engleski

Italian Speakers Learning Croatian as L2 : accents

The influence of one’s mother tongue in learning a foreign language is evident at all levels. The most enduring and prominent phenomenon in L1 transfer is the transfer of sounds, something which foreigners learning Croatian L2 usually point out. This paper focusses on deviations in the pronunciation of Croatian made by Italian-speaking students who attend the course Croatian as L2 and FL at Croaticum Centre of the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, University of Zagreb during their stay in Zagreb through the Erasmus Programme. The analysis shows that the most frequent deviations from the standard pronunciation occur in two situations: (a) in polysyllabic words whose first syllable should be stressed in standard Croatian and (b) in certain verbs whose stressed syllable changes according to the word’s form. These results indicate that the subjects perceived the Zagreb accentual system as a familiar one and close to their mother tongue so that the tendency to stress the pen-ultimate syllable may prove the possibility of interference with the Italian accentual system.

accents ; Italian language L1 ; Croatian language L2

nije evidentirano