The present article reports on the findings of a cross-sectional acoustic study of the production of the Spanish /e/-/ei/ contrast, as in "pena-peina" and "reno-reino," by native-English intermediate and advanced learners of Spanish. The acoustic parameter that distinguishes Spanish /e/ from /ei/ is formant change--/e/ is a…

This article offers a fine-grained investigation of how first-language (L1) phonetics involving English rhotics affect Spanish rhotic production by second-language (L2) learners. Specifically, this study investigates how different L1 English rhotic articulatory routines (retroflex-like and bunched-like) and the phonetic context that produces…

Although it is broadly accepted that adult second-language (L2) learners focus attention only on those aspects of sounds needed for phonemic contrast, the role that allophony plays in the process of L2 speech learning is less well understood. It is widely assumed that speakers do not have conscious awareness of and access to first-language (L1)…

Describes a phonetics experiment at Ball State University, Muncie, Indiana, to test and improve pronunciation in Spanish with the use of an audio device known as Tok-Bak. (DS)

Discussed the pronunciation of the phoneme /s/ in Spanish and all the linguistic variations of it, especially in the dialects that have the sibilant articulation. (NCR)