Minimal pairs for spanish speakers

Using a cross-modal priming design, thirty-three Spanish learners were compared to ten native Spanish speakers. Inflectional regularity: Probing the nature of lexical representation in a cross-modal priming task. Journal of Memory and Language 46 4. Search in Google Scholar. The impact of allophony versus contrast on speech perception.

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Content:

• The Phonetics and Phonology of Bilingualism
• 6 Pronunciation Mistakes Spanish Speakers Make in English (And How To Fix Them)
• Word match – a minimal pairs game for teaching pronunciation
• Spanish language backgrounds
• Minimal pair
• Improve your English pronunciation and speak like a native speaker
• Cross-modal priming differences between native and nonnative Spanish speakers

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The Phonetics and Phonology of Bilingualism

Both experiments were run on TP Software Rauber et al. The results show an interaction between the two cues, especially in the stimuli with no full voicing in the fricative. These findings provide additional evidence to the gradient status of speech in production and perceptual phenomena Albano ; Albano ; Perozzo , besides shedding light on the teaching of Brazilian Portuguese as an Additional Language. Laboratory Phonology, Brazilian Portuguese, speech perception, L2 speech intelligibility, acoustic-articulatory gestures.

Alves, U. This is a different scenario from Spanish, in which a phonological distinction between the voiceless and the voiced counterparts of the alveolar fricative does not occur Alarcos LLorach ; Hualde et al. This difference between the two languages poses difficulties to L1 Spanish speakers attempting to learn BP, as they find it difficult to produce the voiced fricative in the target language cf.

In order to answer this question, in Alves et al. Speech data were collected from six L1 Spanish speakers who had been living in Brazil for less than twelve months. Thirty-five Brazilian participants took part in this task.

The results indicated that voicing the consonant all the way through was not a necessary condition for the identification of the fricative as voiced.

Although the results in Alves et al. As this difference was found in production, it was possible that voicing length would play a decisive role in speech perception, especially in instances of accented speech, in which some primary cues in speech perception might not be fully produced.

The possibility described above deserves special consideration, since preceding vowel length plays an important role in the identification of consonant voicing in many languages Chen By providing evidence from Polish and Czech, the author claims that this vowel length pattern cannot be regarded as predictable, as this phenomenon characterizes different grammars in different language systems, not constituting a physiologically intrinsic aspect.

In our study, therefore, we enquire if this significant difference found in production would also play a role in the perception of BP words, especially in cases in which the fricative is partially voiced. In Experiment 1, stimuli were manipulated from the same original data used in Alves et al.

The experiment was run as an identification task on TP Software Rauber et al. Alves et al. Therefore, in Experiment 2, we added testing conditions in which voicing was not fully present or absent along the fricative. This task was administered after two weeks to the same forty participants who had taken part in the previous experiment.

The results of these two experiments have theoretical implications for the discussion on the phonological primitives of speech perception employed in the current models of L2 speech perception.

In other words, acoustic information seems to function as the primitive unit of speech perception. On the other hand, this has led to an ongoing discussion on The Constancy Problem cf. Strange , given the likely consequence that a unique representation for every single acoustic production should be assumed in this approach. As such a biunivocal correspondence between acoustics and phonological representations was seen as untenable, the model tended to be regarded as a phonetically-driven approach, without much to say about phonological representations.

This proposal would prove attractive not only regarding the principles that guide the perceptual phenomena, but also in what concerns the phonological primitive adopted in the model. In this paper, we discuss the adequacy of the two perceptual models in accounting for our data, as we consider the combined role of two cues in voicing distinctions.

We then follow an alternative approach to tackle both L2 perception and the perception of accented speech Perozzo , grounded on acoustic-articulatory gestures Albano as the primitives of speech perception. As we focus on the perception of accented Brazilian Portuguese productions, this paper also plays a role in the discussions on pronunciation teaching. We therefore assume that listeners can make use of other cues that might not necessarily play a role in the perception of non-accented speech.

