Error analysis of the pronunciation of English consonants by Faroese-speaking learners 1

We provide here a brief summary of the most significant errors of Faroese speakers in the production of English consonants, and advice on how these can be remedied. The analysis is based on audio recordings of six informants from Eysturoy in the north of the Faroes. Altogether, a total of 3,547 occurrences of sounds were analysed. Results show that Faroese speakers have problems with certain phonemic contrasts which are very similar to those facing many other non-native speakers of English. However, they also exhibit errors which are less usual worldwide (e.g. pre-aspiration of fortis stops). There are at the moment no textbooks for Faroese learners of English, nor any descriptions of their pronunciation difficulties; this paper is a first attempt at filling that gap.


Introduction
This paper provides a brief summary of the most significant errors of Faroese speakers in the production of British English consonants and gives some advice on how these can be remedied.The guidelines below are based on an error analysis of recordings of six informants (Hjøllum, 2011).For English we have chosen the standard variety Received Pronunciation (RP), also termed Southern Standard British English (SSBE) or non-regional pronunciation (NRP).There are numerous descriptions of this accent, amongst others Collins and Mees (2008), Cruttenden (2008), Roach (2004Roach ( , 2009)), Wells (1982).Faroese has no standard variety (see below for more detail on the emergence of Faroese).Descriptions of Faroese can be found in Thráinsson et al. (2004), Lockwood (1951Lockwood ( , 1952Lockwood ( , 1977)).The speakers (one male and five females, age range 25 to 39) all came from the area in which one of the authors (EH) grew up, namely the southern part of Eysturoy in the north of the Faroes (see below).All spoke the dialect of this area, which is locally generally referred to as Eysturoyarmál.
were made using the computer recording application Audacity,2 together with a Plantronics Audio 50 headset-microphone.Six informants were asked to read aloud a text (modified from Roald Dahl's Charlie and the Chocolate Factory), providing us with a corpus containing all the sounds to be investigated.In order to discover whether there were any discrepancies in the pronunciation employed when reading as compared to that of spontaneous speech, Informant 1 (the key informant) was also asked to engage in a free speech recording.Results showed that there were very few differences between the two modalities.
Altogether a total of 3547 occurrences of sounds were analysed, which as a whole has given us a reliable impression of some of the characteristics of Faroese-accented English.The procedure was as follows: for Informant 1's reading passage either all (if there were fewer than 100 tokens) or a maximum of 100 occurrences of each sound were analysed; all or 20 occurrences of each sound were taken from the reading passage of each of the five remaining informants; in addition, all or a maximum of 20 occurrences were selected from the key informant's free speech recording.Thus the maximum number of occurrences analysed for any one sound was 220, i.e. 20 (free speech of Informant 1) + 100 (reading passage of Informant 1) + 100 (20 instances from the reading passages of each of the five remaining informants).In some cases there were insufficient occurrences of the sounds to reach the target; nevertheless, the findings are never based on fewer than 23 tokens. 3All occurrences were assigned to one of a number of different categories.For each sound, there was a correct or native-like category; remaining categories were allocated differently for different consonant phonemes both as regards number and type.The errors identified for each consonant are summarised below.For more detail, see Hjøllum (2011).

