Prosodic Features of NES vs. NNES

Differences and Effects on Intercultural Communication

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Introduction

During my stay in Bandung, precisely on 24th of May 2026, I watched a TV program from TVRI that focused on introducing Indonesian cultures. The hosts were native Indonesian and they spoke mostly in English (except when they talk to locals). When I listen to the host carefully, I noticed a slight difference in prosodic features of the host. To be precise, I usually listen to NES (Native English Speaker) hosts, and this felt different from that of NNES (Non-Native English Speaker). So, this got me thinking:

“Is there really a difference of prosodic features in NNES and NES?”

Literature Review

During the conception of this mini study, I thought that the sound features that regulates how meaning is conveyed are (1) pitch, and (2) intonation. But I didn’t actually know the difference between the two. I looked up on Google to find out the difference between the two features.

After doing some literature reviews , I found that there are at least three sound features when human communicate: (1) pitch, (2) intonation, and (3) tone.

Pitch

THe word “pitch” has a slight different meaning across fields. In music studies, pitch refers to the highs and lows note of the instrument. It specifically points at the musical notes such as re, fa, la, si, do, etc. at octaves. Different notes in different octave level denotes different pitch, which can (usually) be distinguishable from the frequency of the note. For example, a “do” note from a lower octave would fall under low frequency band. Inversely, the same “do” note from a higher octave level would be classified as high frequency. In other words, as the musical note gets higher, frequency gets higher as well (a positive relationship).

In linguistics, however, the word “pitch” refers to the highs and lows of the vocal sound being produced by someone. In a sense, it has similar characteristics