er – we all have a special kit –

a football shirt with a number on the back – er – I’m number 7, it’s my lucky number!

And we wear shorts, socks and stuff, all in matching colours and of course our football

boots – oh – and we also have to wear shin pads for protection, you know. We have a

team tracksuit, too – but we only wear this before and after matches and for training.

Erm – my mum always comes to support us – even when it’s raining. Mmm….my team

isn’t very good, in fact we nearly always lose – but we don’t care! Our football coach,

Martin, says winning doesn’t matter – it’s taking part that counts – maybe he’s right, but

do you know what I think? I think it’s just a pleasure when we win! Yeah.

QUESTION: What sport or activity do you enjoy?

Appendix no. 3

Tasks on suprasegmental features

Pronounce these words or phrases with the correct stress placement:

station famous bedroom future chocolate

delicious crazily together engineer decision

beautiful give her one it’s over you’re joking departure

television occupation can’t believe it it’s in the paper

Read the following text aloud, paying special attention to sentence stress A: What’s the matter? B: I’ve lost my hat. A: What kind of hat? B: It was a rain hat. A: What colour rain hat? B: It was white. White with stripes. A: There was a white hat with stripes in the car. B: Which car? A: The one I sold! A: I’m going to meet Ann, grandfather. B: You’re going to meet Sam? Who’s Sam? A: No Sam - Ann. We’re going to play tennis. B: You’re going to play with Dennis? And who’s Dennis? A: Not Dennis, tennis. We’re going to play tennis in the park. Read the following aloud, paying special attention to linking between words June and Bill are classmates in an Italian conversation course. This afternoon they are

having a drink together at an outdoor café near the school. They are talking about how

much they would like to go on a trip to Italy next year.

Decide if the intonation goes up or down at the end 1. Do you like American films? 2. What would you like for dinner? 3. Which newspaper do you read? 4. Would you like to watch the news? Decide what the intonation will be like

A: Can I help you?

B: I’d like a sweater, please.

A: Which size would you like? Small, medium or large?

B: Medium please.

A: How about this one, Sir?

B: That’s perfect. Thank you.

Appendix no. 4

Compact disc with recordings of the Spanish research subjects