Gemination in Northern Welsh English

Abstract

This study tries to contribute to research in bilingualism by investigating whether phonological transfer from Welsh to Welsh English occurs in North Wales. The focus lies on consonant lengthening, or gemination. 8 Welsh-English bilinguals in two age groups from North Wales (mean ages: 22 and 54) and 8 monolingual English speakers (mean ages: 20 and 50,5) participated. They were asked to fill in a questionnaire about language use and they were recorded when reading out loud a list of sentences. Acoustic and statistical analyses strongly suggest that gemination occurs in the speech of Welsh-English bilinguals. In addition, results show that the extent to which geminates are used depends on how much Welsh they speak and the linguistic context (vowel length, manner of articulation and voicing).