Acoustic analyses of differences in [ç] and [ʃ] productions in Hood German

[2] postulates that the multi-ethnolect Hood German (as spoken in Berlin, Ger) differentiates three realizations of /ç/: [ç], [ɕ] and [∫]. Earlier acoustic analyses of 1192 tokens of /ç/ from the ZASspontaneous speech database (collected from 9 adolescent speakers of the Hood German multiethnolect) [9] showed no reliable differences in curtosis, skewness, cog or peak between items impressionistically categorized into these three groups. For a more controlled study, we have now collected 3 minimal pairs contrasting /ç/ with /∫/, read 1) embedded in carrier sentences and 2) as word lists. 32 adolescents from a middle school in Kreuzberg (Berlin) participated in this study. Many of them had muli-ethnic backgrounds and spoke languages other than German at home, but several students also were monolingual mono-ethnic Germans. Results indicate that there is a strong tendency for /ç/ and /∫/ to merge in the speech of young Kreuzberg adolescents and that the language background (monolingual versus multilingual), has an influence on the realization of /ç/ as [ç], [ɕ] or [∫]. However, also monolingual mono-ethnic Germans show a strong tendency for merging and dismissing this contrast. Moreover, our data suggests that locally identifying as somebody from Kreuzberg in contrast to just Berlin is a predictor for palatalization.