Pride and prejudice? Judging non-native pronunciation of English

Abstract

Can non-native judges of language proficiency be trusted? To answer this question, we asked Dutch (N = 70) and English (N = 57) listeners to judge English speech produced by Dutch speakers, and we asked Dutch listeners to judge Dutch speech produced by these speakers. Results showed that the Dutch listeners to the English speech produced by the Dutch speakers are stricter about pronunciation than the English listeners; they also arrive at rankings that are different from the rankings arrived at by the English listeners. We have found that the Dutch listeners, when judging the aesthetic quality and intonation of Dutch speakers’ pronunciation of English, are influenced by aspects of the speakers’ native language which interfere with the target language. Their judgements of English pronunciation may therefore be affected by their impressions of the speakers’ Dutch.