Department of English and American Studies English ... - IS MU [PDF]

Masaryk University Faculty of Arts

Department of English and American Studies

English Language and Literature

Kristýna Konečná

English Pronunciation of Czech Singers Bachelor’s Diploma Thesis

Supervisor: PhDr. Kateřina Tomková Ph.D.

2017

I declare that I have worked on this thesis independently, using only the primary and secondary sources listed in the bibliography.

…………………………………………….. Author’s signature

Acknowledgement: I would like to give a sincere thanks to my supervisor PhDr. Kateřina Tomková, Ph.D. for her constant guidance which enabled me to finish this thesis. Especially, however, I would like to thank her for her support and understanding towards my unorganized artistic mind.

Table of Contents List of tables ..................................................................................................................6 Introduction ...................................................................................................................7 1

Differences in pronunciation ................................................................................ 10 1.1

1.1.1

Czech vowels ......................................................................................... 10

1.1.2

English vowels ....................................................................................... 11

1.1.3

Problems of Czech speakers with vowels ............................................... 11

1.2

Consonants .................................................................................................... 12

1.2.1

Fricatives ............................................................................................... 12

1.2.2

Nasals .................................................................................................... 14

1.2.3

Laterals .................................................................................................. 14

1.3

Aspiration ..................................................................................................... 14

1.4

Other mispronunciations of Czech speakers................................................... 15

1.4.1

–Ing ending ............................................................................................ 15

1.4.2

Pronunciation of w/v .............................................................................. 16

1.5 2

Vowels .......................................................................................................... 10

Accent ........................................................................................................... 17

Factors influencing learning process ..................................................................... 18 2.1

Musical aptitude ............................................................................................ 19

2.1.1

Musician ................................................................................................ 19

2.1.2

Ear sensitivity ........................................................................................ 20

2.1.3

Attitude .................................................................................................. 21

2.2

Technique ..................................................................................................... 22

2.3

Imitative abilities ........................................................................................... 23

2.4

Memory for lyrics and memory for melody ................................................... 24

2.4.1 2.5

LRL technique ....................................................................................... 25

Kind of music ................................................................................................ 27

2.5.1

Style listening ........................................................................................ 27

2.5.2

Style learning ......................................................................................... 28

2.6

Rhythm in speaking ....................................................................................... 28

2.7

Quality of singing .......................................................................................... 29

3

Survey of the connectivity between accent and quality of singing of Czech singers 30 3.1

Quality of singing .......................................................................................... 30

3.1.1

Singing voice ......................................................................................... 30

3.1.2

Convincingness and satisfaction ............................................................. 31

3.1.3

Registers ................................................................................................ 31

3.1.4

Voice control.......................................................................................... 32

3.1.5

Accuracy ................................................................................................ 34

3.1.6

Rhythm .................................................................................................. 35

3.1.7

Memorization ......................................................................................... 36

3.2

Procedure and division .................................................................................. 37

3.2.1

Singers ................................................................................................... 37

3.2.2

Assessing musicians ............................................................................... 38

3.2.3

Speaking ................................................................................................ 39

3.3

Analysis ........................................................................................................ 39

Conclusion .................................................................................................................. 42 Summary (English) ..................................................................................................... 47 Summary (Czech) ........................................................................................................ 48 Appendix A ................................................................................................................. 49 Appendix B ................................................................................................................. 50 Appendix C ................................................................................................................. 51

List of tables

Table 1. Singers as sorted by their singing....................................................................................39

Table 2. Singers as sorted by their speaking..................................................................................39

Introduction There is a general assumption concerning musical aptitude and language learning which claims that having musical aptitude can be an advantage in learning a foreign language. Many studies focused on this topic claim that talented musicians are also predetermined to be good language learners. Further research in this area has already shown that there is a certain connection between these two phenomena. However this topic is still under-examined, since most studies have been dealing with musical aptitude only. Moreover, groups in these researches are mostly children or young students whose musical skills and language skills are examined, or musicians who are able to learn foreign languages more efficiently and can obtain more plausible accents. Significance of this topic is based on the fact that the connection between musical aptitude and language learning these studies have proved cannot be applied to all musicians. Some musicians who have mastered their playing skills have also poor accents, even though according to these previous studies they should be good at both playing an instrument and speaking a foreign language. In order to address this issue in more specific way, I will focus on singers only. More specifically this thesis will focus on Czech singers and their English accent. The main aim is to find the real connection between singers’ musical aptitude represented by their quality of singing and their ability to acquire a native-like accent. Musical aptitude cannot guarantee a plausible accent. Along with other factors such as imitative abilities, it can only help speakers with the process of acquiring it. Since the articulatory settings of both languages are very diverse and do not have much in common, it is crucial to highlight the biggest differences and also provide information about Czechs dealing with these distinctions.

In the first chapter, all aspects of pronunciation of both languages that could be connected to musical aptitude and singing skills will be discussed. Attention is drawn especially to vowels and consonants and their forms in both languages in particular. However, other phenomena must be mentioned in order to create a spectrum of possible problems Czechs tend to have with mispronunciation. These phenomena are for instance aspiration or fricatives which are common for Czechs to mispronounce since, regarding their mother tongue, they do not recognize these naturally. The issue of musical aptitude will be discussed in the second chapter. All factors that are mutual to both language skills and singing skills and could contribute to acquiring a native-like accent will be examined. These factors are for example “ear sensitivity”, imitative abilities or lyrics and memory for melody. Many people tend to forget that even kind of music they like to listen to and like to learn to sing can very much influence their speech habits. Some of these factors are more significant and visible than others, but all of them together can create perfect conditions for learning a foreign language. The last factor mentioned is quality of singing and its impact on language learning. However, this term is very difficult to define and it needs to be dealt with in more depth. The third and final chapter will combine techniques of stating what a quality of singing means and my own research involving recordings and analysis of singers and their accents. For the first part there will be 9 singers who were asked to sing a song of their choice they know very well. In the second set of recordings all of these singers will read a text that includes words which can show all aspects of their pronunciation. They were also asked to fill in a questionnaire with general questions regarding singing e.g. how difficult/easy it is for them to learn a melody or lyrics etc.

All the recordings will be analyzed in two ways. The first will be a division of singers into groups according to their singing skills (including imitative skills and general sense for singing) according to criteria mention earlier in the third chapter. For this part six highly experienced musicians were asked to evaluate singers’ singing skills. The second approach will regard their pronunciation skills in the English language according to all aspects mentioned in the first chapter. The main aim is to show how particular factors contributing to learning language and acquiring certain accent are connected to the factors affecting person’s quality of singing. If there is more than just a connection between musical aptitude in general (which would include all musicians) and language learning, or if singers with high quality of singing are able to acquire a native-like accent while using right techniques of training.

