Introduction

Foreign-accented English abounds in numerous phonetically incorrect words, known as local errors, which are stored in learners' memory with phonologically deviant representations, for example Disney often pronounced in Polish English as [d'isnej] and foreign as [fo'rejn]. In a recent experimental study (Szpyra-Kozłowska, in press), I have demonstrated that such mispronounced items, generally disregarded in pronunciation teaching materials and intelligibility research, are highly detrimental to successful communication in that they significantly decrease the speaker's comprehensibility and intelligibility, create the impression of a heavy foreign accent and are irritating for the listeners. In fact, English native speakers' error gravity judgements show that phonetically seriously deformed words are evaluated as more problematic in all four respects than segmental and prosodic inaccuracies, that is global errors, typical of learners' interlanguage. Consequently, such items deserve to be thoroughly investigated and pedagogically prioritized.

The chapter examines the subjective evaluation of phonetically difficult words by Polish intermediate learners of English, in whose speech they are particularly numerous. It attempts to analyse the major sources of word pronunciation errors and identify several others which have so far escaped notice of pronunciation specialists. This is done on the basis of an experiment carried out by the author in which 100 secondary school pupils, all intermediate learners of English, were asked to list those words whose pronunciation they found particularly difficult as well as to provide comments on the problematic aspects of these items. The obtained data are presented, classified and examined. The analysis hopes to provide some new insights into the interplay between vocabulary and phonetics in the Polish English interlanguage of intermediate learners and carry useful classroom implications.