This paper firstly compares and contrasts the phonetic and phonological systems of English and German and then goes on to describe some frequently occurring problems concerning pronunciation and non-native accents of German ESL students. Some of the factors leading to the problems that will be scrutinized are interference of German, learners’ attitudes and insufficient knowledge of phonetics and phonology systems of the English language, among others.
Moreover, the concept of what is commonly referred to as the aptitude for (phonetic) mimicry will be illuminated and discussed from different viewpoints, taking into account the origin of the term and its applicability to linguistics, particularly within the fields of phonetics and phonology.
One of the objectives of this paper will thus be to determine possible factors affecting learners’ pronunciation competence and to examine to what extent formal instruction in phonetics and phonology can alleviate certain pronunciation difficulties. To that end, a small-scale study was designed and conducted at the University of Cologne with first- and second-year English students, five of whom had not yet taken the Practical Phonetics & Phonology (PPP) course that forms an obligatory part of the English Studies Bachelor’s Degree Program and five who had taken it during the previous semester and had passed the end-of-module exam.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION
1. THEORETICAL BACKGROUND
1.1. The English and German Phonetic and Phonological Systems Compared
1.2. Common Errors and Potential Misunderstandings
2. THE APTITUDE FOR PHONETIC MIMICRY
2.1. Mimicry as an Interdisciplinary Phenomenon
2.2. Innate or Acquired? A Decades-Long Debate
3. EMPIRICAL RESEARCH AND TEACHING APPROACHES
3.1. Participants and Design of the Small-Scale Study
3.2. Evaluation of the Results
3.3. Teaching Pronunciation: Shifts in Educational Trends
4. CONCLUSION
BIBLIOGRAPHY
APPENDIX
Exercises Used in the Study
Questionnaire
Introduction
“Language starts with the ear” (O’Connor 1984: 1). The underlying assumption that constitutes the basis for such statements is that language acquisition is first and foremost an implicit process in which linguistic rules are internalized through extensive exposure to authentic texts in the target language (Postovsky 1974). Against this background, it does not come as a surprise that in recent years studies have shown that students are increasingly inclined to acquire foreign languages more enthusiastically and more effectively through exposure to auditive stimuli that are often taken from popular culture, such as movies, music and other entertainment-related resources (Abdeen, Albiladi & Lincoln 2018), possibly in an attempt to emulate L1 acquisition that initially takes place through auditive immersion (Fry 1977) and with such amazing ease, after all, that we hardly remember how it came about. While L1 acquisition appears to be a natural, intuitive process, foreign language acquisition invariably takes place against the backdrop of one’s first language and is thus prone to negative transfer1 that may also manifest itself in the realm of pronunciation (Thomason 1981).
The bulk of the linguistic literature on L2 acquisition and teaching is replete with descriptions of the problems learners encounter in attempting to pronounce FL sounds, and contrastive explanations for such issues are fairly common (Dechert, Brüggemeir & Futterer 1984; Odlin 1989: 112). Despite its centrality in L2 learning and communication, however, pronunciation training was largely neglected in the field of ESL teaching and did not have a secure place in most L2 curricula in the past, but was rather put on the back burner (Setter & Jenkins 2005) – it has even been referred to as “the Cinderella area of L2 teaching” (Kelly 2000). Due to the common notion that oral language simply appears to be part of our physical or genetic endowment present from birth, relatively little attention has often been devoted to learners’ pronunciation, although there have been accounts of an increasing pedagogical interest in this realm since the late 1990s (Fraser & Perth 1999). Either way, it cannot be denied that in learning environments where students undergo equal instruction one significant disparity arises: while some learners seem to master the potential pronunciation traps effortlessly, others struggle severely with the articulation of FL sounds, which has raised the question whether some people are simply blessed with an inborn “ear for foreign languages” (Odlin 1989: 132).
