Perception and analysis of Spanish accents in English speech

Abstract

The purpose of the present study was to determine what relates most closely to the degree of perceived foreign accent in the English speech of native Spanish speakers: intonation, vowel length, stress, voice onset time (VOT), or segmental accuracy. Nineteen native English speaking listeners rated speech samples from 7 native English speakers and 15 native Spanish speakers for comprehensibility and degree of foreign accent. The speech samples were analyzed spectrographically and perceptually to obtain numerical values for each variable. Correlation coefficients were computed to determine the relationship beween these values and the average foreign accent scores. Results showed that the average foreign accent scores were statistically significantly correlated with three variables: the length of stressed vowels (r=−0.48, p=0.05), voice onset time (r =−0.62, p=0.01), and segmental accuracy (r=0.92, p=0.001). Implications of these findings and suggestions for future research are discussed.