Into Intelligible Pronunciation Features of Thai English in English as a Lingua Franca Context

Abstract

Regardless of whether or not Thai English, also known as ‘Tinglish’, has acquired a status of a ‘new variety of English’, it is undoubted that ‘Thai English accent’ exists among Thai people and involves unique Thai English phonological properties. This research paper examined pronunciation features of Thai English collected from 30 students from a private university in Thailand and compared the Thai English phonological properties to those in the Lingua Franca Core (LFC) proposed by Jenkins (2000). Participants were required to perform different tasks where they could use English naturally. From the findings, Thai English speakers typically operate with a smaller set of consonants (ThE: 17, RP: 24). In particular, there is no voicing contrast in fricative sounds, while most of the other consonant phonemes remain. In addition, most of the English vowels were replaced with Thai regional qualities and similar sets of vowels were observed (ThE: 19, RP: 20). After comparing to the LFC, six features were identified as problematic which could lead to intelligibility failure, including 1) consonant substitution, 2) final consonant devoicing, 3) deletion and substitution of [ɬ], 4) conflation of /l/ and /r/, 5) initial cluster simplification, and 6) non-tonic stress. On the other hand, six other features of Thai English features were considered intelligible in ELF, including non-rhotic pronunciation, vowel substitution, monophongization, syllable-timed stress, non-intonation pattern, and tone transfer. The Thai English pronunciation core from this research could be especially useful in English pronunciation teaching in Thailand, where learners can comfortably accommodate their English to achieve successful communications in international contexts.