Where do accents come from?

Factors affecting the degree of foreign-accented Italian

Abstract

Following similar research on non-native speech, in this paper we assessed the degree of perceived foreign-accented Italian. This is an extensive study on 6 accents (i.e. English, German, French, Romanian, Spanish, and Russian, in comparison to L1 Italian), supported by a database of 42 speakers whose performance was evaluated by 288 Italian listeners, using a six-points scale. Such an approach allowed us to perform comprehensive descriptive and inferential analyses, the outcomes of which suggested that while having comparable levels for all variables, some accents (i.e. German and Spanish) are perceived as being stronger than others. Additionally, it seems that the degree of perceived foreign accent may be predicted by speaker-dependent variables generally ascribable to the quality and quantity of input received (i.e. presence/absence of pronunciation training) and proficiency. Finally, the samples of read speech were perceived as more accented than those of spontaneous speech, presumably as a result of the fact that speakers might not be fully familiar with written Italian.