Abstract
English words and proper names are omnipresent in the German language (e.g. Servicepoint, Shareholder, Hardware, cool, Tony Blair). But how are these words pronounced by German speakers? On the one hand, it seems to be very unlikely that they will be completely nativised (fully integrated into German). On the other hand, a “correct” English pronunciation is not to be expected as well. If the pronunciation of Anglicisms and English proper names is about half-way in between those extremes, does that mean, that some English sounds are always nativised to German and others are pronounced true to original? And, if that is the case, which sound belongs to which group?
The pronunciation of English sounds in German sentence contexts was examined in a production study with 40 subjects. It was shown that some sounds are already quite common in German and that they are articulated even by subjects with a poor knowledge of English. Other sounds however, usually vowels, are systematically replaced by specific German sounds.
A subject’s own pronunciation of a word or sound and his preferred pronunciation by another speaker do not necessarily correspond with each other. It is likely, that the expectations towards the pronunciation of a professional speaker or the output of a speech synthesis system are higher than that towards one’s one usage of English sounds in everyday German conversation. In turn, a pronunciation that is too close to the English original could lead to unintelligibility and hence to a rejection by the listener.
For speech synthesis it is essential to decide on exactly one pronunciation for a word. Therefore a preference test with 50 subjects was conducted to find out how different possible pronunciation variants are assessed. Again, it appeared that the preferences for English sounds differ systematically. Some sounds, usually those which were pronounced frequently in the production experiment, are preferred in the original English pronunciation. Others, again mainly vowels, are rejected by the listeners and preferred as a germanised variant.
By combining the results of the two studies, we do not only get a picture of the current usage and assessment of English sounds in German, but are also in the position to give a suggestion for a selective extension of a German sound inventory for speech synthesis. In addition, the empirical findings provide reliable references for adequate nativisations of certain English sounds.
Complete version (2,7 MB)