The accentedness, comprehensibility, and intelligibility of Asian Englishes

Abstract

This study examines the accentedness, comprehensibility, and intelligibility of speakers of English from China, Hong Kong, Singapore, and the United States (US) by listeners from Hong Kong, Singapore, China, and the US on two speech tasks (read vs. conversation). It also examines the effect of shared background on scores for all listeners as well as the effect of international experience for the Hong Kong and the US listeners. The study found that although accentedness and comprehensibility were positively correlated, neither variable was significantly correlated with intelligibility. The study found that shared background increased ratings of accentedness and comprehensibility but not intelligibility scores, and that international experience also had an effect during the conversational task, in that listeners with international experience received significantly higher intelligibility scores than those without any such international experience.

The role of acoustic similarity in listening to foreign-accented speech: Recognition of Spanish-accented English words by Japanese native listeners

“…Several previous studies have highlighted the significance of similarity [6,26], indicating instances where foreign-accented speech might be more intelligible than native speech [3][4]6]. While the present study does partially support this argument (i.e.…”

“…As foreign accents could be viewed as a barrier to international communication, extensive research has focused on understanding whether and how foreign accents affect listener intelligibility. Most studies define intelligibility as the extent to which a speaker's message is actually understood by a listener, often measured by asking listeners to transcribe what they hear and calculating the intelligibility score based on the total number of words transcribed correctly [1][2][3]. Prior research has shown that foreign-accented speech is often less intelligible to native speakers of the target language (e.g., Spanish-accented English perceived by native (L1) English speakers) [1,[3][4].…”

“…In research on foreign-accented speech, two points have been demonstrated: (1) foreign-accented speech can be more easily understood in certain cases, even when the native languages of the speaker and listeners differ [3,6], and (2) accentedness does not always correlate with speech intelligibility for listeners [1][2][3]. (These studies often measure the accentedness by asking listeners to rate the perceptual degree of accent [1][2][3].)…”

The Interlanguage Speech Intelligibility Benefit for Turkish Speakers of English

“…According to the findings, NNLs received higher intelligibility scores than NLs; however, the differences were rather small without statistical significance. Similarly, in several other studies, NNTs were found to be more intelligible to NNLs with a shared L1, yet the NNLs did not outperform NLs (Han et al, 2011;Hansen Edwards et al, 2018;Jułkowska & Cebrian, 2015;Lee et al, 2005). Despite these research efforts in various contexts, there is a clear research gap in terms of ISIB studies conducted with Turkish talkers and listeners.…”

Swedish Youths as Listeners of Global Englishes Speakers With Diverse Accents: Listener Intelligibility, Listener Comprehensibility, Accentedness Perception, and Accentedness Acceptance

“…For LC, "1" meant "very easy to understand" and "9" meant "very hard to understand" (Munro and Derwing, 1995a, and adapted by many studies). For AP, "1" meant "no non-native accent at all" and "9" meant "very heavy foreign accent" (Hansen Edwards et al, 2018). For AA1, "1" meant "the accent was very pleasant to listen to" and "9" meant "the accent was very annoying and irritating," respectively (Szpyra-Kozlowska, 2014).…”