This paper first briefly reviews the concept of intelligibility as it has been employed in both English as a Lingua Franca (ELF) and world Englishes (WE) research. It then examines the findings of the Lingua Franca Core (LFC), a list of phonological features that empirical research has shown to be important for safeguarding mutual intelligibility…

This paper investigates whether the rhythmic properties of varieties of English found in each of the concentric circles of Kachru's model can, in any way, be elucidated by the "Three Circles" model. A measurement and comparison of the rhythm of three varieties of English: British English (from the Inner Circle), Singapore English (from…

In this paper we shall first try to define the term "China English" (with our own definition of this term deliberated in the "Discussion" section) as a performance variety in the larger conceptualization of World Englishes. Following that, we will adduce some linguistic features of "China English" from the relevant…

Investigated African American Vernacular English dialect features in the midwestern community of Davenport, Iowa, and compared them to those reported by Pollock and Berni (1997) for Memphis, Tennessee--specifically productions of vocalic and postvocalic /r/ across African-American speakers from Davenport and Memphis. (Author/VWL)

Describes the phonological and phonetic features of English as spoken in Pakistan and shows such distinctive patterns as anglicized, acrolectal, mesolectal, and basilectal varieties of Pakistani English. (45 references) (CB)

Discusses West Africanisms in Limonese Creole (LC), an English based creole language spoken in Costa Rica that shows substrate influence from the Kwa languages of West Africa, in particular from Akan (spoken in Ghana). Substrate influence is demonstrated through a comparison of LC and Akan morphophonology, morphosyntax, and lexicon. (Author/VWL)

Analysis of the phonological influence of English on Yoruba found such influences as violation of phonotactic constraints, assimilation of English sounds with those of Yoruba sounds, irregular phoneme correspondences, and resistance to new syllable types. (19 references) (Author/CB)

Discusses findings in the first part of a research project on Hong Kong English (HKE) phonology, including the underlying phonemic system of HKE speakers. Subjects were 15 undergraduates at Hong Kong Baptist University. Using spectrographic analysis, it was found that the typical HKE speaker operates with a considerably smaller set of vowel and…

Examines the use and function of Chinese discourse particles in informal speech in Singaporean English, comparing the intonation and pitch movement of native varieties of English to Singaporean English. (Author/OD)

Examines the constraints on the realization of "/t/" in New Zealander English. On the basis of an examination of the speech of two similar speakers from that country, a series of allophonic rules is provided. The article shows that the distribution of allophones for these speakers is not the same as for other speakers who have been…

English as spoken as a second language in India has developed distinct sound patterns in terms of both segmental and prosodic characteristics. We investigate the differences between two groups varying in native language (Gujarati, Tamil) to evaluate to what extent Indian English (IE) accents are based on a single target phonological-phonetic…