The potential segmental influence of Taishanese on English speech intelligibility

This study examined the potential influence of segmental language differences (vowels and consonants) on the English speech intelligibility. The questions raised were: 1) Is there a significant reduction in English speech intelligibility of adult Late Bilingual Taishanese speakers?, and if so, 2) To what extent do the segmental language differences in Taishanese affect their intelligibility? For perceptual measures, speech intelligibility and mean number of real words (NRW) per utterance were provided by fifteen listening judges. For acoustic measures, vowel, consonant, and controlled spontaneous speech samples were collected from three Speaker Types: Late Bilingual speakers (4), Sequential Bilingual speakers (2), and Monolingual English speakers (2). Findings showed that Late Bilingual speakers have significantly reduced English speech intelligibility. Furthermore, this reduced intelligibility can be, in part, attributed to the segmental vowel and consonantal differences between the Taishanese and English languages.