Comparing native and non-native speakers of the Spanish language: analysis of two speech samples (2013)

Undergraduates: Nicolas Merritt, Carmen Calhoun

Faculty Advisor: Patricia Amaral
Department: Exercise & Sport Science

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The analysis provided is part of my research project for the course Spanish Phonetics and Phonology (SPAN 376). A United States born non-native speaker of Spanish and a Colombian-born native speaker of Spanish have been recorded pronouncing two individual words of the Spanish language. Praat, an open-source computer software, is used to view the acoustic properties of the words. The sounds of the words can then be studied to compare both native and non-native pronunciations. The word ¿capacidad¿ was chosen to determine if there is a difference in the pronunciations of the fricative [s] and the dental approximant. The word ¿conspiraci¿n¿ was chosen to determine if there is a difference in the pronunciations of the nasal consonant [n] and the voiced alveolar flap [ɾ] between the two speakers. As a possible follow-up to this project, I would be interested to continue studying fricatives of non-native speakers, in particular how non-native speakers acquire the interdental fricative or the apical fricative from northern Spain.