General observations on the phonemic system of Faroese
The phonemic inventory of Faroese is similar to the other Scandinavian languages in that it lacks voiced sibilants (Thráinsson et al., 2004: 45).In terms of realisation, it is different from, for instance, Danish in having retroflex consonants, often occurring as allophones in the context of /r/.In addition, a palatal nasal and lateral is to be found when these are followed by palato-alveolars.Without question the most notable feature is pre-aspiration, which may be defined as "a period of voicelessness at the end of the vowel, nasal, or liquid preceding the onset of the stop closure" (Ladefoged and Maddieson, 1996: 70).Thus it has "two manifestations: 'preaspiration proper'…and 'sonorant devoicing'…whereby a sonorant becomes voiceless before a [+ spread glottis] ('fortis') stop" (Hansson, 2001: 157).Pre-aspirated stops are rare in the world's languages (Silverman, 2003), the best known examples being found in Scottish Gaelic, Icelandic and, indeed, Faroese (Ladefoged and Maddieson, 1996: 70).
Pre-aspiration of the Faroese fortis stops /p t k tʃ/ is most noticeable in slow or emphatic speech (Lockwood, 1977: 7).There are some dialectal differences, but in all varieties the spelling pp, tt, kk and kkj (representing /tʃ/) indicates pre-aspiration, e.g. in words like koppur 'cup', mitt 'middle', rakk 'reached', rykkja 'to pull' in these cases, the preceding vowel is always short.Also, the combinations /p t k/ + nasal (/n, m/) and /t/ + /l/ give rise to pre-aspiration in all dialects./p t k/ are not pre-aspirated after long, close vowels, but in most dialects, including Eysturoyarmál, they are preaspirated after long, non-close vowels, whereas they are unaspirated in the southern dialects (Thráinsson et al., 2004: 47-9).

/p t k/
The Faroese stops have weaker post-aspiration than those of English.
Faroese speakers tend to transfer their relatively unaspirated /p t k/ to English both initially and medially, so that the contrast between pearbear, tensedense; coatgoat, lopping -lobbing; staple -stable; heated -heeded; metal -medal; sacking -sagging, ankle -angle may be lost.Furthermore, there is a tendency to pre-aspirate these sounds in medial and final position, resulting in realisations such as happy, pretty, lucky, stop, not, got *[ˈhaeʰpi, ˈprɪʰti, ˈlʌʰki, ˈstɒʰp, ˈnɒʰt, ˈ ɒʰt].This phenomenon is noticeable even though it does not lead to a loss of intelligibility.
Word-finally, a good strategy for learners is to replace pre-aspiration by pre-glottalisation.In addition, it is important to remember that English vowels are shortened before fortis consonants ("pre-fortis clipping", Wells, 2008: 155) but retain full length before lenis consonants.
/t/ is dental rather than alveolar.However, this does not appear to be a significant error since it certainly has no effect on intelligibility.Some speakers pronounce intervocalic /t/ as a brief voiced stop [t ], e.g. in words such as better, later, that is.Although this feature is heard in British English in high-frequency words, notably in word-final position before a word beginning with a vowel, e.g. but I, that it, what a (Collins and Mees, 2008: 86), it is more characteristic of General American -where it also normally occurs word-internally -than it is of RP.Learners should therefore take care not to employ this feature too frequently.

/j/
Although as a fricative in Faroese and an approximant in English, Faroese /j/ is similar to the English counterpart, and in articulatory terms causes few problems.However, some speakers have problems with the distribution of this sound and use Yod-dropping (Wells, 1982: 206-8) (Thráinsson et al., 2004: 45-46).Although Faroese /r/ is alveolar rather than post-alveolar, the difference in place is auditorily scarcely perceptible.Faroese /r/ is devoiced before fortis plosives, e.g.(Thráinsson et al., 2004: 53), as well as before /s/, as in the examples hoyrt, vers above.If this pattern is transferred to English, heart, horse may be incorrectly devoiced, e.g.*[h ːɹ t, hɔːɹ s], and even realised as retroflex consonants e.g.*[h ːɻ t, hɔːɻ s].However, these pronunciations are rare and usually /r/ causes few problems.

Conclusion
In the analyses, we found examples of phonemic, allophonic and distributional errors.The most salient distributional feature was rhoticism, which is appropriate for rhotic accents such as General American but might prove distracting for RP though not affecting intelligibility.Examples of phonemic errors included replacing /θ/ by /t/, ð by /d/, /z/ by /s/, and /w/ by /v/, all of which contribute to a foreign accent, but are not necessarily the tell-tale signs of a Faroese speaker specifically, as these are errors heard from many non-native speakers worldwide.The allophonic errors, on the other hand, show some features that are very uncommon, e.g.devoicing of nasals and approximants /l, r/, dark and dental pronunciation of clear l and perhaps most saliently the pre-aspiration of fortis stops.
This survey of consonants has shown that there are enough features that are typically Faroese in the English of Faroese speakers for it to be worthwhile to consider their specific language-learning problems.Since most Faroese people speak Danish, many students from the Faroe islands attend universities in Denmark without this causing any communication problems, but they are not native speakers of Danish and therefore do not have a Danish substratum.Consequently, textbooks aimed at Danish or other Scandinavian learners of English are far from ideal for these students.We have made a first attempt at describing Faroese learners' difficulties with the consonants of English, but more systematic research is also needed on the vowels and on supra-segmental features such as stress, rhythm and intonation.