1

Differences in pronunciation Due to many differences in pronunciation between Czech and English, it can be

very difficult for Czechs to acquire a native-like English accent. Especially because of the aspect of adoption of speech habits different from their mother tongue. This chapter focuses on the differences in pronunciation and creating various sounds in both languages. Some of the distinctions in pronunciation will be omitted in this thesis, because the aim of mentioning these differences is to demonstrate how they can be connected to musical aptitude and singing skills. 1.1 Vowels Vowels can be taken as one of the most important aspects of speech for this research. The reason is that in singing, vowels are mostly the parts of words which are the longest and the most emphasized. Singers then tend to be more focused on them because first, they can be heard clearly and second, they have to be practiced with more precision otherwise all mistakes in singing technique can be traced. In the following subchapters the systems of Czech and English vowels will be described. In the second subchapter the difficulties that can be caused by the many differences between these two languages will be dealt with as well. 1.1.1 Czech vowels The repertoire of vowels in the Czech language is very limited. As Palková in her book Fonetika a Fonologie Češtiny [Phonetics and Phonology of the Czech Language] states: “Vowels are very well distinguished and in every syllable of a word all vowels are pronounced fully and without reduction. Their form is relatively stable and the impact of a consonant close to the vowel or its position in the word is not

crucial” (170). In other words there is only one correct sound of a vowel /a/ for example. It makes it more difficult for foreign speakers, because there is only one correct sound easily discernible by a native speaker. If the length of vowels is taken in consideration, there are five Czech vowels, their five prolonged counterparts and three diphthongs. To put it another way there are five variants of quality and two variants of quantity (length) i.e. /a,á,e,é,i,í,o,ó,u,ú,eu,au,ou/. 1.1.2 English vowels In English there are 20 distinctive phonemes regarding vowels. Gimson in his book Practical Course of English Pronunciation classifies them as 5 long vowels (ɑ ː , i, ɔ ː , uː , ɜ ː ), 7 short vowels (ɪ , æ, ɒ , ʌ , ɛ , ʊ , ə) and 8 diphthongs (eɪ , aɪ , ɔ ɪ , aʊ , oʊ , ɪ ə, eə, ʊ ə), opposed to the three Czech diphthongs while only one of them /ou/ - is present in originally Czech words and others are used in words taken from foreign languages (Krčmová 87). Regarding the level of openness in both languages, Palková claims that “the level of openness in the Czech language is neutral and fixed” (170) opposed to the English language, where the level of openness is not fixed. Moreover some vowels are not neutral but widely open and others can be only partly open. 1.1.3 Problems of Czech speakers with vowels The division of vowels in English is, however, more complex. Long vowels in English can be reduced such as in words seed and seat (pre-fortis shortening). Moreover, short vowels are divided too and have an impact on the word meaning e.g. bed/bad or mess/mass. Another issue is vowels /æ/ and /ɪ /. When Czechs pronounce these vowels, they naturally shift to the closest sounds they know in their mother tongue. Distinguishing between lengths and forms of vowels can be difficult even for

speakers who study the language and know the rules of English pronunciation. Furthermore if this learner inherited musical aptitude and has good imitative ability, they have a good chance of acquiring a native-like accent. For someone who does not know these rules and has no musical aptitude this ability seems impossible to acquire even if they lived in any English speaking country for a longer period of time. However, there are people who do not know how the articulation process works and they do not focus when creating a sound, but they are able to recreate it naturally. These people are also called intuitive speakers. Similarly there are intuitive singers who hear a song and after listening to it only few times they are able to accurately reproduce the original piece. The issue of intuitive singers/speakers is connected with musical aptitude and imitative abilities that the third chapter is concerned with and will be dealt with in more depth later on in the thesis.

1.2 Consonants In English there are 24 consonantal phonemes and they can be divided into plosives, affricates, fricatives, nasals, laterals, semi-vowels and also one post-alveolar frictionless continuant. Plosives and affricates exist in both the Czech language and the English language, and in both languages are similarly created, which makes it less difficult for Czech speakers to create plausible sounding versions of these consonants. Only aspects that can be improved by having musical aptitude and will be assessed later in the thesis, will be addressed in the following subchapters 1.2.1 Fricatives Both the Czech language and the English language have these two groups of fricatives: labiodental /f,v/ and alveolar /s,z/. Labiodental fricatives are not usually a problem in pronunciation. Alveolar fricatives, even though they exist in both languages,

can cause difficulties with the opting of where to use /s/ and where to use /z/ when it comes to Czech speakers. It can be heard in word-final positions, for instance in words symbols, bands or settles. The endings should be pronounced as /mblz/, /ndz/ and /tlz/, but Czechs tend to use /s/ in all three cases. Considering the fricative is placed in a final position of a word, the distinction can be easily overhead especially if the word stands for itself. However, in a connection with another word such as the verb are, the link between the fricative and the vowel must be pronounced as /z/. There are also two English fricatives which are pronounced poorly by Czech speakers due to the fact that they do not exist in the Czech language. These are the voiced dental fricative /ð/ and voiceless dental fricative /θ/. They are often mispronounced in many ways. The most frequent one is typical for speakers who do not know how to create these sounds because they never learned how to make them properly. Naturally they shift to the closest sound in their repertoire and they simply replace it by it. For the fricative /ð/ it is the sound of voiced /d/ and for the voiceless /θ/ the sound of the Czech voiceless /t/. For example a word with would be pronounced as /wɪ t/ or even /vɪ t/, as Czechs also do not recognize the sound of /w/ as natural for their mother tongue. This issue will be dealt with in the subchapter 1.4.2. Moreover words like then or that are pronounced as /den/ and /det/ (wrong pronunciation of /ɛ / and /æ/ are not the main focus of this chapter). Bronstein claims that “the mass media often represent the speaker of uncultivated English as substituting an alveolar or dental stop (/t/, /d/) for either th sound and it can personify the uneducated speaker” (85). This “uneducated pronunciation” is in music used mostly by American black rappers, which means that theoretically if a singer listens to this music, they can add it into their repertoire without realizing it is not correct. In connection with other errors the mispronunciation of fricatives is one of the most obvious signs of “Czech English”.

1.2.2 Nasals The creation of nasals Gimson describes as follows:”Nasal consonants resemble oral plosives in that a total closure is made within the mouth; they differ from such plosives in that the soft palate is in its lowered position, allowing an escape of air into the nasal cavity and giving the sound the special resonance provided by the nasopharyngeal cavity.” (An Introduction 188) In Czech there are two nasals: bilabial nasal /m/ and alveolar nasal /n/. Both of these nasals are present in the English language too, but there is also one additional nasal consonant which causes difficulties to Czech speakers. It is a velar nasal /ŋ/ created in a different way than /m, n/. “A closure is formed in the mouth between the back of the tongue and the velum as for /k,g/, the soft palate is lowered.” (Gimson. An Introduction 193) This nasal is voiced and can only be partially devoiced in less common cases. 1.2.3 Laterals In Czech there is only one way of articulation of the /l/ phoneme. It is created similarly to /d/ and the airway flows along both sides of the tongue (Palková 232). In English, the phoneme /l/ has three allophones: clear, voiceless and dark. Clear /l/ sounds the closest to the Czech /l/ and can be heard in words let, glad or foolish. The biggest issue of Czechs with laterals is the dark /ɫ / which can be heard in words feel, milk or middle. However, it should be one of the sounds, similarly to vowels that are mostly clearly heard in singing and for singers then easy to reproduce. 1.3 Aspiration Aspiration in English is an initial stop after plosive consonants p,t,k which is followed by a short puff of air or as Gimson describes it, it is “a voiceless interval

consisting of strongly expelled breath between the release of the plosive and the onset of a following vowel” (An Introduction 146). It is typical for the Czech language that there is no aspiration and it is difficult for Czech speakers to use it correctly in their English speech. It happens very often that Czechs, who finally learned to create aspiration, use it even in words where it should not be. In words such pin, tin or kin, the aspiration is clearly heard. In other cases e.g. in words where /l,r,w,j/ follow /p,t,k/ it concludes in devoicing of /l,r,w,j/, such words could be clean, please or pray. “In other positions, i.e. preceding a vowel in an unaccented syllable and finally, such aspiration as may occur is relatively weak. When /s/ precedes /p, t, k/ initially in a syllable, there is practically no aspiration, even when the syllable carries a strong accent.” (Gimson, An Introduction 146) 1.4 Other mispronunciations of Czech speakers There are also other Czech speech habits that can violate rules of English pronunciation. All these habits that will be mentioned can be easily eliminated with the help of musical aptitude, which can be an advantage for singers. 1.4.1 –Ing ending Besides the earlier mentioned major groups of errors, there are other difficulties regarding Czech pronunciation of English. One of the more common ones is an incorrect pronunciation of –ing ending. There are at least two possible pronunciations that Czechs tend to use. The first one is pronouncing /nk/ instead of /ŋ/. A word that should be pronounced as /fiː lɪ ŋ/ is then pronounced as /fiː lɪ nk/. However, even though it is a deviation from RP (Received Pronunciation), Gimson states that “in popular London speech, in which /ŋ/ is phonemic, the word –thing in compounds is often pronounced /fiŋk/, e.g. in something or anything” (An Introduction 194). This