For decades, it has been obsessively noted by linguists that our ability for language acquisition seems to decline rapidly and drastically with increasing age (Seliger, Krashen & Ladefoged 1975; Oyama 1976), which gives rise to the question whether we tragically unlearn a seemingly inherent gift. In line with such perspectives, pronunciation is sometimes rendered very resistant to practice, since the trait view of language learning aptitude has frequently been linked to the popular notion of a gift for languages that cannot be acquired through educational instruction (Rosenthal 1996). The contestation of this alleged innateness – a concept which is increasingly regarded as somewhat over-simplistic – has intensified drastically in recent years (Singleton 2014; ibid. 2017). Singleton (2014: 90) clarifies that we need to come to a new understanding in order to accept the proposition that “language aptitude is not as ‘given’ as we may have once thought, and that what happens to us post -natally may influence it very considerably.”
This paper firstly compares and contrasts the phonetic and phonological systems of English and German and then goes on to describe some frequently occurring problems concerning pronunciation and non-native accents of German ESL students. Some of the factors leading to the problems that will be scrutinized are interference of German, learners’ attitudes and insufficient knowledge of phonetics and phonology systems of the English language, among others.
Moreover, the concept of what is commonly referred to as the aptitude for (phonetic) mimicry will be illuminated and discussed from different viewpoints, taking into account the origin of the term and its applicability to linguistics, particularly within the fields of phonetics and phonology.
One of the objectives of this paper will thus be to determine possible factors affecting learners’ pronunciation competence and to examine to what extent formal instruction in phonetics and phonology can alleviate certain pronunciation difficulties. To that end, a small-scale study was designed and conducted at the University of Cologne with first- and second-year English students, five of whom had not yet taken the Practical Phonetics & Phonology (PPP) course that forms an obligatory part of the English Studies Bachelor’s Degree Program and five who had taken it during the previous semester and had passed the end-of-module exam. After having tested their mimicry ability by means of a few imitative exercises, the students were given minimal-pair-identification and pronunciation tasks and a questionnaire regarding their motivation and their personal opinions pertaining to the overall usefulness of the PPP classes in order to investigate to what extent formal education in articulatory phonetics and phonology can enhance learners’ language awareness and consequently their pronunciation accuracy in English as a foreign language. Furthermore, the relevance and goals of such pronunciation teaching will be questioned and discussed on a more general note.
It will be argued that while native-like pronunciation may be related to inherent factors that cannot necessarily be actively influenced by the learner, it is first and foremost the result of extensive training and practice in- and outside of the classroom and hinges on motivation, language awareness and a proactive, change-oriented linguistic attitude to a considerable degree.
This paper therefore sets out to corroborate the thesis that while innate abilities can be deemed influential to a certain extent in terms of foreign accents, they are not the primary, let alone the sole determiners of the manifestation of one’s accent.
1. Theoretical Background
When learning a foreign language, students commonly use the speech habits and patterns of their first or native language. Oftentimes, the rules of the L1 are simply applied to the L2 and the multi-layered differences between the phonetics and phonology of German and English, among other linguistic realms, lead to various problems (Moroney 2017: 56). This phenomenon is generally referred to as phonetic/phonological transfer – a notion that is very much at the heart of applied contrastive linguistics –, its result being a non-native or foreign accent (Dechert, Brüggemeir & Futterer 1984). By comparing the English and German phonetic and phonological systems and discussing potential pronunciation problems, this chapter sets out to establish the theoretical framework for the subsequent presentation of differing perspectives on the aptitude for as well as the implications of phonetic mimicry within the wider context of FL pronunciation accuracy, the empirical research examining the PPP classes and the evaluation of interviews with native-German learners of L2 English conducted at the University of Cologne.