Table 1 .
Faroese and English stops (frequent allophones in brackets) Learners are recommended to lengthen the vowel before final lenis plosives.Like /t/, Faroese /d/ is dental rather than alveolar but this gives rise to few if any problems./ is more devoiced than the corresponding English sound (cf./b d / above).Without suitable modification, it may cause a loss of contrast in pairs like age -aitch.Preceding vowels should be lengthened to avoid the impression of pre-fortis clipping.

Table 2 .
Faroese and English fricatives (frequent allophones in brackets) and therefore causes no problems when used for English /j/.The dental place of articulation should not be difficult as it is familiar from Faroese /t d/, but replacing the complete closure by a stricture of close approximation proves to be very difficult.Faroese learners should articulate the sound by moving the tongue-tip behind the upper front teeth (i.e.post-dental rather than inter-dental), making sure there is no closure.Confucian, and pleasure sounds like plea[ʃ]ure, usual like u[ʃ]ual, and beige like bei[ʃ].Learners should attempt to add voicing.There are very few minimal pairs and the error rarely causes a breakdown in communication.The sound occurs overwhelmingly in medial position, which is where learners should concentrate their efforts.
/ð/Replaced by /d/, causing potential confusion between they -day, worthy -wordy, breathe -breed.There are few minimal pairs, but replacement by /d/ is distracting.Even more so than in the case of /θ/, learners should ensure that the articulation is post-dental, since an inter-dental place of articulation may produce friction which is too strong to be acceptable for English; in fact, English /ð/ is often realised as an approximant(Collins  and Mees, 2008: 88).In initial position, it is also regularly subject to manner assimilation (where it mainly occurs in grammatical words, e.g.the, this, them, there), /ð/ being replaced by /l/, /n/ or /s/ in sequences such as in the, all the, what's the /ɪn nə, ɔːl lə, wɒts sə/(Collins and Mees,  2008: 117).This can be a useful strategy to adopt for learners who find it difficult to avoid making a stop consonant.Note that the consonants /n l s/ are here prolonged so that a clear difference is maintained between, for instance, in the [ɪnː ə] and in a [ɪn ə].As in the case of the other lenis consonants, it is important to lengthen the vowel before final /ð/.

Table 3 .
Faroese and English nasals (frequent allophones in brackets) . /m n/ Similar to their English counterparts, although learners should take care not to devoice the English sounds preceding the fortis plosives, //, /s/ and /z/.Realisations like *[ʌn ˈtɪl], *[ˈsʌm θɪŋ], *[əˈpɪərən s] for until, something, appearance sound comic to an English ear.Learners should make /m n/ voiced in all contexts.It is not difficult to do so, as voiced nasals do occur in Faroese./ŋ/ Preceding /k/, /ŋ/ lacks voicing, so that drink, wrinkle are realised as [drɪŋ k, ˈrɪŋ kl].Speakers pronounce g following /ŋ/, usually resulting in [ŋ ], but sometimes in [ŋ k].As a result, the contrast between /ŋ/ and the sequence /ŋk/ may be lost (thing -think and sangsank being identical), and anything may sound like *[ˈeniθɪŋ ] or *[ˈeniθɪŋ k].(In our data, long was heard only as *[lɒŋ ].) -ing is sometimes pronounced with /n/, so that talking sounds like

Table 4 .
Faroese and English approximants (frequent allophones in brackets) according to the pattern found in General American, so that words like tune, duke, news are said without /j/.