The effects of regional dialect on vowel intelligibility from a cross‐linguistic perspective

Abstract

The present experiment is a continuation of a previously reported study that examined intelligibility of English vowels as a function of dialect spoken by native speakers of English and Japanese. The purpose of this research is to assess how regional dialectal variations affect vowel intelligibility for native and non‐native speakers of English. Native English and Japanese subjects were recorded in two divergent dialectal regions of the United States (Ohio and Alabama). These tokens were then employed in a perceptual experiment where native English and Japanese listeners from Ohio and Alabama identified the English vowels. To date, perceptual data from only Ohio native English and Japanese subjects have been reported. A further analysis of the data including Alabama native English and Japanese listeners revealed that native English speakers from Ohio obtained the highest intelligibility scores overall (for example, all four listener groups identified Ohio English more accurately than all other groups). Additionally, native Japanese speakers from Alabama received the lowest overall intelligibility scores. The tentative results of this study imply that non‐native speakers of English that are exposed to a nonstandard dialect may have deleterious effects on comprehension.