mispronunciation is more common and most Czechs do not even recognize the difference between this version and the correct version. The second kind of this error is mostly shared by singers. This includes especially those singers that sing and listen to rap songs or R’n’B songs, because in these kinds of music this pronunciation is widely used. And again this error’s incorrectness could be argued, because as Gimson claims this form can be found not only in some forms of regional speech, but it also “became a general feature of fashionable speech in the eighteenth century and has been retained today as a characteristic of an archaic form of RP” (An Introduction 194). The –ing ending here can be heard as simple /n/ in words wrote like this: trippin’, callin’, fallin’. Even though in many cases this can lead to the speaker sounding like American, it is not taken as RP (Received Pronunciation). 1.4.2 Pronunciation of w/v This following issue is common among Czechs and it can be considered as one of the most confusing ones. The issue is the pronunciation of /w/ and /v/. The differences between pronunciations of these two consonants seem to be in singer’s mind clearly distinguished because of their frequent appearances in songs. Most singers seem to learn to recognize this phenomenon relatively quickly under the condition the already learned a certain number of English songs. Mostly words such war, well or wonder then do not sound like /vɔ r/, /vɛ l/ or /vʌ ndər/, but regarding the first consonant, they are pronounced correctly. It is a fact that Czechs sometimes tend to overuse /w/ to sound more audible, in words where it should not be. This confusion can lead to blending these two phonemes together especially in initial position e.g. a sentence the vow was whispered

very

well

could,

/ðə waʊ voz ˈ vɪ spərd ˈ wɛ ri vɛ l/.

in

an

extreme

case,

sound:

1.5 Accent The issue of various types of accents will not be dealt with in this thesis in its whole range, because its impact on Czech singers’ pronunciation is restricted only to the two major accents mentioned in this subchapter. American accent and British accent are the most common ones when it comes to popular culture which Czechs, in the form of speech or music, can hear on the TV, radio and especially on the internet. Major TV shows watched in the Czech Republic are created in USA and most of the popular mainstream music is recorded there, even though small part also belongs to the British production. When it comes to singers, the American accent is the most common one. Even British singers tend to have American accent while singing. Even though some of them try to maintain their British accent, it still in some parts shifts to the American form of language. For instance some British singers, such as Ellie Goulding, Ed Sheeran or Florence Welsch who, in spite of being talented and versatile musicians, are classified as mainstream singers. These singers can be perceived as the ones who to some extent kept their British accents when singing, but mostly they try to sound more American. The reason for this could be the fact that words pronounced with American accent are easier to sing and the words are basically more negligently connected. It can also be linked to the popularity issue. In other words they do not want to stand out and be discriminated among American audience only because they are British. It means Czech singers, while listening to these popular artists, can adopt similar accents.

2

Factors influencing learning process There are many factors contributing to acquiring a certain degree of mastership

at singing and it can be argued that these are the same factors that can have an impact on acquiring certain levels of an accent’s plausibility. Yet few researchers have addressed the question of skills acquired by singers only. Some of these skills can be hereditary with the requirement of being trained and some of them can only be acquired in life. However, all of them can be trained and improved on both the language level and the singing level. The most basic one and the one most studies tend to focus on is musical aptitude. Basically, musical aptitude is a hereditary skill which can also be classified as one of the inherited assets. The assertion that musicians are better at learning languages is connected to their musical aptitudes, which can be a limitation in understanding this issue. Their ear for music can help them learn foreign languages more quickly and efficiently. Their brains are used to carefully listening to music and repeating it in many forms from recreating a sound using their voices or recognizing specific notes and playing them using their instruments. All of this is connected to their brain sensitivity on sounds. However, it does not apply to all musicians and singers, because a division of musicians into groups is needed to find the main reason why some musicians have native-like accents and others do not. Expressions that classify a musician as “good” or “excellent” seem to have substantial significance. They suggest that there are other skills a musician needs to acquire: both a high level of singing/playing and plausible English pronunciation. This thesis premises that singers are unique in this field of learning English. Regarding singers, there are many other factors and skills besides musical aptitude necessary for spotting a hypothetically promising language learner. While imitation skills, lyric and memory for melody, and

quality of singing are the most important aspects, there are also secondary aspects that need to be taken in consideration, as experienced musicians have observed. 2.1 Musical aptitude Musical aptitude can be considered as the smallest part in this system of factors and the most basic premise for a singer to be able to train other skills mentioned below. Gilleece describes musical aptitude as “a group of separate abilities such as pitch discrimination, a sense of rhythm and a sense of harmony” (122). All these skills, all at different levels, then form musical aptitude of an individual. Zybert in his study Musical Intelligence and Foreign Language Learning claims that “musical aptitude is a determinant and a predictor of success in foreign language learning” (108). When considering only accent in connection with musical aptitude, he states that “musical aptitude is predictive of success in developing pronunciation accuracy in the target language.” (Zybert 110) In other words, the higher the level of all skills mentioned by Gilleece the better musical aptitude and the higher probability of acquiring a native-like accent. Musical aptitude is hereditary and even though it can be improved, it mostly depends on the level of musician’s brain capacity and its sensitivity for sounds which can be referred to by term “ear sensitivity”. Musical aptitude of musicians in general is very different from the one of singers and a definition of a word “musician” is necessary for further research. 2.1.1 Musician The term musician has come to refer to every person who plays an instrument or sings. This is, however, very broad a description. The characteristics of a musician are not well understood and have not been dealt with in depth. A musician is someone who has acquired a certain mastership at either singing or playing an instrument (or both).

These are not necessary professional musicians who do music for a living. On the other hand, their skills should be satisfactory for the average listener at a public event for instance. It is also necessary to state that every musician does not have a good ear for music. Some musicians, even being born without it can (with a lot of hard work) train their ears and brains to become more sensitive and therefore these individuals can become good musicians. In order to get to the level of those who “can hear naturally” they have to study musical theory very closely. It also can be applied to the musicians conversely. The premise is that someone who was born with musical aptitude does not necessary have to be a good musician. The thought of hard work and training is essential. In other words, a musical aptitude does not define what musical quality a musician has but a quality a musician can achieve with proper training of all skills attached to music. With singers, this matter is perhaps even more complex than it is with other musicians. Besides singing techniques, there are many other skills which need to be practiced and mostly they are not even recognized as necessities. Singers also have the advantage of practicing the language itself every time they are singing. 2.1.2 Ear sensitivity The term “ear sensitivity” or “sensitivity for melody”, as mentioned above, can be crucial for singers concerning language learning. Ear sensitivity is one of human’s inherited attributes and is also important in L1 learning. As Wermke provides data from previous research of Peter Jusczyk’s from 1999: ”Their extraordinary sensitivity for melody seems to be responsible for the observation that babies are capable of differentiating between rhythmically different languages and different speakers. Perceiving the emotional (prosodic) features of speech

from an early age, infants increasingly apply this knowledge in order to segment the stream of continuous speech into meaningful parts and to recognize words” (3). In connection to musical aptitude these terms can be used as tools for building a strong foundation for future acquisition of non-Czech English accent. Supposing a singer, possessing an ear for music and also high ear sensitivity, can repeat words over and over again until she/he sounds convincing to oneself. Contrariwise, a person without this ability either considers oneself convincing-sounding and comfortably intelligible to other speakers or he/she does not have the sensitivity to analyze one’s own accent. The problem with singers is analogous to the one with musical aptitude above. Ear sensitivity can be used subconsciously by children but only with conscious strife to improve it can be used by grown-up singers. 2.1.3 Attitude The attitude which helps a person to get better is another very important factor which has to be taken in consideration while evaluating a potentially plausible speaker of English. At the beginning a singer has only the talent they need to work with. The premise is simple. If a singer settles for some level of singing they already acquired and refuse to learn new techniques, extend their vocal range or get better at performing in any way, they do not have this mentality of getting better and they can never be successful when it comes to acquiring a plausible English accent. The mentality of moving forward in singing is closely attached to the mentality of moving forward with the level of accent they want to achieve.

