Rhotics in Spanish as a foreign language: An intervention study with German–Turkish bilinguals

Abstract

While German has one rhotic phoneme, the uvular fricative /ʁ/, which is vocalized to [ɐ] in syllable-final position, Spanish possesses two alveolar rhotics, the tap /ɾ/ and the trill /r/, which never undergo vocalization. Turkish patterns with German in having one rhotic but is closer to Spanish in sharing the alveolar place of articulation and in lacking r-vocalization. This article reports on an intervention study carried out with 12 German–Turkish heritage bilinguals learning Spanish in Germany. Reading data were collected before, during, and after the completion of a digital learning module. The phonetic cues considered were (1) consonantal production of the target segment; (2) target-like place of articulation, and (3) target-like distribution of the tap–trill contrast. Results show that high correctness rates regarding the production of alveolar rhotics are achieved from the outset and that the target-likeness of the tap–trill distribution and the avoidance of r-vocalization generally improves across the three measurement points. The case of a single learner who had primarily transferred the German uvular rhotic and showed a considerably increased correctness rate after the intervention indicates that the learners’ awareness of similarities and differences between their heritage language and Spanish has a positive effect on rhotic acquisition.

Keywords

• german
• heritage bilingualism
• rhotics
• spanish as a foreign language
• turkish