Показатели на странски изговор во англомакедонскиот меѓујазик

Abstract

The paper reports on the results of a recent study that aimed to detect and describe the most frequent vocalic and consonantal markers of Macedonian-accented speech as perceived by native speakers of English and to find out whether native speakers who speak different variants of English perceive the same segments as non-native. A brief overviews of the methodology design is presented with emphasis on the web application which was developed as a necessity due to lack of phonetically trained experts in Macedonia but also having in mind the benefits of the approach such as wider audience and fast results. Two types of data were collected: a) quantitative (frequency of phonetic segment variables and global foreign accent ratings on a 5-point scale), and b) qualitative (open-ended questions). The result analysis sheds light on the predicted phenomena and points out three variables as the most frequent markers of Macedonian-English accented speech: final obstruent devoicing, vowel shortening and substitution of English dental fricatives with Macedonian dental plosives. It also reflects additional phonetic aspects poorly explained in the available reference literature such as allophonic distributional differences between the two languages and intonational mismatch (sporadic use of weak forms and frequent inappropriate use of rising tones). Based on the listeners' responses, a detailed profile of the English speech produced by a Macedonian learner of English (the typical representative of our sample) is constructed and practical pedagogical implications are proposed