Perception and Analysis of Chinese Accented German Vowels

This report describes a new approach to obtain specific knowledge about the production of German vowels by Chinese speakers. Experiments have been conducted to acquire both perceptual and acoustic measures of the vowels. 11 Chinese speakers were selected as subjects to read 20 German words. Assessment was conducted by 10 German native speakers. We came up with the conclusion, that the Chinese speakers have less difficulty in pronouncing the long vowels. They are not accurate in producing the short vowels. With further acoustic investigation, it was further discovered that the Chinese speakers can not always aware of the duration contrast of long-short vowels, and they can not find the right position of the tongue and grasp the degree of liprounding in producing central vowels.