No abstract

When we hear speakers of other languages or of other dialects of our own language, we perceive them as speaking more rapidly (or, occasionally, more slowly) than do speakers of our own language/dialect. The purpose of this study was to compare speech rates across dialects and languages to begin to understand these perceived differences. To this end, we compared the speech rate across three groups: 25 speakers each of Dominican and of Puerto Rican Spanish and 25 speakers of English from New York City; all were monolingual speakers of their languages. We measured speech rate for a habitual/automatic speech task, reciting the Lord’s Prayer; each speaker repeated the prayer for at least one minute. We measured the durations of the speech and pauses for one repetition of the Lord’s Prayer (usually the second) for each speaker. Results will be presented in terms of syllables per second. Preliminary results suggest that speakers of Puerto Rican Spanish and New York English do not have different habitual/automatic speech rates, and that speakers of Dominican Spanish have slower habitual speech rates. [Supported by St. Johns University.]