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New FST study shows the distinctiveness of Jamaican English

Dr. Andre Coy

A new ground breaking FST led study recently published in the Journal of Speech, Language and Hearing Research shows scientifically what many of us intuitively assumed - that despite the proximity to British English, Jamaican speech is clearly a distinct variety of English. 

Led by Dr. Andre Coy and graduate student Stefan Watson, the study entitled  Acoustic Similarity of Inner and Outer Circle Varieties of Child-produced English Vowelssought to determine the relationship between the three varieties of English spoken by children from specific regions of America, Britain and Jamaica. The authors undertook detailed scientific analysis of the acoustics of vowels produced by children speaking Jamaican English (JE) (representing a non-dominant variety of English), comparing it to children speaking British English (BE) and American English (AE) representing the dominant varieties that influence its development. The study shows that whereas there is some similarity between the three dialects and even though JE is acoustically more related to BE than AE, JE is acoustically distinct. The authors note that while these conclusions are intuitively understood, the research has determined exactly how the vowels differ across the varieties and the mechanisms by which these differences occur.

Importantly, there are practical applications of the work. Many ongoing projects globally (including those being undertaken by the Signal Processing, Electronics and Communication Systems Research Group, in the Department of Physics at The UWI) are exploring the use of automatic speech recognition (ASR) technology for assistive and educational applications. The detailed acoustic analysis performed in the study provides foundational data for the development of novel ASR algorithms for Jamaican English to be used in these applications.

 

To check out the study: https://pubs.asha.org/doi/10.1044/2019_JSLHR-19-00179

 

Mr. Stefan Watson

Article Posted: May 18, 2020

Published on 18 May, 2020

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