This fact needs to be taken into consideration by foreign language teachers, who should be aware that having a foreign accent does not necessarily hinder intelligibility. The original non-manipulated data 3 were the same ones employed in Alves et al. In that experiment, we had manipulated different rates of voicing in the fricative.

In the present study, in both experiments, we aim to test the manipulated patterns from that previous study in combination with different vowel lengths. As explained in Alves et al. All of them were graduate students at Universidade Federal do Rio Grande and had been taking Brazilian Portuguese lessons in order to improve their proficiency in the language.

Table 1 presents an overall description of these L1 Spanish speakers. This is particularly important, as voicing the fricative in their L1 could affect their production patterns in BP and have an effect on the results of the perceptual task. Each member of the minimal pairs was repeated five times. In order to build our perceptual stimuli, in view of the audio characteristics of the recorded material, in Alves et al. We selected partially voiced stimuli with similar lengths in the preceding vowel, making sure that their fricative segments had also been produced with very similar lengths, as shown in Table 2.

All stimuli manipulations were carried out on Audacity — version 2. In order to manipulate different patterns of length of voicing in the fricative, 5 we added portions of voiced fragments of audio files that had been obtained from a production of the same lexical item that was being manipulated.

On its right border, the voicing of the stimuli was gradually weakened, in order to simulate a gradient loss of voicing all over the fricative.

Given this description of the audio portions used in the manipulation, the procedures for manipulating voicing length 6 adopted in Alves et al. As already mentioned in the Introduction, the results in Alves et al. As we consider the stimuli in the previous study, this question was particularly important, as we had used a longer vowel to control for preceding vowel length, given that our manipulations had been carried out in the voiced counterparts of the minimal pairs.

In the experiments we carry out in the present study, therefore, we not only make use of the fricative voicing manipulations already investigated in Alves et al. In this experiment, we tested only those stimuli from Alves et al. In order to manipulate vowel length, we extracted portions of the vowels from the original lengths shown in Table 2. In the same fashion as in Alves et al.

In Experiment 1, thus, we tested the perception of eight different manipulated patterns, as shown in Table 3. Each one of these audio files was randomly repeated three times, which adds up to 18 tokens in each experimental condition. Experiment 1, thus, totaled tokens. As in Alves et al. Optional pauses were provided after each 48 stimuli. Participants took from seven to 10 minutes to do the task.

Forty participants took part in the study. Participants who had some experience with accented speech in Brazilian Portuguese were also discarded from the study. Most participants spoke either French or English as an additional language.

Experiment 2 aimed to fill in this gap. For the manipulation of stimuli in Experiment 2, we took the same steps employed in Alves et al. Experiment 2, thus, totaled tokens. The same 40 participants who had taken part in Experiment 1 did the task in Experiment 2. The experiment was run two weeks after we had administered the first task. Experiment 2 was also run as an identification task on TP Software Rauber et al. Optional pauses were provided after each 58 stimuli.

All participants took from 10 to 15 minutes to do the task. Table 5 presents the identification rates of [z] in the eight conditions investigated. The averages described in Table 5 show a remarkable difference in the identification of the fricatives as [z] between stimuli with and without voicing. In other words, when compared to manipulated lengths, full vowel length showed significant differences in the identification of [z].

These results are suggestive that both the length of the preceding vowel and the length of voicing in the fricative play a role in the identification of the consonant as voiced [z]. The results of the post-hoc Bonferroni tests are shown in Table 6.

These results suggest that, mainly in those cases in which voicing does not seem to provide enough acoustic-articulatory information to allow for the identification of the consonant as voiced, longer vowel durations seem to contribute to an identification of the consonant as voiced [z]. These results suggest that, when voicing extends all the way through the consonant, the role played by vowel length does not seem to be as pivotal as in the case when voicing is not long enough to account for the difference between [s] and [z].

It is also important to mention that the stimuli with full voicing and full vowel length showed the highest rates of identification of [z] in the data presented in Table 5 with an average of In summary, the data in Experiment 1 suggest that the length of the preceding vowel also plays a role in the identification of syllable-initial [s] or [z], especially in those cases in which voicing does not go all the way through the fricative, which tends to be the case of learners of BP whose L1 is Spanish cf.