2.2 Technique The topic of technique is complicated because most singers in the Czech Republic started singing as young children at singing schools which are part of “Elementary Art Schools” (ZUŠ). The technique taught here is the one used for classical genres such as operas, musicals and folk songs. The airway leans on the diaphragm which is the same as in popular singing, but then it goes upwards and leans on the soft palate. American accents, for instance, use the same technique while creating nasalized vowels. McDonough in his work “The Perception of Nasalized Vowels in American English” claims that nasalized vowels are distinctive feature in American English which foreign speakers tend to use less than native speakers. Furthermore he states that non-native speakers cannot hear the difference because their ears are not sensitive enough to the sounds unless the nasalization is clearly heard (with the help of longer pause between sounds). This suggests that singers who already have experience with these distinctive sounds can very easily apply them when speaking without knowing it. If a singer masters this technique and is able to control his or her soft palate, it is easier to imitate nasalized accents. Unfortunately it is in most cases not the technique used while singing popular genres of music to which most singers from these classical schools proceed. After finishing these schools most singers have to look for other teachers. What teacher they choose depends on the style of music they prefer to sing. Opera singers are not taken into consideration, since most arias are not sung in English. Singers seek a pop singing teacher who can help them to learn how to control their voices in a way different from what they learned before because the use of the classical technique can lead to a severe damage of singer’s focal folds. Furthermore, the technique taught by these teachers can help with accent too. Depending on the pitch, there are three main techniques that can be used while singing. All of them use the

diaphragm but the air can lean on different parts of the body along the way, the chest for the low register and lower middles, back of the neck for the middles and highs and the upper back of head for falsetto notes. The focus will be on the middles and the back of the neck, because the air very often shifts to the soft palate and the sides and back of the throat. That is the position that can have an impact on the speaker’s accent. The best singing technique for practicing is called twang. Since the soft palate is very important in English, singers who are able to switch back and forth between the airways leaning on the back of the neck and the airways leaning on the soft palate and sides of the throat, are able to make words like “wrong”, “gone” or “trying” sound very native-like. This technique is very well explained by Kerri Ho in her video “How to Sing With Twang”, who claims that twang is a very nasal technique and mastering this technique then can help with controlling person’s soft palate (Kerri Ho). 2.3 Imitative abilities “Music is expressive; so is language and expressiveness in speech is achieved mostly by means of suprasegmentals: intonation, rhythm, pitch, and stress” (Zybert 100). Many famous singers are also very good impersonators if they are willing to practice. A good impersonator’s skill to imitate voices and sounds is the skill every good singer should have and most likely has. It only needs to be discovered and trained. Many great singers have also admitted that when they were little children they would try to imitate sounds of everything around and voices of people on the TV or the radio. However, nowadays the skill of being able to sound like somebody else is mostly rejected by singers, because the main aim is to be original and to acquire and possess a distinguishing sound. Regarding accents in connection with imitative skills Graham suggests that “an accent in a second language depends not only on the speaker’s sensitivity to sounds but mostly on the way they are able to reproduce these sounds”

(448). This presumption can be applied on the case of musicians who, while singing, can hear they are out of tune but cannot improve because their imitative abilities are limited. There is a technique of singing that can be practiced to achieve better imitative abilities and also a good accent. This technique is based on listening and repeating. It is, however, not based on repeating the sole lyrics, but the melody and the exact sounds of the words which are bound by rhythm. It is mostly practiced by Czech singers of very young ages who do it subconsciously. They do not know the English words yet, but they are able to have better accents than people who have been studying English. Grown up singers mostly forget about this, focusing on learning the lyrics separately from the melody. 2.4 Memory for lyrics and memory for melody Many studies have been written on association between memory and songs. Falioni in his study “Music as means to enhance cultural awareness and literacy in the foreign language classroom“, basically summarizes that it is much more likely for people to remember rhyme, rhythm and/or melody better than ordinary speech. Furthermore Wermke claims that “if a person is not able to distinguish between the phonemes and intonation which differentiate the target language from the mother tongue, it will be impossible to learn the L2” (5). Even children, who do not know any foreign language, in this case the English language, have to learn and remember English songs by heart. The most effective way is to learn the lyrics from the way they sound and not from their written form. It means they do not learn words but sounds, just like when they try to reproduce a sound they heard somewhere before and which has no meaning. The song they learn is then a pure gibberish but the accent can be very much like the one of a native English speaker. The remembering of melody and lyrics is very closely associated with each other. When it is taken from another perspective it can be

shown on an example of impersonating a famous person. The impersonator has to find a right pitch, the person’s intonation and the exact way they speak. In his study Zybert shows this connection on the evaluation of his experiment. He claims that “students with musical abilities perform better in phonetic tasks than their counterparts and that they have no problems in imitating English intonation patterns.” (105) A practiced singer can do the same thing with a song. The technique of singing mentioned earlier can be called “learn and repeat learning” (LRL). 2.4.1 LRL technique The assumption for this technique is that a singer has at least some knowledge of the English language and for acquiring a native-like English accent, the original song has to be recorded by a native speaker of English. The knowledge can be very limited, but the basic words that a speaker knows even if they do not study the English language, can work just as efficiently. LRL is based on careful listening of one song at a time and it combines the ability to learn the gibberish lyrics as the singer remembers from their childhood and acquired ability to read and connect things in the lyrics that they acquired later in their life. It is needed to be said that a higher level of English of the singer can be both an advantage and disadvantage. The LRL technique sounds very simple but in order to use it efficiently the singer needs to practice both consciously and subconsciously focused actions. The whole process of this technique can be divided into three phases. First, singer has to listen to the song just to get familiar with the melody, without any lyrics - this should be repeated at least two times. The number of repetitions of these steps in this process depends on the learner’s ability to learn i.e. both their talent and the number of songs they already know by heart are helpful factors. Then they take a printed lyric of the song and listen to it again when trying to imagine in their heads singing it with the singer. To realize how the phrasing goes in the song, the singer

then speaks the lyrics along with the song – still without singing. Finally the singer can try singing the song. In this phase it is already assumed that the singer knows the entire lyric by heart if they are trained properly or at least knows the chorus and the most expressive or most repetitive parts of the song. These repetitive parts are already in the brain of a singer and can be used in spoken language. As Wermke claims “the ‘songstuck-in-my-head’ phenomenon is a melodic Din like an (in) voluntary musical and verbal rehearsal.” (5) This phenomenon is consciously used in this technique. The most important part of this technique is to do everything the original singer does in the song regarding its melody and lyrics. Trying to hit all the notes the same as the original singer also helps. This fact must be emphasized because it is crucial for getting better at both singing and speaking. Some songs are easier to learn – especially if they are catchy or have strictly divided melody in a sense. These songs are also better for practicing this technique. For example songs which have the repetition of lyrics made as a scale, when every word is on different note – such as the song “ABC” by the Jacksons 5. The lyric in this song goes: “ABC, it’s easy as 123, as simple as do re mi, ABC, 123 baby you and me girl”. Even other parts of the song use this style. Another example of divided melody which is then connected to the words could be “Single Ladies” by Beyoncé. The lyric and its phrasing is very sharply divided and attached to the melody when at the same time the words have very specific intonation. Besides the chorus when “All the single ladies, all the single ladies, now put your hands up” is repeated many times, even in the verse where the lyric goes “up in the club we just broke up I’m doing my own little thing”, the words have their place and can very easily stay in singer’s mind because they are connected to the melody. Wermke states: “Using music can produce an ideal situation for learning because songs bridge the [brain‘s] hemispheres, strengthening retention due to complementary functions as the right hemisphere learns

