The EMIME Bilingual Database

Abstract

This paper describes the collection of a bilingual database of Finnish/English and German/English data. In addition, the accents of the talkers in the database have been rated. English, German and Finnish listeners assessed the English, German and Finnish talkers' degree of foreign accent in English. Native English listeners showed higher inter-listener agreement than non-native listeners. Further analyses showed that non-native listeners judged Finnish and German female talkers to be significantly less accented than do English listeners. German males are judged less accented by Finnish listeners than they are by English and German listeners and there is no difference between listeners as to how they judge the accent of Finnish males. Finally, all English talkers are judged more accented by non-native listeners than they are by native English listeners.