Abstract
One hundred and fifty-one Mandarin and Cantonese learners of English participated in an accent perception task and a language attitude rating task on Mandarin-, Cantonese- and native-accented English speech excerpts of various accent strengths. The accent perception results show that the native English excerpts received better ratings over both Mandarin- and Cantonese-accented ones. Both Cantonese and Mandarin speakers tended to rate Cantonese-accented excerpts as more accented than Mandarin-accented ones, despite good intelligibility. Language attitude results show that native English speech received the highest ratings on superiority and dynamism whereas Cantonese scored the lowest on both aspects. Mandarin-accented English received the highest score on attractiveness. The findings reveal native-speakerism among English learners in China and the necessity of preserving Cantonese in the Greater Bay Area. Copyright © 2023 IEEE.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Title of host publication | Proceedings of 2023 26th Conference of the Oriental COCOSDA International Committee for the Co-Ordination and Standardization of Speech Databases and Assessment Techniques, O-COCOSDA 2023 |
| Place of Publication | USA |
| Publisher | IEEE |
| ISBN (Electronic) | 9798350344028 |
| DOIs | |
| Publication status | Published - 2023 |
Citation
Lan, Y., Xie, T., Sun, J., Zhu, Y., & Lee, A. (2023). Second language accent perception and language attitude by Mandarin and Cantonese speakers in Mainland China. In Proceedings of 2023 26th Conference of the Oriental COCOSDA International Committee for the Co-Ordination and Standardization of Speech Databases and Assessment Techniques, O-COCOSDA 2023. IEEE. https://doi.org/10.1109/O-COCOSDA60357.2023.10482962Keywords
- Accent
- Intelligibility
- Language attitude
- Superiority
- Attractiveness
- Dynamism