Lingua Franca Core
The Lingua Franca Core is a selection of pronunciation features of the English language recommended as a basis in teaching of English as a lingua franca. It was proposed by linguist Jennifer Jenkins in her 2000 book The Phonology of English as an International Language. Jenkins derived the LFC from features found to be crucial in non-native speakers' understanding of each other, and advocated that teachers focus on those features and regard deviations from other native features not as errors but as acceptable variations. The proposal sparked a debate among linguists and pedagogists, while Jenkins contended that much of the criticism was based on misinterpretations of her proposal.
Features
Jenkins summarised the Lingua Franca Core as follows:- may be substituted by other consonants.
- Syllable-final is always produced.
- Intervocalic are always pronounced rather than .
- Allophonic variation within a consonant is allowed insofar as it does not interfere with another phoneme.
- Word-initial are aspirated.
- Pre-fortis clipping is present, so that the vowel in kit is shorter than that in kid.
- Omission of consonants in clusters is allowed word-medially and -finally.
- Vowel epenthesis between consonants is allowed.
- The contrast between checked and free vowels is maintained quantitatively, not necessarily qualitatively, so that the vowel in heat is longer than that in hit but need not differ in quality.
- Non-native vowel qualities are acceptable as long as they are consistent, except for the vowel.
- Contrastive stress is present.
- ,, and
- Finer vowel quality
- Weak forms of function words
- Some features of connected speech, such as the place assimilation of a word-final plosive
- Pitch movement signalling attitude or grammatical meaning
- Lexical stress
- Stress-timed rhythm
The features were based on 40 tokens of misunderstanding between speakers from Japan and Switzerland, and were intended as subject to further empirical testing and fine-tuning. The legitimacy of inclusion or exclusion of certain features has been challenged, such as, rhoticity, the vowel, lexical stress, and pitch movement. Taking into account these perceived shortcomings of the LFC, recommendations similar to the LFC but intended for learners from specific linguistic or geographical backgrounds have been produced.