1.1. The English and German Phonetic and Phonological Systems Compared
“Any study of transfer must naturally provide a detailed consideration of cross-linguistic differences” (Odlin 1989: 129)2 and a cross-linguistic comparison of sounds in two languages should invariably include descriptions of the phonetics as well as the phonology of the native and target languages (Brière 1968). Additionally, contrastive analyses ought to take into account the cross-linguistic frequency of the sounds that are being contrasted: some sounds are extremely common, whereas other are significantly rarer and thus prove more difficult to master for non-native learners of that language. That is to say, there appears to be a rough correlation between the frequency of a sound or a certain phonological rule and their relative difficulty for L2 learners (Maddieson 1984). Bearing all this in mind, a few basic definitions will be laid down first. Keeping matters rather simple, Davis (1998: 4) defines phonetics and phonology as follows:
Phonetics is that part of linguistics in which we study the physical characteristics of the sounds which we hear in languages. It is interested in how we produce these sounds in the mouth, nose, throat and lungs, and in how the ear and the brain perceive and interpret them. Phonology is the study of how particular languages use these sounds, e.g. what combinations of consonants a language allows at the beginning or end of a word or syllable, which sounds have a restricted distribution in the language, how some sounds affect neighbouring sounds in that language etc.
In other words, phonetics focuses on the physical aspects of speech sounds, their description, classification, creation and reception and thus studies the human vocal and auditory tract (Plag et al. 2015: 1ff.). Phones are the concrete, physically produced speech sounds that serve as the objects of interest within this linguistic branch (ibid.: 33). Phonology, on the other hand, examines the sound systems of different languages (and therefore generally incorporates comparative linguistic studies, e.g. of cognates), how individual sounds can be used and combined and how the specific use of certain sound patterns creates meaning (ibid.: 29ff.). Phonologists study phonemes, i.e. the smallest abstract, meaning-distinguishing units that can be identified by finding minimal pairs, for instance, and occur in contrastive distribution (ibid.: 33). “Phones which function as [non-distinctive] alternant realisations of the same phoneme are called allo-phones of that phoneme” (ibid.). All allophones of the same phoneme are phonetically similar and they occur in complementary distribution, meaning they never occur in the same phonological context (Moroney 2017: 12). An example of this would be the different phonetic realizations of the phoneme /l/ in the words clap, containing a clear l: [l], and fall, which features a dark l: [ł]. The main focus of the subsequent paragraphs will be on the differences between the sound inventories and the respective articulation in German and English – particularly the sounds that exist in English but that are absent from German, as those appear to present the most prevalent obstacles for native German speakers to surmount. Furthermore, a few phonological deviations will be enumerated and elaborated on. It should be noted though that the following list of phonetic and phonological phenomena is far from exhaustive, since certain choices had to be made with regard to the relevance for the overall objective of this paper.
In spite of the fact that English and German are both West Germanic languages and are therefore comparatively similar in numerous aspects, not the least of which is pronunciation (Garry & Rubino 2001), there are certain systematic phonetic and phonological differences between the standard varieties of English (NRP) and German (High or Standard German).
Turning to phonetic descriptions, so the articulatory characteristics of the sound inventories, the most striking differences between the consonantal systems of German and English will be scrutinized first. Two languages frequently have sounds which may seem identical at first glance, but which are in fact acoustically (i.e. phonetically) different, or one language may include sounds that are entirely novel to FL learners, as their native language phonetic inventory lacks them.3 A few major differences between German and English consonants are that German has no dental fricatives – so the voiceless [θ] or the voiced [ð] – whatsoever, as is the case for many languages, and no bilabial approximant [w], which figure quite prominently in English. In most regions of Germany, the grapheme <r> is realized as the voiced uvular fricative [ʁ], whereas NRP [r] is a(n) (post)-alveolar approximant.4 The German alveolar lateral approx-imant [l] is clear in all contexts, whereas NRP, as has been mentioned before, has an allophonic contrast between clear [l] and dark [ł]5 and r-sounds, which are either realized as [r] in words such as rip or as [ɹ] when preceded by a voiceless plosive, such as in trip.
Regarding the vowel systems, it can be stated that German lacks the low-mid central unrounded vowel [ɜ], the low-mid back unrounded vowel [ʌ], the near-low front unrounded vowel [æ] and the low back slightly rounded vowel [ɒ]. Furthermore, the centering diphthongs [ɪə], [eə] and [ʊə] and the closing diphthongs [eɪ] and [əʊ] do not exist in German either, which only features the three closing diphthongs [aʊ], [aɪ] and [ɔɪ], all of which exist in NRP, too.
