Data Sets

Brunei

ASEAN

Nigerian + Bruneian : 947

S1 = Bruneian female
S2 = Bruneian male
S3 = Nigerian male

Context : S3 is talking about the system of educaton in his country.

S3 : ... in the primary school

S2 : hmm

S3 : three (.) like er <spel> j s s </spel> we call it junior secondary school. three years. another three years again (.) in senior school

Intended Words: three

Heard as: (tere)

Discussion: Just as in the previous extract, S1 enclosed tere in brackets to indicate she could not understand it. However, she was able to understand the same later in this utterance.

One problem in the first token of three is that three begins with [t] rather than [θ]. Another issue is that is [ə] occurs after the initial consonant and before the [r], making it sound as if the word has two syllables. In contrast, in the second and third tokens of three, there is less evidence of an inserted [ə] inserted between the first two consonants. This suggests that three pronounced as [təri:] is a problem, but if it is pronounced as [tri:], there is no such problem. In other words, voiceless TH as [t] is not an issue unless it is combined with other factors.