Between-speaker variation in English Learners' Realisation of Dental Fricatives

Abstract

Anecdotally, it has been observed that Swiss Germans speaking English use a plethora of sounds for the dental fricatives /θ/ and /ð/. It is unsurprising that L2 speakers tend to substitute a sound not present in their native phoneme inventory with a sound that is present; however, there is wide intra- and inter-speaker variation in the sounds chosen to replace the dental fricatives. The present study is an initial examination of how speakers of Swiss German differ in their choice of sound substitution when speaking English. We recorded read speech from 45 high school students. Data was coded auditorily and acoustically. Findings confirm substantial variation between the learners, with the most common replacement being [d] for the voiced dental fricative and [f] for the unvoiced counterpart. We discuss potential reasons for the reported between-speaker variation.