What proves particularly striking when examining the phonological systems of both languages are phonological constraints and rules that exist in one language but not in the other. Therefore, phonological node-switches6 are often the result of the application of L1-specific phonological rules to the L2, such as final obstruent devoicing, which is obligatory in German but not in English, where voiced obstruents can and frequently do occur word-finally. Given that this rule forms part of multiple languages, it can be regarded as quite natural (Eckman 1977). Hence, many German speakers learning English will have considerable difficulty in suppressing this native-language rule. In English – as opposed to German – two final plosives, fricatives and affricates, i.e. obstruents, must agree in voice, which is why the grapheme <s>, for instance, is always realized as /s/ when it is preceded by the voiceless obstruents /p t k f θ/ and as /z/ in all other word-final positions. In German, initial vowels are typically preceded by a glottal stop [ʔ], which is distinctly different from English, where the preceding consonants tend to be linked to the following word instead; not at all, for example, is usually realized as /nɒ:tətɒ:l/.
Finally, a few crucial phonotactic or sequential constraints that hold true for English but not for German or vice versa will be taken into account (Moroney 2017: 47-49). In English, /kn/ never occurs syllable-initially, whereas this is a well-formed consonant cluster in German (compare German Knie /kni:/ and English knee /ni:/). Furthermore, the maximum number of consonants in a final consonant cluster in English words is three (Roach 2009: 59), whereas it is four in German, e.g. /-pfst/ as in rupfst or klopfst. Moreover, /mb/ as a final CC cluster is not well-formed in NRP, which is why tomb is pronounced /tu:m/.
To complicate matters further, in many cases of cross-linguistic analysis – and German and English can be deemed such a case – the pronunciation and orthographic rules of the L1 and the FL are distinctly different (Coulmas 2003: 35), which can lead to tremendous confusion and instances of interference. For example, there is virtually no systematic phoneme-grapheme correspondence in English, whereas German words are generally spelled the way they are pronounced – it is mostly loan words, many of which are derived from French, that deviate from the dominant orthographic and pronunciation rules. As Moroney (2017: 3) puts it: “Due to historical reasons, English modern orthography does not represent or correspond with pronunciation.” A few examples of such discrepancies are words that include the same sound, but are spelled differently (e.g. /aɪ/: aye , b uy, d ie, g ui de, h i de), clusters that are spelled the same way, but include different sounds (e.g. th in /θ/, th is /ð/, Th ames /t/), silent letters (e.g. bom b, cha l k, de b t, glis t en, h our, k nee, ou gh t, p sychology) and seemingly missing letters that are only added when pronouncing the words (e.g. use / j u:z/, music /m j u:zɪk/, tube /t j u:b/) (Fromkin, Rodman & Hyams 2003: 562). Moreover, the English language is interspersed with homographs: minute (Adj.) /a minute (N), perfect (Adj.) /to perfect (V) and homophonous words, such as right – write – rite, bear – bare, hole – whole, night – knight etc. Consequently, it is far from surprising that not only correct orthography but also accurate pronunciation in English are highly precarious endeavors, since the spelling of English words does little in terms of providing clues as to the correct pronunciation but can in fact prove rather misleading. Hence, learning English exclusively or primarily through reading seems to be only of marginal help for the improvement of one’s pronunciation, unless one is familiar with the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA), which, however, most learners who do not study English at university level are not, as phonetics and phonology are usually not taught in German secondary schools. Generally speaking, it has been unambiguously established that many errors produced in FL usage are attributable to the influence of the L1 on FL processing (Breuer 2015: 11). This first-language transfer has, inter alia, been analyzed by Figueredo (2006: 880), who describes the phenomenon as follows:
An ESL learner who has not yet reached a proficient level of English language skills may be said to have a language system called the interlanguage [which is sometimes regarded as a complete language in its own right], composed of three parts: (a) parts of the first language (L1 [- German]), (b) parts of the second language (L2 - English), and (c) universal aspects of language.
