The Non-Target Pronunciation of the Consonants /θ/ and /ð/ by Brazilian Speakers of Portuguese: A Source of Incomprehensibility?
Thaís Suzana Schadech | 2010
When learning English, Brazilian learners tend to replace the consonant sound /θ/ with /s/, /t/, or /f/, and replace /ð/ with /z/, /d/, or /v/ (Reis, 2006). Taking this into consideration, the objective of this study is to analyze if the non-target pronunciations of these consonant sounds by Brazilians hinder English native speakers‟ comprehension, which can be defined as “the ease or difficulty with which a listener understands L2 accented speech”, according to Derwing, Munro and Thomson (2007, p. 360). Therefore, in this study, ten samples of speech containing the pronunciation of the sounds /θ/ and /ð/ by Brazilians were collected from The Speech Accent Archive site and presented to a group of eleven native English speakers who were familiar with the way Brazilians pronounce English words. Then, after answering a questionnaire eliciting personal information, these listeners were asked to tell how difficult it was for them to understand the words that contained those consonant sounds. Being the main research question: Does the non-target pronunciation of /θ/ and /ð/ by Brazilian speakers of Portuguese hinder English native speakers’ comprehension?, it was possible to conclude that the non-standard pronunciation of the interdental fricative sounds by Brazilians does hinder English native speakers‟ comprehensibility, even when they are already familiar with the accent. Therefore, teaching and practicing these sounds are important in order for ESL speakers not to have communication problems.