The Acquisition of English lateral allophones by Khowar Adult speakers

Abstract

Khowar is Indo-Aryan language spoken in the northern part of Pakistan which carries unique sounds relatively to the major languages of Pakistan. It has lateral phoneme in contrast to English, which possess two allophonic variant such as clear /l/ and dark /ɫ/. Looking into nature of existing literature it is deciphered that English dark /ɫ/ is not understood in Pakistan therefore, this paper presents the production of English lateral allophones with two groups of Khowar L1 adult speakers and each group is comprised of 15 participants which are making 30 total participants. One group of participants is selected from Pakistan and second group is taken from UK to be able to see whether Khowar L1 speakers can realize the difference of English clear /l/ and dark ɫ/. Lexical items carries target sounds are ‘oil’ and ‘later’ with other distracting items recorded from the both group. Acoustical study is carried out through measurement of F1, F2 and F3 frequencies of English lateral allophones. And the study found that both group remained poor and non significant in acquisition of English dark /ɫ/ and it is related with clear /l/ of L1 which is assumed in the Speech Learning Model by Flege (2020).Foreign group despite native intake could not perform well. However, it is recommended from this study that traditional way of teaching does not help to acquire native-like accuracy; therefore, English teachers need to be trained about phonetic realization of English consonants which can be further helpful for the learners of second language.