Though these results provide important information on the combined role of these cues, the data in Experiment 1, however, only account for those cases in which voicing is either fully present or totally absent in the fricative.

Following a more dynamic account, in Experiment 2 we present the identification rates of [z] in those conditions in which voicing does not go all the way through the consonant. Table 7 presents the descriptive data regarding the identification of the consonant as [z]. As previously seen in Table 5 , the identification rates of [z] increase as the rate of fricative voicing becomes larger. The descriptive data in Table 7 also show that there is a gradient increase in the identification rates in view of vowel duration, when the length of fricative voicing is the same.

This makes it clear that voicing in the fricative is a decisive cue in the identification of the consonants as voiceless or voiced, as a longer voicing length entails more identifications of the consonant as [z].

In other words, when its effects are considered in isolation, vowel length is also a decisive cue in identification, with longer vowels accounting for higher rates of [z]. These results once again reinforce the combined role of preceding vowel length and fricative voicing in the identifications of [z].

Given this interaction, we investigated possible differences among those test conditions with the same degree of voicing, in order to further discuss the role of vowel length. However, the post-hoc Bonferroni tests did not reveal significant differences among all conditions. Table 8 presents the results of those comparisons showing significant results.

As can be seen in Table 8 , from the six pairwise comparisons carried out, only two of them showed significant results. These results show the decisive role of fricative voicing and once again suggest that vowel length plays a significant role especially when the length of voicing in the fricative is shorter than the consonant itself which is particularly the case of L1 Spanish learners of BP, who find it difficult to voice the fricative all the way through. Post-hoc Bonferroni tests showed significant differences between all the tested pairs with a p value of 0.

These results reinforce the fundamental role of fricative voicing: when two different degrees of voicing in the fricative are tested, there is always a significant difference due to the higher identification rates in the pattern with longer fricative voicing, regardless of vowel length.

This result should not be seen as surprising, as syllable-initial [z] in BP tends to be voiced all the way through by native speakers; vowel length, then, should play the role of a secondary cue in perception. However, when there is no full voicing in the fricative which is the case of the manipulated stimuli in this study and in real productions by L1 Spanish learners of BP , vowel length may also be used as a cue by native listeners of BP.

This follow-up test was possible as the participants in the two experiments were the same, and the time lag between the two tests was not longer than two weeks. This once again confirms the decisive role played by vowel length in the identification of fricative voicing. As for the post-hoc tests, the results of the comparisons among the test conditions with the same degree of voicing have already been shown in Experiments 1 and 2.

These results are especially important with regard to the perception of accented L2 speech, especially among L1 Spanish speakers, who might find it difficult to fully voice the fricatives in Brazilian Portuguese.

6 Pronunciation Mistakes Spanish Speakers Make in English (And How To Fix Them)

An important feature of all human languages is that the meaningful utterances that we use to communicate with each other verbally are made up of a small number of building blocks, a handful of sounds, consonants and vowels, that, by themselves, are meaningless. It is important to realize that these sounds do not possess any meaning in themselves. Although sopa , paso and sapo all use the same four sounds of the Spanish language they do not share any feature of meaning. The crucial thing about phonemes is that they are contrastive.

Word match – a minimal pairs game for teaching pronunciation

What is a phoneme? The phonemes of a language are its speech sounds viewed as units in a functioning system. In some cases, e. As a rule, two or more sounds that are similar to one another and which never occur in the same phonetic context — hence are said to be in complementary distribution — can be viewed as different realizations of the same underlying phoneme. This analysis follows from the following facts: i the sounds in question are similar to one another, both being lateral consonants with the same primary place of articulation; ii they are in complementary distribution, clear l occurring word-initially e. And the same applies if you use a clear l before a consonant or at the end of a word. Indeed, some varieties of northern British English systematically employ dark l word-initially or before vowels and, conversely, speakers of varieties such as Welsh English or Caribbean English may produce clear l in final position or before a consonant.

