The intelligibility of native and non-native speakers of American English using spelling alphabet test materials

Abstract

Male and female speakers who were native speakers of French and Dutch, as well as native American Engish speakers, were recorded reading randomized lists of the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) spelling alphabet words (ALFA, BRAVO, CHARLIE, etc.) and the digits 0 to 9. The resulting tapes were subjected to a variety of degradations, including Gaussian noise, interruption by silence and by noise, and LPC coding. Non-native speakers were less intelligible than the native speakers, and the decrement was greater for some of the degraded speech conditions. Results are compared with selected DRT scores for the same speakers. [Work supported by NAVSPAWARSYSCOM.]