The Influence of Native Language Rhythm on Speech Rate Perception in Unfamiliar Languages

Abstract

Abstract

This experimental study investigates the influence of language rhythms on speakers’ perception of speech rate both in native vs. unfamiliar languages. An experiment was conducted to compare participants’ perception of speech rate in Arabic as their native language (stress-timed), to that in three other languages, each having a different rhythmic pattern: German (stress-timed), Spanish (syllable-timed), and Japanese (mora-timed). A total of 120 sentences (30 from each language) was carefully prepared and recorded for this purpose. A mixed-gender group of 45 native Arabic speakers, unfamiliar with all of the other languages listened to the sentences and gauged the speech rate for each sentence on a 7-point Likert scale. The results revealed that speech rate was perceived as identical in Arabic and German, but faster than Arabic in Japanese and Spanish. Hence, the finding offers evidence that an independent and mutual factor between Arabic and German increased the participants’ efficiency in gauging the speech rate, which is language rhythm. Future work must take into consideration this predictor both in theorizing on speech rate and designing respective experiments.

Keywords: Speech rate, Speech rate perception, Language rhythm, Arabic language, Unfamiliar languages.