Spanish language backgrounds

This work deals with the assimilation of vowel lengthening in EFL Spanish speakers at an advanced level, and tries to determine if the explicit teaching of phonetics contributes to the acquisition of this trait. Finally, it aims to analyze the students' own perception of their level of oral competence, and to observe if both realities correspond one each other. Behind the need to communicate, it is the need to share. Behind the need to share,. Leo Rosten This study deals with vowel length in English.

Minimal pair

In Part 1 I identified some of the historical, cultural and but mainly linguistic challenges encountered by Spanish trying to learn English, and focused on vowel sounds. Here, in part 2, I go on to examine difficulties with consonants, features of connected speech and word stress. As outlined in Part 1, English vowel set presents big challenges to Spanish learners but they also have problems with some consonants. This is often unuttered by English learners because it is silent in their own language. This is a sound which does not feature in the English phoneme set and if you do this you will definitely sound Spanish!

Improve your English pronunciation and speak like a native speaker

Abstract: This research was undertaken with the purpose of determining the degree of appropriateness with which junior students majoring in English as a second language at Veraguas University Branch pronounced some contrastive and non- contrastive segments and some phonological features of English that make up the backbone of the phonological system of this language. Therefore, taking into account the trendy movement of Education in Panama towards a more bilingual country, this paper aimed at analyzing first, the ocurrence of pronunciations of utterances and the assigning of non-contrastive features to the segments; second, determining the degree of first language interference or transfer; and finally, discussing the impact of proper instruction regarding the sound system of the English language. To conduct this research, a sample of 10 out of a population of 25 junior English students from the University of Panama, Veraguas Branch were randomly selected to participate in this study. The instrument used to collect information was a reading consisting of a seven-line poem which depicted a midwestern pronunciation from the United States. They were recorded using a video camera and tape recorder to determine the position of their articulators while they were reading. After the analysis of the reading, these students demonstated a very inaccurate production of some contrastive in vowels and non-contrastive English sounds and some phonological features of the language, and a heavy influence of their first language. This has serious implications for the teaching of the sound system of the English language in English schools, since communication, which is the orientation of most English programs in this country, may not be achieved if we continue neglecting the fundamentals of a right pronunciation of English in universities. Keywords: Segment, non-contrastive, features, interference, phonology.

Cross-modal priming differences between native and nonnative Spanish speakers

Both experiments were run on TP Software Rauber et al. The results show an interaction between the two cues, especially in the stimuli with no full voicing in the fricative. These findings provide additional evidence to the gradient status of speech in production and perceptual phenomena Albano ; Albano ; Perozzo , besides shedding light on the teaching of Brazilian Portuguese as an Additional Language. Laboratory Phonology, Brazilian Portuguese, speech perception, L2 speech intelligibility, acoustic-articulatory gestures.

This article is about the phonology and phonetics of the Spanish language. Unless otherwise noted, statements refer to Castilian Spanish , the standard dialect used in Spain on radio and television. For details of geographical variation see Spanish dialects and varieties. This "ceceo" is not entirely unknown in the Americas, especially in coastal Peru. Some of the phonemic contrasts between consonants in Spanish are lost in certain phonological environments, and especially in syllable-final position.

Ones in blue linked to graded lists of minimal pairs. Will add more as more lists go up. Article on pronunciation for Spanish speakers also now available here. Updated 19 July If you like this and want more, please support TEFLtastic. O and or boat and bought. However, I still pronounce cat and cut the same way.

This website uses cookies to give you the best possible experience. By continuing to use this site we'll assume that you are happy to receive all cookies as per our cookie policy. English pronunciation can be challenging for learners from all language backgrounds, but it is particularly difficult for Spanish speakers because of the lack of equivalency in their respective sound systems. The aim of this article is to help teachers working with Spanish learners better anticipate the common problems Spanish learners have with individual sounds, word stress and spelling pronunciation when learning to pronounce new vocabulary, as well as offering some ideas for practical classroom activities.