The Most Common Pronunciation Mistakes in Georgian-Accented Speech and the Issue of Intelligibility

Abstract Kachru (1985) described three groups of English speaking world - inner, outer and extending, out of which the last circle includes those speakers who use English for international purposes. As he claimed, for native speakers’ standard norm is acceptable, however, for the rest of the circles, local variations are more logical. Georgia is part of the third, extending circle, and thus, the question which deviances from norm are acceptable and which are not is the question to ask. The presented study of Georgian-accented English is the first research in the Georgian-English accent studies that is oriented to find out the three groups of pronunciation mistakes: unintelligible, disturbing and ugly. This was possible by creating three groups of listeners, native English speaking, Georgian and Dutch English speaking judges who assessed the Georgian-English speech and singled out the problematic features. The results of the study has shown some serious mistakes that hinder the...Show moreAbstract Kachru (1985) described three groups of English speaking world - inner, outer and extending, out of which the last circle includes those speakers who use English for international purposes. As he claimed, for native speakers’ standard norm is acceptable, however, for the rest of the circles, local variations are more logical. Georgia is part of the third, extending circle, and thus, the question which deviances from norm are acceptable and which are not is the question to ask. The presented study of Georgian-accented English is the first research in the Georgian-English accent studies that is oriented to find out the three groups of pronunciation mistakes: unintelligible, disturbing and ugly. This was possible by creating three groups of listeners, native English speaking, Georgian and Dutch English speaking judges who assessed the Georgian-English speech and singled out the problematic features. The results of the study has shown some serious mistakes that hinder the intelligibility and are disturbing. However, those features that were assessed as ugly were not considered to be very important and were advised to improve only on the higher level of English teaching.Show less

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The Most Common Pronunciation Mistakes in Georgian-Accented Speech and the Issue of Intelligibility