The pronunciation of English by speakers from China

This chapter reviews the existing empirical research on the structural features of Hong Kong English (HKE). Among postcolonial varieties of English, HKE is an unusual case in that the territory's emancipation from the colonial power was not accompanied by self-rule, but by what is locally called the "handover" of Hong Kong to mainland China. Thus, a relative lack in institutional entrenchment as well as a continuing turnover in population raises questions as to whether HKE is a "real/"focussed" variety. In addition to influence on HKE from Cantonese, the chapter addresses the sociolinguistics of Hong Kong as a globalised city by discussing the influence of local varieties of English used by speakers of Mandarin Chinese, by the South Asian and SouthEast Asian communities and speakers of English as a Native Language from so-called Inner Circle countries such as the United States. Finally, the chapter considers possible scenarios for the linguistic future of Hong Kong, involving Cantonese, Mandarin, and English, as well as for the future of HKE: On the one hand, an exonormative development with increasing Americanisation, and, on the other hand, an endonormative development with increasing reliance on a local identity and local norms.

2007

World Englishes, 2010

Research from populations around the world on attitudes to varieties of English is essential in order to have a better understanding of how the complexities of globalization play a role in the form of English as a world language. To that end, university students in China were asked to name countries around the world where they believe English is spoken and indicate what kind of impression they have of those varieties without the presentation of voice stimuli. This type of data elicitation enables the participants themselves to provide the researcher with evaluative categories and avoids problems associated with using voice stimuli. The results indicate that the effect of the cultural hegemony of US English as a variety is complex, and that, contrary to assumptions, US English is unlikely to be a model for a 'standard' variety of world English in the traditional sense.

Sino-Platonic Papers, 2016

There has been immense pushback to the acceptance of China English (CE) as a variety of World English (WE) on several fronts, but the scholarship to date overwhelmingly agrees that CE is a "developing" but valid native variety of English. In light of all this, why has there been so much resistance to recognizing CE and encouraging its use? The opposition stems from the lack of general understanding of how CE has developed, what it is and is not, and why its acceptance and adoption is beneficial--if not necessary--for the growing Chinese English-speaking population. The goal of this paper is to increase awareness of CE and argue for its ongoing study, legitimacy, and implementation. I will first provide background on the development of WEs in general and CE in particular, then distinguish CE from other obfuscatory English "varieties" in China. I synthesize scholarship examining CE's distinct linguistic features, and finally consider commentary both advocating and discouraging the validation and adoption of CE as China's own standard English variety. Although it is not yet fully mature, the consensus of decades of research promotes China English as a legitimate and functional WE variety that has the potential to improve communications with and within China.

This issue of Asiatic has a thematic focus: Asian Englishes. English has penetrated Asian societies deeply since colonial times and especially in the postcolonial period, during which English has evolved from a colonial language to a global language. Even as early as 1982, J.R. Rickford had the following to say about the phenomenal growth of English language worldwide:

2014

A recurrent debate invoked with the precipitate growth of English as an International Language (EIL), is seldom separable from the issue of intelligibility particularly on the subject of how readily intelligible are non-native English varieties in an international context. With more and more learners of English studying in Outer Circle and Expanding Circle countries, it is necessary to find out if there are any intelligibility problems that these non-native speakers of English could have faced while residing in the aforementioned countries such as in Malaysia and Singapore. This is also the case for students from China who are studying in Malaysia, a multiracial country where the English spoken is nativised by the diverse local languages. Hence, this research aims to investigate to what extent Malaysian English is intelligible to international students with considerations on the English spoken by the different ethnic groups in Malaysia. Using Jenkins’ LFC (1998, 2000, 2002) and Seid...