The different languages the speaker knows inevitably interact and compete with one another to gain the upper hand. This gives rise to the impression that in order to obtain native-like pronunciation skills, the demands of the L1 pronunciation rules should be “defeated” and overcome entirely, when the L1 may in fact be used as an additional resource that can and even should be consulted, but one has to figure out a way in which the first language “is used but not misused” (Wolff 2000: 110). Thus, L1 transfer can be divided into positive and negative transfer, meaning that first-language knowledge can either be applied appropriately (e.g. transfer of general phonological awareness) or inappropriately (e.g. L1-specific phonological rules) to the second language (Figueredo 2006: 882). The latter case is otherwise known as language interference. If there are any differences between the L1 and the L2, however subtle they may be, learners run the increased risk of making unintentional use of negative transfer, which may occur temporarily until the FL pronunciation rules have been internalized and are used consistently. Such transfer may persist, however, if there is no awareness of instances of L1 interference, since L2 learners have to establish new phonetic categories for unfamiliar sounds:
Sounds perceived as the same in both languages do not necessitate any learning. The phonetic category established for the L1 ‘evolves’ to incorporate this sound as a realization of the category. New sounds are perceived as not belonging to the L1 sound inventory. For these, new categories will have to be established. Similar sounds have certain phonetic characteristics of L1 sounds and might therefore not be perceived as different enough to warrant the creation of a new category by the […] learner. (Gut 2009: 23)
Thus, “[t]here is little doubt that native language phonetics and phonology are powerful influences on second language pronunciation” (Odlin 1989: 112). It is paramount to bear in mind though that manifestations of transfer can vary considerably from one learner to the next (ibid.: 130) and that negative transfer is regarded as a type of individual variation that can occur on either a conscious or on an unconscious plane (ibid.: 145).
Another factor that affects interlingual identifications is the set of relations implicit in the phonemic system of a language. A study conducted by Scholes (1968) of the perception of English vowels by native and non-native speakers revealed that the latter are liable to categorize foreign language sounds largely in terms of the phonemic inventory of their native language. Interestingly, certain systemic differences may even induce speakers to create vastly innovative sounds that cannot be found in either phonetic system (MacDonald 1989: 224).
Studies conducted by Major (1986), inter alia, have revealed that phonological L1 transfer is particularly prevalent in the earlier stages of language proficiency. Similarly, Flege’s (1980) analysis shows that increasingly proficient learners are capable of modifying their production of sounds so that their pronunciation comes closer to the target-language norms. Nonetheless, these modifications often do not result in the attainment of FL norms, but rather in approximations that are neither fully native- nor target-like (Odlin 1989: 113). The development of such compromise forms demonstrates the importance of unconscious judgments: “Research indicates that when everything else is equal, transfer will most likely result from a learner’s judgment […] that particular structures in a previously learned language are quite like – if not the same as – structures in the target language” (ibid.: 142). Hence, “the most salient consequences of linguistic differences are production errors which result in pronunciation patterns that diverge from those found in the target language” (ibid.: 115).
1.2. Common Errors and Potential Misunderstandings
The importance of correct FL pronunciation, according to Fraser (2006), has its roots in three interrelated matters: firstly, it enhances speakers’ comprehensibility and thus facilitates effective communication, secondly, once the finite clusters and structures have been acquired, it enables infinite use due to the principle of recursion, and thirdly, it has been shown to serve integrative purposes. Consequently, erroneous pronunciation can cause an array of problems. Newman (2002: 41) cites the Accent Services USA as follows: “Some accents, unfortunately, are distracting, irritating and penalizing… Accents can hamper performance, can adversely influence advancement and promotion and may be a source of concern and embarrassment.”
