A Database for the Analysis of Cross-Lingual Pronunciation Variants of European City Names

This paper reports on a speech database that includes non-native pronunciation variants of city names/town names from several European languages. The database is designed as a research tool for the study of pronunciation variants in this specific domain that occur in different groups of non-native speakers. The ongoing data collection currently comprises 20 to 27 native speakers of 3 languages each who pronounce material from 5 languages. The languages covered are English, German, French, Italian, and Dutch. All languages are examined as the source language (L1) and as the target language (L2). For the first stage of the data collection, the targeted status is a collection of 5 x 5 language directions with at least 20 speakers per native language. After a brief overview of related studies and an outline of some specifics of proper names (place names in particular) in the context of speech technology applications, the database design and the current stage of the data collection is described.