An analysis of the pronunciation of english consonantal sounds in proper names and other capitalized items by chilean advanced learners of english

Abstract

The purpose of the present study was to analyze the pronunciation of English consonantal sounds in proper names and other capitalized items by a group of 12 advanced Chilean Spanish learners of English with the aim of studying the deviances produced. These learners were undergraduate students of the English Linguistics and Literature academic programme, Universidad de Chile. The data of the study consisted of the subjects' recordings of a selection of news headlines taken from the BBC World News. The data processing involved the identification of deviant forms, their classification on the basis of a taxonomy of the difficulties caused by English consonant sounds to Chilean Spanish speakers proposed by Professor C. Vivanco (1991), the corresponding explanation of such deviances, and the quantification of the different types of difficulties.