Learning American Pronunciation: A Case Study from Latvian Experience
Authors:   Ohio University, Bond Dzintra , Markus Dace 
Published: February 2025

In the context of studying the acquisition of Latvian by children from ethnic minorities in Latvia, we had the opportunity to follow a related instance of acquisition, a young Latvian, Dainis (age 14 years 9 months), immersed in English in high school. The aim of our article is to make sure that good American pronunciation learning opportunities come directly from using language inside and outside the classroom. Our emphasis was on pronunciation, in part because the school provided academic instruction in reading and writing English but only indirect instruction in pronunciation. Consequently, changes in Dainis’s pronunciation of English resulted primarily from exposure and a natural tendency to use the ambient language.
We compared Dainis’s reading of a passage from a newspaper in September and January; the speech was transcribed and analysed using the Kay Elemetrics Computer Speech Laboratory (CSL), following standard laboratory procedures. Even in this short period of time, we found considerable changes in fluency accompanied by a more American version of vowels, particularly in unstressed syllables and function words. He had studied standardised English in Latvia and now had to fit into American society.
The article analyses sound pronunciation but also focuses on stress, sound quantity and tension. The school that Dainis attended is situated in a relatively small college town in southeastern Ohio. Students at the school come from quite diverse backgrounds. Some are from rural families of limited means; others are the children of academics or graduate students, sometimes using English as a second language; finally, there are children of lawyers and others in various professions and townspeople. The speech patterns of these groups differ considerably, but all are considered acceptable within the school setting. English language instruction at school emphasises reading, writing, vocabulary, and other academic approaches firmly based on American English practice. In his daily experiences, Dainis was exposed to all these varieties. It is impossible to say what effects this variety may have had in creating a model of American English pronunciation for Dainis. Furthermore, Dainis was the only Latvian speaker in his school, so he had no choice but to use English to manage his daily affairs.
The results of our experiment are summarised and described in the following groups: 1) Sporadic pronunciation errors; 2) Consonantal substitutions; 3) Speech rate and phrasing; 4) Vowel durations; 5) Vowel formant values. The main conclusions:
1. Even a short period of exposure proved adequate for some changes in pronunciation towards the ambient American model.
2. Dainis spoke more fluently and rapidly in January than in September.
3. Dainis’ vowel durations began to approximate American durations, particularly for lax vowels and in unstressed syllables, both in multisyllabic words and function words. This pattern is characteristic of English, so it is probably salient to learners.
4. Dainis showed a tendency to modify vowel quality in unstressed positions towards formant values characteristic of schwa. His unstressed vowel productions were also considerably shorter.
5. Over the period of four months, Dainis did not modify the pronunciation of consonants, either approximating difficult American segments or American allophones.
6. Dainis’s stressed vowel quality did not change appreciably, perhaps because discrepancies from the American model were inconsequential for successful communication.
7. Although Dainis did not receive specific instruction in pronunciation, using the ambient language both in and out of class still provides opportunities for learning.
8. Our research results show that the language environment is very important; therefore, the new reform in education, when all educational institutions in Latvia change their language of instruction to Latvian, could be evaluated as positive.
Though our report is quite preliminary, we hope it provides insight into the importance of the common national language use. The results of the studies confirm the conviction that it is the use of language in a given linguistic environment that is very important; therefore, the new reform in education, when all educational institutions in Latvia step by step change the teaching language to Latvian, is positive.