The Perception of English-Accented Polish –A Pilot Study

Abstract

<jats:p>While the perception of Polish-accented English by native-speakers has been studied extensively (e.g Gonet &amp; Pietroń 2004, Scheuer 2003, Szpyra-Kozłowska 2005, in press), an opposite phenomenon, i.e. the perception of English-accented Polish by Poles has not, to our knowledge, been examined so far despite a growing number of Polish-speaking foreigners, including various celebrities, who appear in the Polish media and whose accents are often commented on and even parodied.&#x0D; In this paper we offer a report on a pilot study in which 60 Polish teenagers, all secondary school learners (aged 15-16) listened to and assessed several samples of foreign-accented Polish in a series of scalar judgement and open question tasks meant to examine Poles’ attitudes to English accent(s) in their native language.&#x0D; More specifically, we aimed at finding answers to the following research questions:&#x0D; • How accurately can Polish listeners identify foreign accents in Polish?&#x0D; • How is English-accented Polish, when compared to Polish spoken with a Russian, Spanish, French, Italian, German and Chinese accent, evaluated by Polish listeners in terms of the samples’ degree of:&#x0D; (a) comprehensibility&#x0D; (b) foreign accentedness&#x0D; (c) pleasantness?&#x0D; • What phonetic and phonological features, both segmental and prosodic, are perceived by Polish listeners as characteristic of English-accented Polish?&#x0D; • Can Polish listeners identify different English accents (American, English English and Scottish) in English-accented Polish?&#x0D; • Does familiarity with a specific foreign language facilitate the recognition and identification of that accent in foreign-accented Polish?</jats:p>