A comparative study of the acoustic features of the post-alveolar fricative ʃ in Mandarin, Cantonese, and English speakers

Chinese learners of English often experience interference from their native languages when pronouncing certain fricatives in English, particularly the post-alveolar fricative ʃ. This study investigates the acoustic features of the voiceless post-alveolar fricative ʃ produced by Mandarin Chinese learners, Cantonese learners, and native English speakers. The corpus comprises recordings of English words containing ʃ from 20 Mandarin Chinese speakers, 20 Cantonese speakers, and 20 native English speakers. Spectral moments of ʃ—centroid frequency, variance, skewness, and kurtosis—were extracted using Praat to capture key acoustic properties associated with fricative production. Linear Discriminant Analysis was employed to evaluate the distinctiveness of accented productions of ʃ and to classify differences between Mandarin- and Cantonese-accented ʃ relative to native English ʃ. Results reveal that transfer from native languages significantly influenced ʃ production: Mandarin speakers’ production of ʃ in English resembled Mandarin retroflex ʂ, while Cantonese speakers’ ʃ in English showed features of Cantonese s. Spectral parameter analysis indicated that Mandarin-accented ʃ was acoustically closer to native English ʃ than Cantonese-accented ʃ. These findings provide empirical evidence on the influence of L1 phonetic transfer on English fricative production and underscore the need for targeted pronunciation instruction tailored to specific L1 backgrounds.