Mutual Intelligibility of Malay- And Swedish-Accented English: An Experimental Study

Abstract

In using English as an international language (EIL), one important issue is mutual intelligibility among EIL speakers from different language backgrounds. The present study investigates the crosslinguistic intelligibility of Malay-accented English and Swedish-accented English, regarding the three phonetic features -word stress pattern, consonant clusters, and long vowel in particular. We prepared 15 English statements that are evidently true or false if understood, and examined to what extent the three phonetic features are related to 30 Swedish and 38 Malaysian listeners' understandings of the statements read by a speaker from the other language group. We compared the Malaysian and Swedish listeners' answers given with understanding as well as processing time to respond. The listeners' own accounts of their struggles in understanding the speakers' pronunciations were also analyzed. Results show that Malaysian listeners easily understood Swedish-accented English, while Swedish listeners struggled to understand Malay-accented English. The difference between the two groups of listeners seems to be closely related to the degree of the realization of the three phonetic features by the speakers as well as to the degree of the use of these features as perceptual cues by the listeners. Based on the findings, we discuss potential phonetic core features of EIL for intelligibility and some pedagogical implications for teaching English pronunciation to the learners of the language.

Effect of altering three phonetic features on intelligibility of English as a lingua franca: a Malaysian speaker and Swedish listeners

“…The question that we pose here is whether a balanced mutual intelligibility was achieved between Swedish English and Malaysian English when the three phonetic features of Malaysian English were altered. Given the large discrepancy in the comparison between Malaysian listeners (see Jeong et al, 2017), overall, Tables 7 and 8 show that the three altered phonetic features of Malaysian English have led Malaysians and Swedes to obtain results that are more similar to each other than those of the first experiment. There is no statistical difference in reaction times for all three types of sentences, as well as in the answers given, with understanding of stress pattern sentences.…”

“…This study followed the same methodological procedure as the first study (Jeong et al, 2017), as described in the following.…”

“…This current study is a follow-up of our previous one (Jeong et al, 2017). It aims to find out whether the intelligibility of Malaysian English for Swedish listeners could be improved if its word stress patterns, consonant clusters and long vowels are altered for clear realization, while all the other features are maintained.…”

“…As a way to test the intelligibility principle, our previous study (Jeong, Thorén, & Othman, 2017) looked at mutual intelligibility between Malaysian-accented English and Swedish-accented English. Specifically, we wanted to test the effects of the three phonetic featuresword stress, consonant cluster and vowel lengthon the mutual intelligibility; the features that literature suggests are important for intelligible pronunciation, although in mixed and inconclusive ways (e.g., J.…”

The level of awareness and production of English lexical stress among English language teacher trainees in Malaysia

“…While several studies claim that lexical stress is important for speech to be intelligible (Field, 2005), others feel that it may not be necessary (Jeong, Thorén, & Othman, 2017). However, as future teachers of English, the assumption is that if teachers are aware of how English stress works in the pedagogic model, they can then use this knowledge to compare it with their own realisations of stress.…”