English Native Speakers’ Pronunciation of Selected Polish Consonant Clusters
English Native Speakers’ Pronunciation of Selected Polish Consonant Clusters

Summary/Abstract: The present paper is concerned with articulation of selected Polish consonant clusters by native speakers of English and is situated within the scope of Polish phonetics. The analyses that became the basis of this paper were conducted for the purpose of the master’s thesis. They originated from the emerging need of researching the notions of phonetics in the context of teaching Polish as a foreign language. The aim of the study was to determine which consonant clusters present in the research material are pronounced inconsistently with the norm. Those investigations were accompanied with an attempt of detecting some typical phenomena appearing in English native speakers’ articulation of Polish consonant clusters and some causes of such realisations among the selected respondents. The mentioned claims were accomplished. In her investigations the author took into consideration also language biography (e.g. other languages spoken by the students), the ability to differentiate Polish sounds (individual and geminate sounds) and the notion of transfer (also phonetic interference) related to various differences between the composition of consonant clusters in Polish and English. The qualitative analysis was based mainly on the transcription of the recordings of the students’ performances (readings of the prepared text) and the author’s subjective auditory impressions. In order to examine sound perception, Kwiatkowska’s test (2015) was applied. Based on the analysis of the performances of five speakers the author determined which Polish consonants appeared as most difficult to differentiate and which clusters turned out to be the most problematic to pronounce. It was determined that incorrect articulation concerned both consonant clusters inside words (word-initial, word-medial, word-final) and across word boundaries, especially modifications of the place of articulation, mistakes in voicing and devoicing were noticed, also simplifications of clusters (vowel insertions or consonant deletions). Moreover, a number of mistakes concerned incorrect pronunciation of the sounds: [ʃ̺], [ʒ̺], [t̺͡ʃ̺], [d̺͡ʒ̺] and [ɕ], [ʑ], [t͡ɕ], [d͡ʑ]. The conclusions of the analyses may help in formulation of some adequate pronunciation exercises addressed to the native speakers of English studying Polish as a second language (some exemplary ones, not included in the present paper, were proposed by the author in her other publication, see Derych 2021).

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