German-English Interference in the Field of Vocalism (Based on the Speech of Germans who Study English as a Foreign Language)

Abstract

The growing popularity of contrastive phonology as a branch of linguis-tics is seen now, in particular, due to the spread of bilingualism and multilin-gualism. Globalization involves the ability to speak several languages, in the study of which the phonetic level is primarily considered. The purpose of this work is to examine and describe the most likely consequences arising from in-terference in the articulation of vowel sounds in the English-language speech of Germans who study English as a foreign language. The article deals with monophthongs, diphthongs, and triphthongs, dis-cusses possible variations in the articulation of sounds, as well as the processes of reduction, elision, and substitution. Descriptive and comparative methods are the leading ones in the work, however, the instrumental method is also used to determine deviations from the norm and the nature of changes in articulation. The paper identifies a number of trends in the articulation of English sounds by Germans and reveals the reasons of the main difficulties which stu-dents face while studying phonetic norms of RP and speaking German as their native language, i.e. the qualitative and quantitative mismatch of allophones. The achievement of this goal testifies to the theoretical significance of this work, namely, the possibility of further detailed research in the field of sociophonetics and phonostylistics.