INTERSPEECH 2011 12th Annual Conference of the International Speech Communication Association Florence, Italy August 27-31. 2011

The Open Front Vowel /æ/ in the Production and Perception of Czech Students of English

Pavel Šturm, Radek Skarnitzl

Charles University in Prague, Czech Republic

This study addresses the acquisition of the English open front vowel by Czech learners of English, who are known to experience difficulties in both its production and perception. Secondary school students and university students of English judged the acceptability of the open front vowel as pronounced by other Czech learners of English. Their evaluations were plotted against acoustic measurements (F1, F2, and vowel duration) and linguistically relevant variables. The evaluations varied as a function of F1 and L2 experience. The experienced subjects perceived the vowel more accurately and consistently than did the relatively inexperienced subjects.

Full Paper

Bibliographic reference.  Šturm, Pavel / Skarnitzl, Radek (2011): "The open front vowel /æ/ in the production and perception of Czech students of English", In INTERSPEECH-2011, 1161-1164.