the melody, the left, the words“(4). It means there is certain cooperation between the hemispheres which helps the speaker to connect words to the melody. It can be assumed that when a speaker needs to use the words only, they are still able to pronounce them in the way they learned it with a melody, and it means pronouncing them correctly. 2.5 Kind of music The importance of the style of music a singer is used to sing has been in most studies oppressed, but it can be crucial nevertheless. The main assumption is that the more singing styles a singer is able to master the more authentic accent they can acquire. Moreover the kind of music is also important during the phase of listening. 2.5.1 Style listening This particular topic has been in most works overlooked. Impacts of different styles a singer listens to, can vary especially in the aspects of speech they are focused on. To stay away from misconception of this assumption it is essential to eliminate all music styles where the vocal part is not substantial such as partly or purely instrumental music. Furthermore the music styles where the vocal part is not thought through or where the basic line is hard to remember e.g. death metal or metalcore (vocal style called death growl is used). These cannot be taken in consideration as tools for easier language learning. From analytical point of view, the best styles for language learning should be those, where the vocal part is above all instruments and can be easily heard and understood. There are also other elements which can help the music to be more useful for this purpose. For instance in jazz, acid-jazz or funky music there are a lot of instruments and each of them has its own specific line, but they still merge together. This can be considered as the perfect formula for brain training because this music keeps the singer’s brain concentrated all the time. The singer’s brain focuses on

different instrument every time they are listening to the song. Subconsciously, while focusing on a specific instrument, the brain is still aware of the vocal part because it is always above the instruments. On the other hand Celtic music or country music which, in most cases, tells stories, train brain as well, because the lyric memorizing is connected to the story the song is telling. R’n’B or soul music, for instance, is unique not only because of the singing part which is mostly vocally strong, but also because of the rhythm which is typical for the English language. Even styles where there is rapping instead of singing can be useful. Singer can learn how to speak fluently and especially how to link words together and create a unified speech as if they were singing, which is difficult for Czech speakers who are used to divide words in a sentence by empty voiceless spaces. 2.5.2 Style learning In the perfect case there is a possibility of existence of the ideal candidate for obtaining an authentic accent. The main theoretical premise behind this is, as mentioned above, that every style of music has impact on different aspect of person’s speech. It means that when a singer acquires the highest level of singing skill in every kind of music i.e. all aspects of the style, he or she also obtains a hypothetical pre-requisite to acquire a native-like accent. The supposition that there is a singer who is able to sing all kinds of music and switch between various singing techniques is, however, possible only in a theoretical sphere. Then again there is no need for such extreme. 2.6 Rhythm in speaking “The rhythm of a syllable, word or sentence is the pattern produced by the systematic relationships of its stronger and weaker parts as they succeed each other” (Lewis 49). Rhythm is an important aspect of music as it is of speaking. The Czech

language, as Palková states, is a syllable-timed language, whereas English is a stresstimed language (159). It means that in English some syllables are longer than the others and vowel length creates distinctions between words, which can be confusing for foreign speakers. When speaking of the connection between rhythm and language Gilleece claims: “There is correlation between rhythmic ability and language ability, more specifically the ability to reproduce words in a foreign language” (106). This suggests that learning a certain rhythm is easier for singers who are trained to learn various rhythms of various songs. Once a speaker learns this rhythm it is easier to speak fluently and imitate sounds that fit into the rhythm. Rhythm is one of the aspects that can also help with word-linking and intonation. 2.7 Quality of singing Selection of techniques used to evaluate quality of singing is computationally demanding especially because of various ideas and criteria of meaning of a “good singer”. However, quality of singing can be taken as a common denominator of all factors mentioned above and is therefore important for this research. It means it links together all of the factors contributing to the acquirement of a native-like accent. Besides listener’s taste in music, there are other more objective criteria that can be used for evaluation of a singer’s performance.

3

Survey of the connectivity between accent and quality of singing of Czech singers

3.1 Quality of singing As mentioned earlier, it is difficult to categorize singers according to their quality of singing. This issue, however, is treated at art schools during entrance examinations or even in singing competitions. There is a difference when it comes to the level importance of visual performance in these two cases. In most singing competitions, the overall impression from a performance is the most important. At prestigious singing schools the singing skills themselves are crucial in deciding if a singer should be accepted or not. There have already been studies focused on this topic and they have managed to gather certain criteria needed in order to be able to evaluate singing skills. According to Latukefu’s study, there are four main components of singing that together create a level of mastership at singing. These components are: technical achievement, interpretative skills, professional skills and qualitative judgments. For this research, however, the parts regarding singer’s performance and how they affect listeners’ emotions have to be decreased to the level of impression made only by voice and singing themselves. The criteria for the whole performance including relationship with audience will be omitted. The criteria according to which the singers will be assessed will be analyzed and described in the following subchapters. First and foremost there is an issue of singing voice quality and it is necessary to mention this phenomenon to be accurate in further research. 3.1.1 Singing voice Evaluation of singing skills can be distorted by a listener due to singing voice quality. Some people inherited a “color of voice” that is pleasing to listen to, which can

help to confuse a listener. Singers with “colorful” voices can produce notes out of tune and still sound pleasing. This can help them when they do not have a perfect singing technique, because their singing voices can compensate this lack of technique. Professional musician with a lot of experience in music can, however, avoid this confusion because they can hear beyond “good voice”. Singing voice quality is an important aspect of overall quality of singing, but there is only a weak connection between singing voice and accent regarding everyday speech. It is, of course, important for impersonators who need to have high quality voices to be able to imitate various people and things, but singers used for this research have no intention in trying to sound like anyone but themselves. 3.1.2

Convincingness and satisfaction The word “convincingness” was used by Latukefu to address how persuasive in

their performance a singer can be. Convincingness and satisfaction is linked to the overall performance of a singer. It involves the first part which can be called “feeling” and, even though the visual part of the performance cannot be taken in consideration in this research, the singing should also evoke emotions in the listener. Latukefu mentions convincingness and satisfaction as some of the crucial parts in creating a pleasing performance. As similar to voice quality, experienced musicians can entirely omit consideration of emotions during and after listening to a song, and can focus only on the musical part of it. 3.1.3 Registers As slightly touched in the second chapter, there are three main registers in which a singer can sing: low register (chest voice used air leaning), mix (back of the neck, partly chest) head voice or falsetto (back of the head). There are also other registers such as the whistle register or other mixed registers. A complex singer should be able to

sing in all these registers, but only few songs can cover all of them. It is, therefore, difficult to evaluate a singer in depth from a single song. The main three registers are found in most songs and they are sufficient for the purposes of this thesis. Attention will be drawn especially to the mix, because as Fleming-DeBerger states it is “a blending of legit and belt vocal production that is speech-connected with a wide variety of resonant qualities depending on the repertoire”, so it is the register which is used in speech (11). As mentioned earlier in the second chapter the biggest impact on pronunciation has the technique attached to the middle and high registers called twang. Twang uses soft palate and inner side of the throat along with a certain position of lips (level of openness). It will be one of the main focuses of the evaluation. To be able to deal with the register problematic, an issue of voice control needs to be examined. 3.1.4 Voice control Voice control is closely linked to the usage of all registers, but it can be recognized even from a short passage of a song, sung only in one or two registers. First and foremost the basic requirement is that a singer has to be able to sing in tune, which can be achieved with the help of their “ear sensitivity” in the connection with their musical aptitude. The evaluation of singer’s voice control can be done only if this requirement is met. During the evaluation various criteria are taken in consideration. Any singer, evaluated as singer with a high quality voice control, has to be able to switch between registers effortlessly or at least be able to clearly distinguish between these registers. It is a common knowledge that every singer has a different voice pitch, which means that some registers are easier for them to control. Considering technique the lowest register and the falsetto have very similar techniques of singing involved in their creation. In other words it means that if a singer is able to produce a high quality chest voice, they are also able to produce a high quality head voice. Voice control,

