Study Abroad in Central Spain: The Development of Regional Phonological Features

This study investigated the development of two regional pronunciation features by 25 Spanish major or minors from a variety of universities in the United States who studied abroad for one semester in central Spain. Data were collected at the beginning, middle, and end of the semester using three tasks that ranged from reading a formal passage aloud to informal spontaneous speech. All tasks elicited the interdental and the uvular fricative, both salient phonological features of Castilian Spanish. Several linguistic and extralinguistic factors may account for the increase in use of the features throughout the semester by a small percentage of students