The formants of the eleven monophthong vowels of Standard Southern British (SSB) pronunciation of English were measured for five male and five female BBC broadcasters whose speech was included in the MARSEC database. The measurements were made using linear-prediction-based formant tracks overlaid on digital spectrograms for an average of ten instances of each vowel for each speaker. These measurements were taken from connected speech, allowing comparison with previous formant values measured from citation words. It was found that the male vowels were significantly less peripheral in the measurements from connected speech than in measurements from citation words.

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An English lingua franca seems to be emerging in the ten ASEAN countries, and this paper investigates features of the pronunciation of this lingua franca. Twenty speakers, two from each of the ASEAN countries, were recorded while they were conversing in groups of three or four people, all from a different country. The speech that they used is analysed to identify shared features of pronunciation, especially to evaluate the effect that these features have on intelligibility, and it is argued that some of their shared non-standard features actually enhance intelligibility. Finally, some of the misunderstandings that occurred are analysed to determine the extent to which pronunciation played a part, and it is found that only those features of pronunciation not shared by speakers from other ASEAN countries resulted in a break-down in communication.

This paper provides a detailed description of the pronunciation of English by fifteen fourth-year undergraduates at the Hong Kong Institute of Education. First, the occurrence of American features of pronunciation is considered. Then there is an analysis of the pronunciation of initial TH, initial and final consonant clusters, L-vocalisation, conflation between initial [n] and [l], monophthong vowels, the vowels in FACE and GOAT, vowel reduction, rhythm and sentence stress. Finally, the status of Hong Kong English is considered, particularly the extent of its continuing alignment with an exonormative standard.

Despite the large number of speakers of English in China, little previous work has been done to describe their pronunciation. Thirteen young speakers from north-east, east and central China were recorded reading a passage and participating in a short interview, and their pronunciation is analyzed. The most salient features of their speech include the use of an epenthetic vowel after word-final plosives especially before another word beginning with a consonant, avoidance of reduced vowels especially in function words, heavy nasalization of vowels preceding a final nasal consonant, substitution of [s] for /θ/ and [z] or [d] for /ð/, use of [x] for /h/, and emphasis on sentence-final pronouns. It is suggested that some of these features may become established as part of a unique variety of English that is emerging in China.