however, does not depend only on this one criterion. If a singer is able to switch between registers perfectly it does not necessarily mean they have a perfect control over their voice. Voice control is also connected to the breath control. As mentioned earlier the airstream leaning differs from register to register and it changes throughout the technique spectrum. If the breath control is strong, the tone sounds clearer and more stable. These abilities take time to practice but basically they all begin in singer’s head. If there is an idea of way of creating a certain sound in singer’s mind, they can implement it to their singing. To put it another way, a talented singer, who has a motivation to create a perfect sounding note, who has a “manual” in their head how to do it and how it should sound, and who also has already reached a certain level of mastership at singing, can easily create this “perfect sound”. This singer can then use this technique of linking multiple skills together to create a perfect sound while speaking. There is also one aspect of voice control which cannot be easily described. Basically, this way of singing was primarily used by singers of African origin from early stages of jazz and later on in R’n’B, soul and other similar styles of music. Because African-Americans have more flexible vocal cords, this way of singing was natural for them. To explain how this way of singing sounds, it can be imagined as a very fast sequences of tones following each other mostly down the scale while staying in tune the whole time. Only singers with high level of voice and breath control are able to use this technique effortlessly without ruining their voices. According to these data, a singer who is able to imitate this way of singing and is also able to switch between registers has the highest level of voice control in popular singing. Fleming also mentions another skill attached to quality of singing, which is accuracy.

3.1.5 Accuracy Accuracy can be interpreted as either tone accuracy or accuracy in imitation and interpretation of a certain singer. Furthermore the tone accuracy can be determined by its place on the scale and by its rhythmic features. Rhythmic features will be dealt with in the following subchapter. The place on the scale of a certain tone is fixed and every deviation from its original position can be recognized. The difference is, however, in the extent of this deviation. When talking about an average singer, mostly this deviation occurs in the extent of a semi-tone mostly not even recognized by this singer. This can distinguish an average singer from an excellent singer. An excellent singer with high ear sensitivity can produce a tone, which is semi-tone under/above the original position of the tone, but can immediately hear it and tune themselves to the original position of the tone. This same phenomenon can be found in case of tuning instruments. This is also one of the criteria which can be predominant for evaluation of quality of singing. The second approach towards accuracy is, as mentioned above, imitation. Imitative abilities in the connection with speech abilities were analyzed in the second chapter. Here these abilities have different meaning which was only touched upon. Accuracy in this sense means that the singer covering a certain song is able to reproduce all the tones and phrasing in the same manner as the original singer. Covering singers tend to make singing easier for them by for example changing the key in which they sing the song. It is understandable in the case of a female singer singing a male part; otherwise it makes the impression that the singer is not good enough because they do not have the same vocal range or singing abilities to sing the song in the original key. Another way to make singing easier is to omit certain more difficult parts of the song. Omitting or making some parts easier can evoke the same impression as changing the key. Nonmusicians mostly cannot tell if someone sings a song a tone lower because it does not

make much difference, but almost everyone can tell when someone creates a different phrasing or omits the most difficult tone in the whole song because most people are waiting for this one particular part, especially when a singer sings a well-known song. 3.1.6 Rhythm It is a common knowledge that rhythm plays a crucial role in both singing and speaking, especially when it comes to English which as a language has its own specific rhythm. It can be assumed that when a singer has a punctual rhythm when singing, they can be able to use this ability when speaking. Not only rhythm helps with phrasing while singing but also with linking words together while speaking. This seems to be the biggest issue of native Czech speakers who try to learn how to speak English fluently. Czech speakers tend to make pauses between words, while English is based on connecting words together. Some Czech speakers mistake rhythm for speed. Speaking quickly does not necessarily mean connecting words properly. A speaker can connect words and at the same time sounds intelligible. Adopting this rhythm with the help of songs learned can have an impact on speaker’s speech improvement. As mentioned earlier, the kinds of music a person listens to have an impact on their singing and speaking abilities. Regarding rhythm the basic premise is that the most helpful kind of music would be the one with the most easily audible distinction of rhythmic periods (it can be for example a beat given by the bass drum and/or the snare drum) played in a medium speed. In other words that is music which imitates regular speech environment. For instance children’s songs are constructed in this manner and are a perfect example of the combination of melody, rhythm and also principle of creation of poems. This subconscious connection between music rhythm and language rhythm does not need to be known to the singer and they are still able to use these common features to make their speech more plausible.

3.1.7 Memorization Melody, lyrics and key are the main focuses regarding memorization. Furthermore, the issue of memorization can be dealt with from more than one standpoint. Firstly, it is needed to be mentioned, that long-term and short-term memory can play crucial role in the connection between music and accent acquisition. There are singers, who has to be cramming a certain lyrics into their heads, in order to perform the song and a day or week later they do not remember a word from it. Others can memorize hundreds of lyrics without any problem and remember them for years without singing them. Lyric memorization plays a very important role in accent acquisition, because singers who have various lyrics in their memory have a wider spectrum of sounds to choose from while speaking. Memorization of a melody is the easiest part for all singers. It is a significantly important linking part between memory for lyrics and speech itself. Melody is easier to memorize than lyrics, but as certain melody is linked to certain lyrics, it can help with its memorization and its remembering and usage in everyday speech. The accent of the song is then used also in speaking. The third focus is key memory, which is the hardest ability to achieve and only some singers have it. It requires not only high ear sensitivity but also combination of memory for melody and inherited musical aptitude. It can be trained and acquired later in life, but it is very difficult to achieve the highest level of mastership at this discipline. Being able to remember in which exact key is a song played is easier for musicians, because they remember for instance C major and they simply play it. Singers, if they do not have the ability to sing any note from the top of their heads, are not told much with this piece of information. There comes the importance of key memory. It is basically ability of a singer to start singing a song in its original key without instrumental music to lead them. This can be an advantage and also a disadvantage. If a band starts playing a song and

the singer remembers it in a different key, it can be very confusing and it basically does not sound right to the singer. To conclude the topic of memorization, memory for melody and memory for lyrics are vital for quality of singing, while key memory can be taken as additional ability which can help an experienced singer and on the other hand confuse an inexperienced one. 3.2 Procedure and division

In order to examine a possible connection between accent and quality of singing, both singing and speaking needed to be assessed. Two groups of musicians participated in the survey. The first group was formed by singers who actively participated in the survey by filling a questionnaire, recording their reading of an English written text and also recording of an English song. In the second group there are musicians who assessed these previously recorded songs. After the assessment of both singing and speaking, two different groups were created in order to examine what could be the possible connecting point between good accent and high quality of singing. All the participants have signed an informed written consent with their voice recordings being used for research purposes and appearing as Appendix in the author’s unpublished Bachelor’s diploma work. 3.2.1 Singers A number of 9 singers actively participated in the survey and they were randomly given numbers from 1 to 9 regardless their singing or speaking abilities. All of these singers were asked to choose an English song of their choice under the circumstance they knew the lyrics by heart. They were also asked to choose a song which could represent the kind of music they usually listen to the most. Then they would read and record an English text written by the author of this thesis (see Appendix B) for purposes of the assessing of their speech abilities and accent, and then they

would record an English song (see Appendix A). All the songs and recordings of singers’ reading were copied on a compact disc attached to the thesis. The questionnaire these singers filled was designed to explain possible differences in both assessments (see Appendix C). It is also needed to be said that all these singers are from 19 to 24 years of age and all of them have been studying English as their L2 since primary school. 3.2.2 Assessing musicians A number of 6 highly experienced musicians i.e. musicians who started playing an instrument or singing at very young age and have been doing music for a living for 15 or more years were asked to assess all the recordings of the singers’ songs according to the categories mentioned earlier in the thesis along with a proposal of an overall mark for every singer. This marking system was based on numbers 1 to 3, with 1 being the best and 3 being the worst and helped to create 3 groups of singers. The groups were named X,Y and Z (see table 1). The division of singers was based on the average of the marks they were given in the following categories: tune, voice control, accuracy, rhythm and overall mark which covered convincingness and feelings the singer managed to evoke in the assessing musicians. It is needed to be said that the marks from different musicians mostly coincided. These musicians first listened to all of the songs to be able to create a theoretical scale and establish the highest and the lowest quality. The singer number 9 achieved the maximum of five best marks from the musicians, which makes them the best singer in this survey. All the singers were, however, assessed as good, only some of them were better in certain disciplines.

