TransWikia.com

'confusion matrix' for English phonemes

English Language & Usage Asked by El Marce on August 4, 2021

Is there a measure of distance somewhere that tells me that certain phoneme A is more "distant" or "different" to phoneme B than it is to phoneme C in English?

For example, that the phoneme /k/ is more close to phoneme /t/ that it is to /a/. (random values to create an example)

Edit:
As suggested by @Mitch, this is actually a ‘confusion matrix’ for English phonemes. Can anyone point to one of such tables?

2 Answers

After googling for a while for "confusion matrix", found this resource:

http://people.cs.uchicago.edu/~dinoj/research/confmat.html

Perhaps is interesting to learn how to read a confusion matrix here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confusion_matrix

Edit: Thanks to J Trana for also pointing out the following papers:

Correct answer by El Marce on August 4, 2021

The confusion matrix is highly dependent on the native language of the listener.

For example, a German speaker once asked me why we pronounce the German composer Bach's name with a /k/, when [bɑf] is clearly closer to [bɑx] than [bɑk]. It's not to modern English speakers. But it might have been closer in Middle English: the word laugh, which was originally pronounced with /x/, is now pronounced with an /f/ and not a /k/.

Similarly, this question and its answers show that Spanish speakers perceive /ɛ/ as the closest English phoneme to /e/, while American English speakers think it's /eɪ/.

And I suspect that /z/, /d/, and /v/ are the closest phonemes to /ð/ in various languages, because these are all substituted for /ð/ by foreigners learning English.

And even among native English speakers, people from California can't tell the difference between Don and Dawn, while people from the U.K. think they sound nothing alike.

Answered by Peter Shor on August 4, 2021

Add your own answers!

Ask a Question

Get help from others!

© 2024 TransWikia.com. All rights reserved. Sites we Love: PCI Database, UKBizDB, Menu Kuliner, Sharing RPP