Croatia - Croglish

Table of contents

01 02
Segmental differences:
Consonants Vowels

03 04 05
Suprasegmental differences:
Rhythm Vowel reduction Tonal aspects
 01
Segmental differences: Consonants
Differences in the phonemic inventories:
• Pronunciation of those English sounds which Croatian
does not use distinctively (/Ɵ/ /ð/ and /w/ usually
pronounced as /t/ /d/ and /v/)
• Croatian palatals: the lateral /ʎ/ and the nasal /ɲ/ (often
misinterpreted as /l+j/ in “Value” and /n+j/ in “News”)
Phonetic differences:
• Different realisations of the English phoneme /v/ as in
“Very”
• /r/ in Croglish tends to be manifested by a flap or a trill
sound
• The place of articulation of /t/ in Croatian speakers is dental
rather than alveolar
• Croglish speakers fail to realize the English “dark” /l/ and
maintain the clearness of the /l/ in all positions
• The phonetic quality of the Croatian affricates/English
consonants /tʃ/ and /dʒ/ with the Croatian affricates being
more complex (“hard” and “soft”)
• Croatian velar place of articulation of the consonant /h/, as
in "heavy“ instead of the target glottal consonant /h/ in
English
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=41Rd_sZUYLc
 02
Segmental differences: Vowels
• The difference in the vocalic systems: English has two
subsystems (monophthongs and diphthongs) while Croatian
does not have diphthongs in the real sense of the word
• Striking differences in the systems of monophthongs
• English: 12 vowels /i:, ɪ, e, æ, ɜ:, ǝ, ʌ, ɑ:, ɒ, ɔ:, ʊ, and u:/
• Croatian: 5 vowels (a e i o u)
• Even in cases where phonetic symbols suggest similar
vowel types, the individual formant values for any pair of
vowels are notably different
• Vocalic length in Croatian functions as a phonological
parameter (“Pas”)
 03
Suprasegmental differences: Rhythm
• English is an extreme case of stress-based rhythm while
Croatian rhythm is syllable based
  Syllable-based rhythm (Croatian) Stress-based rhythm (English)

1 Proportional reduction of all syllables with the Greater reduction of unstressed syllables
increase of inter-stress material with the increase of inter-stress material
 

2 Smaller quantitative differences among Greater quantitative differences among

unstressed syllables unstressed syllables

3 Smaller extent of final lengthening Greater extent of final lengthening

 

4 Preference for regressive compression of Preference of anticipatory compression of

stressed vowels in a stress group unstressed vowels in a stressed group

5 Increase of speech rate achieved at the Increase of speech rate achieved at the
expense of consonants expense of vowels
 04
Suprasegmental differences: Vowel
reduction
• Unstressed vowels are pronounced less clearly
• The process of qualitative reduction of unstressed vowels,
alongside other qualities of stress-based rhythm, determines
the prosodic nature of English
• Croglish speakers and other non-native speakers do not
apply the rule of vowel reduction, therefore sounding
foreign
 05
Tonal aspects of Croglish
• Croatian and English belong to two totally different types
of languages
• Croatian uses tones associated with individual moras (a unit
of syllable weight by which stress or timing of utterance is
determined) to give words their lexical identity
• English uses tonal patterns exclusively for intonation
purposes
• Different Croatian dialects have prosodic patterns
interacting with intonational patterns in different ways
• Croats speaking English rarely use metric or emphatic
lengthening characteristics of English because in Croatian
vocalic length gives lexical identity to words
 Conclusion
● striking phonological and phonetic
differences between Croatian and
English
● In speech these differences co-occur
and interact making Croglish a
challenging foreign accent phenomena
● Pointing to them can lead to insights
into the nature of both languages
 Bibliographical references

● Josipović- Smojver, V. (2010). Foreign Accent and

Levels of Analysis: Interference between English and
Croatian. In Waniek-Klimczak, Ewa (ed.), Issues in
Accents of English 2: Variability and Norm. Newcastle
upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 23-35.
● Johnson, K., & Martin, J. (2000). Acoustic vowel
reduction in creek: Effects of distinctive length and
position in the word. Phonetica, 58(1-2), 81–102.
https://doi.org/10.1159/000028489