Groups

Singers

Description

X

9,5,4

Highest level of all disciplines

Y

3,7,6,1

Slightly lower level of voice control

Z

2,8

Lower level of voice control and accuracy

Table 1. Singers as sorted by their singing performance 3.2.3 Speaking The groups X,Y,Z were also created after assessing the speaking part of the survey (see table 2). There the singers were assessed based on their speech performance regarding criteria mentioned in the first chapter of this thesis, independently on their place in the first division. The categories were: vowels, fricatives, nasals, laterals, s/z, w/v, aspiration and –ing ending. Also their accent and overall impression were taken in consideration. These groups were created independently on the evaluation of singing, but the numbers of singers are the same. Numbers of singers who are in the same group as they were in the singing part are written in bold. Groups

Singers

Description

X

3,5,9,6

The most plausible accent

Y

1,4,7

Problems in some disciplines

Z

2,8

Problems with almost all speech phenomena

Table 2. Singers as sorted by their speaking

3.3 Analysis These two on each other independent divisions into groups sorted by singing and speaking show that most of the singers are in the same group in both singing and

speaking. The singer number 9, who was according to the overall mark evaluated as the best singer, has also one of the three best accents. There are also singers who changed their group. These singers, however, are on the edge of both groups regarding singing and speaking. When trying to find the factor which caused moving some of the singers from group X to Y and vice versa, it seems that memory for lyrics is one of the key issues. According to the answers in questionnaires these singers were asked to fill, the best singer knows over 1000 different lyrics by heart and other singers in the group X know at least 250 lyrics. The singers in the group Y know from 30 to 70 songs and the singers in the group Z know only 7 to 15 songs by heart. The same model works for the questions about how many times they need to listen to the song to learn the melody and to learn the lyrics to an unknown song. The singers who need to listen to the song only once or twice to learn the melody, and four to five times to learn the lyrics are in the group X in both evaluations. Moreover, the kind of music these singers listen to showed to have significantly high importance. The singers in the group X listen to jazz, R’n’B, gospel, soul, Celtic music and other music genres which require high level of all singing abilities mentioned. Whereas singers in the group Z listen to electro music, pop and other types of dance music. The third possible skill that could make a difference in the division was rhythm. It was, actually, mentioned and drawn attention to by the assessing musicians, that there are big differences in the abilities of singers to sing in perfectly accurate rhythm. That, however, does not mean singing exactly how the metronome clicks, but one of the musicians mentioned the term “to feel the rhythm”. In other words, the best singers seem to naturally have this feeling of rhythm which they can later use in speaking. It can be hereditary or trained by listening to and singing rhythmically more challenging songs. Nevertheless it was proved to be one of the three factors influencing these different divisions into groups the most. These evaluations also

showed, that the higher quality of singing, the higher probability that a singer can obtain a plausible accent. However, only exceptionally good singers, who have mastered most of the abilities mentioned regarding high quality of singing, can acquire a native-like accent.

Conclusion

The thesis discusses the question of the connection between quality of singing and English pronunciation of Czech polo professional singers. Since very little research has been made considering singers in particular, this thesis focuses not on people with musical aptitude in general, but only on this much smaller group of musicians. Furthermore it was expected that the higher quality of singing the better English pronunciation. Firstly, the characteristics of both Czech and English pronunciations were closely analyzed in order to be able to define difficulties Czech speakers can possibly meet when they speak English. Moreover, it was stated what are the most common mistakes Czechs tend to make in their English speech. Mentioning of these differences and mistakes also prepared a template for future analysis. To get to the second part of the comparison between music and speech, the most crucial abilities concerning musicians and their musical aptitude were stated. Furthermore, memory, rhythm, singing technique and various kinds of music a speaker listens to were shown as having a significant importance in making the main difference in the level of accent plausibility. In order to find the connection between quality of singing and the level of accent plausibility, both singing and speaking needed to be analyzed and assessed. All singers who participated in the procedure were divided into three groups. Firstly, they were divided into groups according to their singing abilities evaluated by experienced musicians. Secondly, regardless of their singing abilities, they were divided into groups according to their speaking.

Only this division itself showed that most of the singers were placed in one group of singing quality and in the same group of quality of pronunciation. It is needed to be mentioned that not one singer moved from the group X to the group Z or vice versa. However, there were singers who moved from the group X to the group Y, or from the group Y to the group X. These were singers who were on the edge of both groups and in one evaluation they would better fit into the group X and in the other they would have more common characteristics of the group Y. Furthermore, in order to be able to determine what abilities are the most important ones regarding a plausible accent acquisition, it was needed to use information from the questionnaires these singers filled in and also analyzed their singing in more depth to find similarities. In-depth evaluation more clearly stated abilities. These abilities were lyrics and memory for melody, rhythm and kinds of music these singers usually sing and listen to. To put it another way, combining musical aptitude and obtaining high levels of all abilities concerning quality of singing can create a perfect pre-requisite for a singer to be a speaker with a plausible accent. Musical aptitude itself is not enough, because all the singers in the survey were able to sing in tune and were assessed by the assessing musicians as being good singers. This proves that all musicians do not have plausible accents.

Works Cited

Primary sources Garrigan, Steve. All I want. Kodaline. Kodaline, 2013. MP3. Keys, Alicia. By Alicia Keys. Hallelujah. Mark Batson, 2016. MP3. Kiiara. By Kiara Saulters and David Singer-Vine. Gold. Felix Snow, 2015. MP3. Knowles, Beyoncé. By Robert Waller. Me, myself and I. Scott Storch, 2002. MP3. Lee, Peggy. By Eddie Cooley and John Davenport. Fever. Henry Glover, 1956. MP3. Legend, John. By John Stephens. Love me now. Ryan Mills, 2016. MP3. Menzel, Idina. Take me or leave me. Rob Cavallo, 2005. MP3. Robin, Guy James, and John Paul Cooper. Perfect strangers. Jonas Blue. Jonas Blue, 2015. MP3. Sinatra, Frank. By Cole Porter. I've got you under my skin. Voyle Gilmore, 1956. MP3.

Secondary Sources Bronstein, Arthur J. The pronunciation of American English. New York: AppletonCentury-Crofts, 1960. Print. Falioni, J.W. "Music as Means To Enhance Cultural Awareness and Literacy in the Foreign Language Classroom." Thesis. 1993. Mid-Atlantic Journal of Foreign Language Pedagogy 7 (1993): 97-108. Print. Fleming-DeBerger, Rachelle. "Guidelines and Criteria to Assess Singing and Music Training in Baccalaureate Music Theater Programs." Diss. U of Miami, 2011. 1 Dec. 2011. Web. 3 Apr. 2017. Gilleece, Lorraine Frances. "An empirical investigation of the association between musical aptitude and foreign language aptitude." Diss. U of Dublin, 2006. Print.