While transfer manifests itself in all linguistic realms, findings by Thomason (1981) strongly suggest that the influence of source-language phonetics and phonology on the L2 acquisition process will be more pervasive than the influence of other language subsystems, such as syntax. In fact, there is significant empirical support not only for specific contrastive but also more general predictions as to which sounds will prove particularly difficult to pronounce correctly for native speakers of which language, revealing that the native language of students appears to be an especially reliable predictor of the accuracy of their speech in English and the obviousness of their accents when compared to other potentially influential factors, such as length of residence or motivation to pronounce English sounds correctly (Odlin 1989: 112).
Moulton (1962a)7 devised an error taxonomy taking into account the tremendous complexity inherent in second-language pronunciation. He identified four different types of L2 segmental errors (i.e. errors involving vowels and consonants): phonemic, phonetic, allophonic and distributional errors. In this section, a few examples will be given for each of those types.
Phonemic errors are likely to arise whenever the phonemic inventories of two languages differ in certain elements and can be deemed the most problematic type of errors in that they are meaning-distinguishing and can render words unrecognizable. For instance, the phoneme /θ/ as in thing tends to be replaced with a sound closer to /s/ or /f/ and the phoneme /ð/ as in there is often substituted by a sound closer to /z/, which can make the difference between think /θ/ and sink /s/ or thought /θ/ and fought /f/ challenging to decipher. At times, erroneous mix-ups of the two dental fricatives – which merely differ in voicing, after all – may also occur, which might amount to a change in meaning, too, such as in teethe /ð/ (V) or teeth /θ/ (N). Furthermore, /w/ is sometimes replaced by /v/, which might cause confusion between words such as whale – veil, wet – vet, while – vile etc. Vowels are just as prone to such confusions, if not more so. For instance, NRP /æ/, a low vowel, is often replaced by the similar (central) vowel /e/ that seems more familiar to German ears, which results in mix-ups of pet and pat or flesh and flash and numerous other minimal pairs. Generally speaking, pronunciation errors primarily prove problematic when a different phoneme, i.e. a different meaning-distinguishing unit, is erroneously chosen.
By contrast, phonetic errors involve cases of cross-linguistic equivalence at the phonemic but not the phonetic level, meaning that both the L1 and the L2 have comparable phonemes, but with phonetically different allophones, e.g. the different r-sounds (German uvular and English retroflex). The r-sounds that German speakers are likely to produce may differ significantly from the target-language consonant. Such errors are not quite as problematic in conversation though, as they are generally not meaning-distinguishing.
Phonetic errors partially overlap with allophonic errors, which arise in cases of interlingual identifications of phonemes in two languages: when a particular phoneme has several different phones as its realizational variants, speakers are liable to produce the sound closest to their L1 phonetic inventory instead of the sound produced by native speakers of the target language, which is why many German speakers often fail to articulate the dark [ł] in contexts which require its production, such as milk, kill, well, field etc.
Distributional errors may be reminiscent of allophonic errors, but they can also include combinations of sounds; in other words, the position of a sound within a word or even a syllable can affect how easy it is to pronounce. Many German speakers have trouble when attempting to pronounce the clash of /z/ or /s/ with /ð/ or /θ/, as in What i s th is? /wɒtɪzðɪz/, clothes /kləʊðz/ or months /mʌnθs/. Generally speaking, language interference may occur due to distributional differences between the L1 and the L2. Final obstruent or terminal devoicing is one such example: German ESL students may find it rather challenging to avoid pronouncing words such as bed /bed/ the same way as bet /bet/, serve /sɜ:v/ as surf /sɜ:f/, lose /lu:z/ as loose /lu:s/, grieve /gri:v/ as grief /gri:f/, mad /mæd/ as mat /mæt/ etc. (Moulton 1962b),8 all of which can be deemed the result of the German phonological system interfering with English pronunciation.
Regarding the application of this rule, developmental factors may also come into play: it appears to be such a natural rule that even children acquiring English as their native language initially tend to devoice word-final consonants (Edwards 1979). Hecht and Mulford (1987) found that such developmental errors are strikingly common with fricatives, while transfer errors seem to occur with particular frequency with other types of consonants and vowels.
