The Intelligibility of the Vietnamese Accented English

Abstract

This study was purposely conducted to determine what linguistic features affect the intelligibility of the Vietnamese speakers. To do this, speech samples of exemplars of Vietnamese English were audio-taped and then listened to by representatives of the Kachruvian circles, who wrote down what they heard. The findings show that Vietnamese speakers have some difficulties producing English words properly, especially with final sounds, word-final consonant clusters, and words that have more than three syllables. The exemplars also find it difficult to deal with the stress time rhythm of English words with more than two syllables. The findings also imply that intelligibility is not much of a problem for Vietnamese exemplars, results of intelligibility scores of American and Filipino listeners show that less exposure of other speakers to another language does not follow that the latter would be completely unintelligible to the former. In addition, similarity in the general features of language between speakers of different nationalities does not guarantee mutual intelligibility between these people. From the findings, the paper discusses their implications for English language teaching in Vietnam.