Factors Affecting Accent of New and Similar Vowels in Hong Kong Cantonese Pronounced by Urdu Speakers from Secondary School

Factors Affecting Accent of New and Similar Vowels in Hong Kong Cantonese Pronounced by Urdu Speakers from Secondary School Yi Liu Jinghong Ning The Hong Kong Polytechnic University Department of Chinese and Bilingual Studies The Hong Kong Polytechnic University Department of Chinese and Bilingual Studies Hung Hom, Hong Kong yi.liu@polyu.edu.hk Hung Hom, Hong Kong Chion.ning@polyu.edu.hk Abstract “Two literacies and three languages” are used by Hong Kong people. In Hong Kong non- Chinese speaking students are trilingual speakers: they speak their mother language, English and Chinese (Cantonese or Putonghua). Since Urdu speakers make up a large portion of the population among non-Chinese speaking students, the study chose Pakistani students from a local secondary school as subjects and examined the perceived accent of new and similar vowels in Hong Kong Cantonese produced by non-native speakers and rated by native listeners. The results show that language learners got much more accent in producing the new vowels than the similar vowels. It also demonstrated that the use of Cantonese (L3) correlated closest to the accent scores, followed by Urdu (L1) use and age-related factors. 1 Introduction 1.1 Introduction Vowel distinction exists due to their being different vowel inventories and phonetic features across languages. There are new and similar vowels when comparing two vowel systems of languages. Similar vowels represent the vowels sharing certain phonetic features and phonology status within two vowel systems. While non-native speakers acquire similar vowels, they can get information from their mother tongue. New vowels refer to the ones that do not have counterparts in the mother vowel system, and language learners will develop a new category while perceiving the new vowels (Flege, 1987). In Speech Learning Model (SLM) Flege (1995) proposed that non- native speakers are likely to make equivalences between native (L1) and non-native (L2) systems. For instance, if the sounds in L2 have similar counterparts in learners’ phonological system, the non-native sounds will be merged to the L1 category. Due to the impact of native pronunciation, language learners may produce L2 sounds with a strong foreign accent. If the L2 sound is totally new to learners, it is predicted to be easily acquired. However, there is no agreement on whether the similarity between language systems can prevent or assist the acquisition of L2 phones. Bohn and Flege (1992) explored the influence of L1 experience upon the production of new and similar English vowels by German speakers. They reported that the similar English vowels produced by the experienced L2 speakers did not have stronger accent than the ones by inexperienced L2 speakers. This observation was in line with the hypothesis of SLM. However, the accent rating result for the new vowel /æ/ did not clearly support the model, and the acoustic results for new vowel demonstrated that the experienced learners could articulate /æ/ in the same way as English natives did, unlike the inexperienced learners. With regard to the non-native sound acquisition, various factors influence the accent degree in the production of non-native speakers. For instance, it has been …

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