Data Sets

Brunei

ASEAN

Hong Kong + Malaysian — HK1 : 710

S1 = Hong Kong male
S2 = Malaysian female

Context: They are talking about painting murals in America.

S1 : you all you know have this kind of background okay (1.0) then (.) i want the wall (.) this is i the wall i (.) everyday i will (.) go to work i will see i go to school i will see this wall

Intended Words : want the wall

Heard as : won the war

Discussion : By the time S1 said wall the third time, S2 had managed to figure it out, particularly within the context of going to work and going to school. However, initially she heard the first two instances as war. This seems to arise mainly because of the omission of the final [l] in the word.

S1 pronounces want with the vowel [ɒ], which is as expected in RP British English. However, this may cause problems for a listener from Malaysia for two reasons: first, in Singapore and probably also in Malaysia, want usually has the vowel [ʌ] rather than [ɒ]; and second, won often has [ɒ] (Deterding, 2005), in what might be regarded as a spelling pronunciation. This helps explain why want the wall is heard as won the war.

References

Deterding, D. (2005). Emergent patterns in the vowels of Singapore English. English World-Wide, 26(2), 179–197.