Gimson, Alfred Charles. An Introduction to the pronunciation of English. London: Edward Arnold, 1962. Print. Gimson, A. C. A practical course of English pronunciation: a perceptual approach. London: E. Arnold, 1993. Print. Graham, Robert Somerville. “The Music of Language and the Foreign Accent.“ The French Review 42 (1969): 445-51 Gordy, Berry, Freddie Perren, Fonce Mizell, Deke RIchards, and Michael Jackson. ABC. Motown, 1992. MP3. Knowles, Beyoncé, and Thaddis Harrell. By Christopher Stewart and Terius Nash. Single ladies (Put a ring on it). Tricky, 2008. MP3. tiny. Brno: Masarykova univerzita, 1997. Print. Latukefu, Lotte. Critical Discernment of Quality in Singing: An Approach to Encouraging Self-regulated Singers through Peer Assessment. Thesis. University of Wollongong, 2010. N.p.: SAGE Publications Ltd, 2010. Web. 13 Mar. 2017. Lewis, J.Windsor. A guide to English pronunciation. Oslo: Universitetsforlaget, 1969. Print. McDonough, Joyce, Heike Lenhert-LeHouiller, and Neil Bardhan. "The Perception of Nasalized Vowels in American English: An Investigation of On-line Use of Vowel Nasalization in Lexical Access." Thesis. University of Rochester, n.d. Web. 10 Apr. 2017.

oboru. Praha: Univerzita Karlova, vyd. Karolinum, 1997. Print.

The Songbird Tree Kerri Ho. “How to Sing With Twang.” Online video clip. YouTube. YouTube, 27 April 2016. Web. 10 April 2016. Zybert, Jerzy, and Sabina Stępień. "Musical Intelligence and Foreign Language Learning." Research in Language 7.-1 (2009): n. pag. Web. Wermke, K., M.C. Fonseca-Mora, and C. Toscano-Fuentes. "Melodies that help: The Relation between Language Aptitude and Musical Intelligence." Anglistik International Journal of English Studies 22.101-118 (2011): 101-18. Web. 15 Mar. 2017.

Summary (English) This bachelor thesis deals with the connection between musical aptitude and polo-professional Czech singers’ acquisition of a plausible English accent. One of the main issues, which this thesis deals with, is the connection between quality of singing and pronunciation. The premise here is that qualities of both singing and speaking are connected and can be improved depending on one another. As the quality of singing raises, the quality of speaking raises too. In other words, a singer who achieves a high level of quality of singing is presumed to be an English speaker with almost native-like accent. The first chapter deals with the differences in pronunciation between the Czech language and the English language. The biggest issues Czech speakers tend to have with English pronunciation are also mentioned in this chapter. Further on, the thesis focuses on the connection between factors influencing the acquisition of high level of mastership at singing, and skills which can help to acquire the most plausible English accent possible. The attention is drawn especially to musical aptitude and techniques of singing, which can help with learning of foreign language. The final part is dedicated to a description of quality of singing and also analysis of recordings of speaking and singing of 9 Czech singers in the connection with the phenomena mentioned earlier in the thesis. Opinions of six highly experienced musicians with many years of experience in the musical field were used for the analysis of the singing part. The evaluation establishes that singers evaluated as better singers also have better English pronunciations. The slight deviation from this model proves the importance of memory for lyrics and rhythm of these singers.

Summary (Czech) Tato bakalářská práce se zabývá spojitostí mezi hudebním sluchem a osvojováním anglické výslovnosti u českých poloprofesionálních zpěváků. Jednou z hypotéz je spojitost kvality zpěvu s kvalitou přízvuku a výslovnosti v anglickém jazyce. Předpokladem zde je, že kvality obou odvětví se prolínají a společně se mohou zvyšovat i snižovat. To znamená, že zpěvák s vysokou úrovní kvality zpěvu má předpoklady k tomu mít i dobrou anglickou výslovnost. První kapitola je zaměřena na rozdíly v českém a anglickém jazyce týkající se výslovnosti a tvoření různých hlásek v obou jazycích. Jsou zde také zmíněny největší problémy, které tyto rozdíly způsobují Čechům snažícím se o akvizici co nejvěrohodnějšího anglického přízvuku. Další kapitola je již věnována konkrétní spojitosti mezi faktory ovlivňujícími dosažení vysoké úrovně ve zpěvu a dovednostmi, které mohou pomoci při získání co nejlepšího přízvuku v anglickém jazyce. Je zde rozebírán především hudební sluch a techniky zpěvu, které se zdají být nápomocny v učení cizího jazyka. Závěrečná část se zabývá vymezením pojmu „kvalita zpěvu“ a analýzou nahrávek mluveného a zpívaného projevu devíti poloprofesionálních zpěváků ve spojitosti s dříve zmíněnou problematikou výslovnosti a kvality zpěvu. Pro analýzu zpěvu bylo využito šesti profesionálních muzikantů s mnohaletými zkušenostmi v oblasti hudby. Výsledky srovnání ukázaly, že zpěváci, kteří byli ohodnoceni jako kvalitnější, měli zároveň i kvalitnější anglickou výslovnost. Odchylky od tohoto modelu také prokázaly důležitost paměti na texty písní a přesnosti rytmu těchto zpěváků.

Appendix A

Contents of enclosed CD-ROM

This CD contains 18 recordings of singers’ singing and speaking. The first half contains 9 songs and the second half 9 recordings of speaking. Singers’ names are in both halves replaced by numbers. Regarding the songs, the name of the song and singers’ number is mentioned. For an easier comparison, the recording of speaking of a particular singer imminently follows their song recording.

The order is as follows: 1. Love me now

Singer 1

2. Speaking 1

Singer 1

3. Gold

Singer 2

4. Speaking 2

Singer 2

5. Perfect strangers

Singer 3

6. Speaking 3

Singer 3

7. Hallelujah

Singer 4

8. Speaking 4

Singer 4

9. Take me or leave me

Singer 5

10. Speaking 5

Singer 5

11. All I want

Singer 6

12. Speaking 6

Singer 6

13. I got you under my skin

Singer 7

14. Speaking 7

Singer 7

15. Fever

Singer 8

16. Speaking 8

Singer 8

17. Me, Myself and I

Singer 9

18. Speaking 9

Singer 9

Appendix B

The text singers were asked to read and record for the evaluation

There once was a girl who believed in fairies. When she told someone she got laughed at so she stopped telling and decided to keep it a secret. Then one summer evening she was walking through the forest close to her house. The day had already slipped away and the dark night came. She was humming a Celtic song she knew from her grandmother and she heard her voice singing: The forest is magic The trees are alive Dear child be careful While counting the stars The wood’s full of fairies, nymphs and dryads They wait in the darkness; They appear when you’re lost...

She saw some mysterious light coming through the trees and she couldn’t help following it. The moon was shining to reveal a glade where the dryads were dancing and singing. She’d heard stories about these creatures and suspected they would never let her go home. She decided to run through the forest back to the path. She couldn’t find it. Then she heard a voice behind her: “Do you need help?” whispered one of the fairies. “I got lost” she replied, and she feared she was lost forever. The fairy reached for the moonshine dust to make flying possible. They both were suddenly floating in the air, leaving the woods, flying home. The sun was up, tickling her, waking her up in her bed. “Was it a dream?” A hillock of silver specks on the sill was the answer.

Appendix C

This is the questionnaire which singers were asked to fill in

1. How old are you? 2. How long have you been singing? 3. What are your favorite kinds of music? 4. How long does it take for you to learn a melody of a song? (How many times do you need to hear it?) 5. How long does it take for you to learn lyrics? 6. How long have you been studying English? 7. How many English songs do you know by heart? 8. How do you learn a song? (Technique) 9. Do you watch American/British movies/TV shows in English? 10. Is it a problem for you to sing in English?