L1 Dialect Influence on L2 English Pronunciation: The Cases of Maribor and Ljubljana

Škofljanec, Matija (author), Stopar, Andrej (mentor)

This thesis investigates the manifestation of dialect influence on the pronunciation of Slovene learners of English. Previous research has shown that the phonology of a speaker’s first language influences their speech when learning a second language. Since Standard Slovene is a learned variety for most Slovenians, it was hypothesized that dialect influence would be present in the speech of students from Ljubljana and Maribor, two major cities belonging to distinct dialect groups. A contrastive analysis of phonemes was conducted, followed by an experiment in which recordings of 57 grammar school students were analysed to determine whether systematic and statistically significant differences between the two groups existed. The results show that there are statistically significant differences between the two groups for all General British vowels except /iː/, demonstrating that systematic differences do exist. Furthermore, a contrastive analysis of the differences between General British and Standard Slovene proved to be a good predictor of difficulties, but only in where the corresponding Standard Slovene vowel does not change in the dialect. Finally, most of the differences between the two groups can be readily explained through contrastive analysis when including dialect influence, strongly suggesting that dialect influence is a major factor in the participants’ pronunciation of English.

• Language: English
• Keywords: dialect, formant, magnet effect, contrastive analysis, normalisation
• Work type: Master's thesis/paper
• Organization: FF - Faculty of Arts
• Year: 2023
• PID: 20.500.12556/RUL-151342
• COBISS.SI-ID: 167131139
• Publication date in RUL: 05.10.2023

Secondary language

• Language: Slovenian
• Title: Vpliv dialekta J1 na izgovorjavo angleščine slovenskih dijakov: primera Ljubljane in Maribora

Abstract

Cilj pričujoče magistrske naloge je ugotoviti, kakšen je vpliv dialekta na izgovarjavo slovenskih učencev angleščine. Rezultati predhodnih študij potrjujejo vpliv maternega jezika na učence tujega jezika. Ker je za večino govorcev slovenščine knjižna slovenščina priučen jezikovni kod, smo predvidevali, da bo v angleščini sodelujočih dijakov iz Ljubljane in Maribora opazen vpliv dialekta. Kontrastivni analizi fonemov je sledil eksperiment, v katerem smo analizirali posnetke 57 dijakov z namenom, da ugotovimo, ali so med skupinama statistično signifikantne in sistematične razlike. Rezultati so pokazali statistično signifikantne razlike med obema skupinama za vse samoglasnike britanske angleščine z izjemo fonema /iː/. Iz rezultatov je torej razvidno, da med skupinama obstajajo sistematične razlike. Kontrastivna analiza se je izkazala kot dober način napovedovanja težav sodelujočih, a zgolj tam, kjer se dialekt in standard nista razlikovala. Večino razlik, ki so se pojavile, lahko pojasnimo, če v kontrastivno analizo vključimo tudi dialekt sodelujočega, kar kaže na to, da je J1 dialekt učencev angleščine pomemben faktor v njihovi angleški izgovorjavi.

• Keywords: dialekt, formant, magnetni učinek, kontrastivna analiza, normalizacija