THE AWARENESS OF SPEAKERS OF CROATIAN AS L2 OF VARIATIONS IN THE PRONUNCIATION OF VOWELS

Abstract

Sociophonetic researches of differences in the pronunciation of vowels often stress the greater importance of adequacy in public speech than on other levels, i.e. stress is placed on the suprasegmental level of accents. In addition, native speakers of Croatian tend to appreciate generously those non-native speakers of Croatian who tend to make mistakes in their realization of Croatian accents; nonetheless they appear to be very strict in evaluating the pronunciation of vowels. The results of this research show that the speakers of Croatian as L2 are aware of their deviations in the pronunciation of vowels. Perceptive analysis indicates that the biggest problem is the pronunciation of the vowels o and u.