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In this article, we introduce recently released, publicly available resources, which allow users to watch videos of hidden articulators (e.g. the tongue) during the production of various types of sounds found in the world's languages. The articulation videos on these resources are linked to a clickable International Phonetic Alphabet chart ([International Phonetic Association. 1999. "Handbook of the International Phonetic Association: A Guide to the Use of the International Phonetic Alphabet." Cambridge: Cambridge University Press]), so that the user can study the articulations of different types of speech sounds systematically. We discuss the utility of these resources for teaching the pronunciation of contrastive sounds in a foreign language that are absent in the learner's native language.

The front vowels of Received Pronunciation lowered in quality over the twentieth century (Wells, 1982b; Fabricius, 2007; Bjelaković, 2017). Connections between choral singing and Southern Standard British English (SSBE) have been made in musicological literature (e.g., Potter, 1998), and with specific reference to the Choir of King's College, Cambridge (Sagrans, 2016; Day, 2018). At King's and places like it, choristers are likely trained to sing using features of SSBE. This study investigates whether the SSBE pattern of front vowel lowering over time is also found in choral singing, both in a dialect area where SSBE is widely spoken (Cambridge) and in a non-SSBE dialect area (Glasgow). Two electronic, automatically segmented diachronic corpora were constructed in LaBB-CAT (Fromont & Hay, 2012). F1 and F2 were extracted for the vowels /i ɪ ɛ a ɑ/. Both datasets were analysed with Bayesian linear mixed models using brms in R. A main effect of lowering is supported by the data, priors and models. This paper provides evidence that British choral singing has changed over time and that this change follows a well-evidenced change in SSBE speech. We also find evidence for a shared non-regional choral accent emerging in terms of front vowel height. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study aimed to determine the relative processing cost associated with comprehension of an unfamiliar native accent under adverse listening conditions. Two sentence verification experiments were conducted in which listeners heard sentences at various signal-to-noise ratios. In Experiment 1, these sentences were spoken in a familiar or an unfamiliar native accent or in two familiar native accents. In Experiment 2, they were spoken in a familiar or unfamiliar native accent or in a nonnative accent. The results indicated that the differences between the native accents influenced the speed of language processing under adverse listening conditions and that this processing speed was modulated by the relative familiarity of the listener with the native accent. Furthermore, the results showed that the processing cost associated with the nonnative accent was larger than for the unfamiliar native accent. (Contains 5 footnotes, 3 tables and 3 figures.)

Discusses development of a battery of tasks that were used to assess phonological processing skills in Panjabi-English bilingual children in West Birmingham, United Kingdom. Results support the notion that at least some tasks of phonological awareness may be language specific. (Author/VWL)

In Britain, 30 bilingual 7-year olds were given phonological awareness tasks separately in English and Panjabi. Results suggested that assessment of preliteracy skills in bilingual children is useful only if carried out in both of their languages. (SK)