Certain English consonant clusters are also prone to being subjected to negative transfer, such as mb in bomb(ing), which tends to be pronounced in its entirety by native speakers of German, for one thing since there is no phonotactic constraint in German rendering this combination ill-formed and presumably also due to the German cognate Bombe. In fact, the similarity of cognate forms may induce learners to establish correspondences between sounds that actually differ on the phonetic level, as is frequently the case for German fett /fet/ and English fat /fæt/, Violine /violi:nə/ and violin /vaɪəlɪn/ or good /gʊd/ and gut /gu:t/. The abundance of such cognates contributes significantly to German ESL learners’ pronunciation difficulties.
Moreover, Greenberg’s (1965) findings indicate that certain language universals can also be telling predictors of pronunciation issues, since most languages are more likely to have syllables ending in two voiceless consonants (e.g. /-pt/ as in stopped) than in two voiced consonants (e.g. /-bd/ as in robbed) and most German speakers do indeed appear to have more difficulty in pronouncing final consonant clusters that contain two voiced consonants.
According to Keshavarz (2012), yet another phonological error made with ostentatious frequency is the so-called spelling pronunciation of words, since many learners tend to pronounce words as they are spelled and apply the rules they have internalized from their knowledge of different words, such as in butcher /bʊtʃə/ with the <u> being pronounced as in cut /kʌt/, so /bʌtʃə/, food /fu:d/ as in foot /fʊt/ or honest as /hɒnɪst/, assuming that the grapheme <h> must be pronounced as this holds true for the majority of syllable-initial h-sounds in English.
Despite the numerous consonantal difficulties that have, inter alia, been discussed above, it appears that vowels generally prove the most menacing to ESL students (Scholes 1968), as their articulation is not quite as clear-cut as that of consonants and the differences are often more subtle. According to Pronunciation Studio, German speakers tend to confuse /ɔ:/ with /ɒ/, for instance in short and shot or caught and cot, whereas /əʊ/ in NRP or /oʊ/ in GA as in so, coat or know, which does not exist in either form in German, is often replaced with a monophthong closer to /ɔ:/ and native German speakers often tend to produce /ɜ:/, yet another sound that the German inventory lacks and that appears in words such as nurse, world or first, by rounding their lips, although they should be relaxed, with the tongue in the center of the mouth.
Suprasegmental contrasts involving stress patterns, tone, rhythm, loudness, pitch9 etc. are also frequently evident in cross-linguistic influences on pronunciation and entail crucial implications not only for speech production as such but also for comprehension (Cutler 1984; Odlin 1989: 117) – when a native-language stress pattern is erroneously applied to the FL, this can leave certain terms entirely unintelligible (Bansal 1976). Contrastive studies of intonation in German, Dutch, English and other languages also point to native influence (Pürschel 1975; Willems 1982; Van Els & De Bot 1987); indeed, “one of the surest clues to the specific foreign accent of an individual appears to be the ensemble of characteristics of sentence rhythm and pitch in the native language” (Odlin 1989: 119). In terms of pitch, German speakers tend to use a lot of rising patterns, which can imply a question in English, or uncertainty if used in the wrong context. English, by contrast, most commonly uses high falling intonation . It is no coincidence that there is an entire chapter in the PPP script dealing with syllable structure, stress and the distinction between strong and weak forms (Moroney 2017: Chapter 6) and one that is devoted to some crucial features of connected speech (ibid.: Chapter 8),10 since German ESL speakers tend to put too much stress on words that should be pronounced as weak (ibid.: 6f.) and oftentimes fail to employ processes of simplification, which is a distinctive feature of native speakers. Nonetheless, these types of suprasegmental errors will not be delved into further, as the subsequent empirical approach will primarily be concerned with segmental errors.
