McCarthy, K; Evans, B; (2019) The perception of familiar and unfamiliar accents by bilingual and monolingual children. In: Proceedings of the 19th International Congress of Phonetic Sciences. (pp. pp. 2203-2207). International Phonetic Association

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Abstract

In large urban cities, children typically grow-up in a diverse multicultural environment. Depending on their local language environment, children are often exposed to regional as well as foreign-accents. This study investigated whether children’s accent processing is affected by the variability in their ambient language environment. English monolingual and Sylheti-English bilingual children were assessed on their ability to identify sentences in three accent conditions: London-English (familiar to all), Sylheti-accented English (only familiar to the bilinguals), Spanishaccented English (unfamiliar to all). All children were most accurate in the London-English accent condition, however the groups differed with their dominant familiar accent: the monolinguals were more accurate at recalling the London-English sentences than the bilinguals, and the bilinguals were more accurate in the Sylheti-accented condition than the monolinguals. The results suggest that variation in linguistic experience in early life, give rise to differences in the processing of familiar and unfamiliar accented speech.

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