Common Pronunciation Mistakes among Spanish Speakers of English with the Focus on Vowels

This thesis is focused on vowels and describes them as to their articulatory, auditory, and acoustic properties. The following chapter presents a phonological description of two specific languages - English and Spanish. The aforementioned languages are then compared in their vocalic systems, phonotactical patterns and orthographical representation of vowels. Based on the knowledge gained from the comparison of English and Spanish, several hypotheses regarding Spanish pronunciation of English were formed. The validity of these hypotheses was investigated through the use of an experiment. 15 recording of native Spanish speakers reading an original English text are perceptually analysed in the empirical part. The aim is to prove that the wide variety of English vowels causes pronunciation difficulties to Spanish speakers, who are used to differentiating only 5 pure vowels. The socio-cultural background and the language competencies of the respondents are considered when interpreting the amassed data. The results of the experiment, which confirm the majority of the hypotheses, are presented in the final part of the thesis