Taking all this into account, it becomes evident that an erroneous pronunciation and a rather lax attitude towards it will likely lead to frequent misunderstandings and may therefore severely impede effective communication, be it for professional or academic purposes or merely in everyday conversation. Thus, enhancing one’s pronunciation ranks among the top points on the agenda of many highly motivated ESL students who aspire to attain native-like foreign language skills. Besides such motivation, Piske et al. (2001: 204) list the following as factors claimed to affect the degree of foreign accent: age at which the L2 acquisition process started, length of residence, gender, formal instruction/educational background, language use (i.e. time spent speaking English with native speakers) and language learning aptitude. Language aptitude subsumes musical ability and mimicry, which have been shown to be interconnected by various studies (Milovanov et al. 2010) – a claim which was first sought to be disputed:
[…] musical ability has as yet not been identified as one of those variables that have an important influence on degree of L2 foreign accent. The ability to mimic unfamiliar speech sounds, on the other hand, has repeatedly been identified as a significant and independent predictor of foreign L2 accent. (Piske et al. 2001: 202)
Not all second-language researchers subscribe to this position though and a phenomenon that has been termed the aptitude for phonetic mimicry is the object of much controversy in contemporary linguistics, although on the whole, scholars have often been inclined to simply downplay its relevance (Hinton 2013: 103).
[...]
1 Note that Odlin (1989: 12f.) distinguishes between borrowing transfer, which is defined as “the influence a second language has on a previously acquired language”, and substratum transfer, “the type of cross-linguistic influence investigated in most studies of foreign language acquisition; involv[ing] the influence of a source language […] on the acquisition of a target language”. The term transfer will consistently serve as an abbreviation for the latter concept in this paper.
2 As Odlin (1989: 130) has pointed out, these considerations are only idealized descriptions of both languages, only approximations of the speech of any single native English or German speaker respectively, as no two people speak exactly the same and individual speech inevitably undergoes certain changes over time. Naturally, this poses problems for contrastive language analysis, which generally relies on comparisons of collective rather than individual linguistic behavior. Consequently, contrastive analyses that describe collective behavior may give rise to inaccurate predictions of individual performances (ibid.).
3 Most of the examples cited in this section have either been retrieved from the PPP script by Moroney (2017) or the website https://pronunciationstudio.com/10-english-pronunciation-errors-german-speakers/.
4 The different sounds that can be produced to realize the grapheme <r> in German and English are quite numerous, given that in German alone there are three possible realizations: the aforementioned uvular fricative, the uvular vibrant [R] and the alveolar vibrant [r]. German syllable-final [ʁ] is usually vocalized and realized as [ɐ] and NRP [r] is only pronounced when followed by a vowel. Moreover, depending on the variety of English, further disparities become evident: the r-sounds in German and NRP are both non-rhotic, whereas the [r] in General American (GA) is always rhotic.
5 “[A]s a result many varieties of English dark l might sound vowel-like to German ears” (Moroney 2017: 57).
6 Node-switches can be defined as “symptoms of performance errors caused by the attacks of the L1 on the FL and the increasing influence of the L1 due to various factors, [such as] cognitive overload and the inability to reduce L1 activation” (Breuer 2015: 48).
7 The theoretical terms are cited according to Odlin (1989, Chapter 8: 129-150), while many of the examples have been retrieved from https://pronunciationstudio.com/10-english-pronunciation-errors-german-speakers/.
8 Interestingly, English speakers learning German have comparably little trouble in learning to apply the rule of final obstruent devoicing, but those asymmetrical patterns of difficulty are quite common in second language acquisition (Moulton 1962b).
9 Pitch is of particular importance in tone languages such as Mandarin, Thai, Punjabi, Yoruba etc., where pitch levels have phonemic significance, whereas pitch in most European languages does not signal phonemic distinctions but does convey crucial information about speakers’ attitudes and emotional states (Odlin 1989: 118).
10 These include elision (the deletion of one or more sounds), liaison (the insertion of an extra sound to facilitate articulation, e.g. linking and intrusive /r/), assimilation (the alteration of a speech sound to make it more similar to its neighbors) and coalescence (the merging of two sounds to create a new one that differs from both original sounds).