A DESCRIPTIVE ANALYSIS OF ENGLISH VOWEL SOUNDS BY L1 PAHARI LEARNERS

Abstract

This study aimed to analyze the acoustic characteristics of English vowels produced by Pahari L1 learners of Pakistani English (PakE) from Murree and Islamabad. The researchers used PRAAT version 6.1.04 to measure the F1 and F2 formants and duration of ten monosyllabic words with the CVC structure in the ‘hVd’ context. They compared the results with those of native British English speakers and analyzed the data using t-tests in SPSS and R software for graphical representation. The findings revealed significant differences between PakE and British English recordings, confirming that PakE is a distinct and rule-governed variety of English with its own phonology. The results have practical implications for PakE language teachers to improve their students' pronunciation skills and for designing speech technologies that aim to improve the accuracy of PakE pronunciation. The study contributes to the phonological system of PakE and can be helpful for future research in the field of phonetics and speech technologies, particularly for Asian English varieties.