Analysis of the features of Turkish-accented English and its comprehensibility

While contributing to diversity in language, accents make comprehension harder for L1 and L2 speakers. This is caused by non-native speakers pronouncing said language’s phonemes different in a way that’s rooted in the non-native speaker’ languages’ cross-language phonetic differences. This study aim...

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Bibliographic Details
Author: Türeli, Vefa
Format: article
Publication Date:2025
Country:España
Institution:Universidad de Alcalá (UAH)
Repository:e_Buah Biblioteca Digital Universidad de Alcalá
Language:English
OAI Identifier:oai:ebuah.uah.es:10017/65175
Online Access:http://hdl.handle.net/10017/65175
Access Level:Open access
Keyword:General American English
Istanbul Turkish
Phonology
Levenshtein algorithm
Inglés general americano
Turco de Estambul
Fonología
Algoritmo de Levenshtein
Description
Summary:While contributing to diversity in language, accents make comprehension harder for L1 and L2 speakers. This is caused by non-native speakers pronouncing said language’s phonemes different in a way that’s rooted in the non-native speaker’ languages’ cross-language phonetic differences. This study aims to describe phenomena like these that occur with native Turkish speakers’ pronunciation of English.The study was conducted with Turkish high-schoolers who had completed a preparatory year in English. They were asked to read 2 texts and a list of words while being recorded, these recordings were transcribed using the IPA and compared with the General American accented counterparts using the Levenshtein algorithm. Volunteer American high-schoolers in southern United States listened to and were surveyed about the recordings.The comprehension survey yielded results agreeing with the previous claims on the accent’s properties. As for the comprehensibility of Turkish-accented English, the answers claimed the accent to be mainly comprehensible.