Journal of the International Phonetic Association, 2010

Singapore English, by David Deterding, does not fail to deliver in the author's usual manner: the strengths for which he is well known are ever present in this slim volume. His treatment of Singapore English (SgE) is systematic, and written in a clear and succinct style. The volume starts with a concise introduction to the history and sociolinguistics of Singapore and the methodological concerns of the study, followed by chapters on phonetics and phonology, morphology and syntax, discourse and lexis. It closes with an account of recent history and current changes, involving in particular language and educational policies which have a bearing on the development of SgE compared to other New Englishes in Asia. As with many of the author's collections, there is also a useful annotated bibliography; and finally, a full transcript of the data is also appended. This review will primarily concern itself with the phonetics and phonology aspects of the volume. The phonetics and phonology chapter includes brief descriptions of some of the more characteristic features of SgE segmentals-e.g. the use of alveolar stops or labiodental fricatives for dental fricatives, final consonant cluster simplification, final glottal stop, aspiration, vocalised [l], non-prevocalic [r], labiodental [r], the absence of length distinction in vowel pairs, the merger of vowel contrasts, the monophthongisation of FACE and GOAT vowels, the realisation of POOR and CURE vowels, and of triphthongs, and the occurrence of reduced vowels. Suprasegmentals, including rhythm, stress and intonation are also covered. These are generously illustrated with examples from the Lim Siew Hwee Corpus of Informal Singapore Speech (Deterding & Lim 2005). Altogether the account does a very good job of capturing the essence of the sound system of SgE. In the representation of the monophthongs though, it would perhaps have been more appropriate to use [a] rather than [Ø] for the symbol for the START/ PALM/ BATH/ STRUT vowel (pp. 13, 26), to better represent a low and central vowel, lower in quality that the British English (BrE) STRUT vowel, as used in Lim (2004a) and adopted by Gupta (2005). The description is in some sections supported by quantitative measures, such as frequency counts (e.g. the various pronunciations of [T] in different positions or for various words, pp. 15-16; the incidence of reduced vowels in function words, p. 30), as well as acoustic analyses conducted on the data (e.g. a plot of formant 1 and 2 for monophthongs, p. 24; measurements of fundamental frequencies from pitch tracks to support the description of intonation contours of discourse particles, pp. 67-70). Such quantitative data comprise a most laudable inclusion, as these provide readers with a clearer awareness of which variant(s) are more commonly occurring in SgE, and a more objective, quantitative measure of a qualitative description, and it would have been even better if this was more widely included, in addition to the instances mentioned above. Also accompanying the descriptions at times are suggestions for reasons for the pattern observed (e.g. the more common a word, the greater tendency for a dental fricative to be used rather than alveolar stops, pp. 15-16). A methodological limitation of the account in the volume is the fact that its primary source of data is a corpus comprising one hour's worth of speech of one ethnically Chinese young female on a single occasion. The author suggests at the outset that this helps solve 'the problems of variation' (p. 6), and allows him to 'describe a coherent variety of the language in some detail' (p. 6). While it is indeed the case that many descriptions of the sound systems

University of Edinburgh, 2006

This dissertation argues, according to the theory of interference and first language transfer, that one’s first language will affect the acquisition of any other languages thereafter. The case study of first language Cantonese speakers in Hong Kong acquiring English as a second language, focusing on speech production, has been used to illustrate this argument. The previous literature suggested that sociolinguistic and political factors contributed to the shaping of Hong Kong English. Previous researches focused mainly on tonal and stress placement, a factor unique to Chinese acquiring English. Data collection for this dissertation includes recording informants of various linguistic backgrounds reading out a Chinese and an English word list, and collecting relevant personal information with regards to the study. Through analyzing the English minimal pairs of <knee> - <need> and <moo> - <mood>, this dissertation assesses the second language acquisition theories – Contrastive Analysis Hypothesis (Lado) and Speech Learning Model (Flege). This dissertation focuses on voiced dental fricative occurring word-finally in English words, a factor that is absent in Cantonese. Interviews ESL informants, bilingual Cantonese-English informants, and monolingual English informants are analyzed through spectrogram analysis. This dissertation compares words with word-final voiced dental fricative (CVC) and ones with the absence of such (CV). Through thorough analysis of the research material and the acoustic data, this dissertation found that the speakers of Hong Kong English replace the word-final voiced dental fricative with a glottal stop. However, they have difficulties in determining which position requires a word-final stop, thus hypercorrecting and produce word-final glottal stops both in CV and CVC situations. Based on the findings of this case study, it can be concluded that the first language Cantonese speakers speaks an inter-language with varying degrees of competency, with few reaching the target language. Second language speakers, however competent and well exposed to the language, still have a few oddities in their pronunciation. It can be observed that all languages a speaker has learnt will affect one another, be it native or acquired. Through this study, the ESL teachers in Hong Kong can take note of the oddities that HKE speakers produce, in order to raise the success rate of their production. In future study, one can research on the possibility of devoicing and aspiration in stops.

2014

For many years, there has been plenty of interest in charting the development of the variety of English found in Hong Kong, and the fact that it is now often called “Hong Kong English ” (Schneider 2007: 50) reflects its emergent status as an established variety of English, indicating a shift from the early eighties when Luke and Richards

Changing English, 2006