Keynote 2: Perceptual and structural analysis of pronunciation diversity of World Englishes

摘要

English is the only language available for global communication but its form is altered easily and variously depending on the mother tongue of speakers and their environment of learning English. It is true that internationalization of things always alters them due to local cultures. English pronunciation is not exceptional and, if we take two users of English, their pronunciation will show different characteristics, called accents. Today, we often hear the term of World Englishes (WE), where it is claimed that there is no standard English and that American English (AE) and British English (BE) are just two major examples of accented English. While everybody agrees that English is a very useful tool, he/she will also agree that, in international contexts, accents can often cause miscommunications. In this talk, the presenter will show the results obtained in two on-going projects related to the diversity of pronunciation of WE.