PERCEPTION OF ENGLISH LISTENERS ON VIETNAMESE VOWELS CONTRASTING IN ROUNDING

Abstract

This study investigated into how English listeners from Midland U.S. perceived Vietnamese back vowels contrasting in rounding. The words were produced by Northern and Central Vietnamese speakers. The results showed that Vietnamese vowels [o] and [u] was assimilated to English [oʊ] (77%) and [u] (69%) respectively. [ɤ] and [ɯ] were not assimilated to any English vowels. This suggested that Midwest U.S. speakers tended to use vowel height to map between native vs. non-native vowels while Southern U.S. speakers in the only previous study (Shport, 2019) tended to use vowel rounding. Dialect effects were found for Northern Vietnamese [ɯ] was assimilated to [u] (61%) while Central Vietnamese [ɯ] was perceived the most as [ʊ] (39%). Thus, the perception of non-native sounds can be affected by the dialects of both speakers and listeners. The study suggests that English teachers should be aware of this issue to accommodate appropriate teaching strategies in classroom.