The Interlanguage Speech Intelligibility Benefit for Turkish Speakers of English

Abstract

This study is aimed at investigating the Interlanguage Speech Intelligibility Benefit (ISIB) via native English and Turkish listeners’ transcriptions of Turkish talkers’ words with pronunciation errors in English. Speech samples collected from talkers with a Turkish L1 background (N=16) were presented to 33 L1 English and 33 L1 Turkish listeners via an instrument to be filled with the transcriptions of erroneous target words. Results supported matched ISIB for listeners as Turkish talkers were more intelligible to Turkish listeners in a considerably higher number of target words. Similarly, a higher number of target words were more intelligible to Turkish listeners with statistically significant differences. Most of these words had been labelled erroneous due to L1 transfer caused by orthographic interference, mispronunciations of English sounds that do not exist in Turkish, and loanwords found in similar forms in Turkish. Turkish listeners appeared to rely on such cues in Turkish talkers’ speech.