Received: 10 May 2018 Revised: 30 July 2018 Accepted: 3 August 2018 DOI: 10.1111/weng.12344 PAPER The accentedness, comprehensibility, and intelligibility of Asian Englishes Jette G. Hansen Edwards 1 Mary L. Zampini 2 Caitlin Cunningham 3 1 Department of English, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong 2 Department of Foreign Languages, Le Moyne College, USA 3 Department of Mathematics, Le Moyne College, USA Correspondence Jette G. Hansen Edwards, Department of English, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, 338 Fung King Hey Building, Shatin, HKSAR. Email: jhansen@cuhk.edu.hk Funding information Faculty of Arts, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Grant/Award Number: Direct Grant for Research Abstract This study examines the accentedness, comprehensibility, and intel- ligibility of speakers of English from China, Hong Kong, Singapore, and the United States (US) by listeners from Hong Kong, Singapore, China, and the US on two speech tasks (read vs. conversation). It also examines the effect of shared background on scores for all listeners as well as the effect of international experience for the Hong Kong and the US listeners. The study found that although accentedness and comprehensibility were positively correlated, neither variable was significantly correlated with intelligibility. The study found that shared background increased ratings of accentedness and com- prehensibility but not intelligibility scores, and that international experience also had an effect during the conversational task, in that listeners with international experience received significantly higher intelligibility scores than those without any such international experience. 1 INTRODUCTION The current study examines the intelligibility, accentedness, and comprehensibility of three varieties of English in Asia – the English spoken in China (China English), Hong Kong (Hong Kong English), and Singapore (Singapore English), as well as American English, which has gained prominence in Asia in the past decade due to the influence of the Amer- ican mass media (Hansen Edwards, 2016b; Tan, 2012, 2016). Despite the fact that many researchers and a growing number of speakers of these varieties (Bolton, 2000, 2008; Hansen Edwards, 2015, 2016a; Kirkpatrick, 2007; Schnei- der, 2007) view these Englishes as legitimate in their own right, American and/or British English models and norms for language teaching and assessment are still prevalent in many parts of Asia, including Hong Kong, Singapore, and China, largely due to the unsupported belief that American English and British English are ‘less accented’ and thus more intel- ligible than Asian Englishes (Chan, 2013; Hansen Edwards, 2015; Sewell, 2013). However, there has been no research to date that examines the relationship between intelligibility, comprehensibility, and accentedness of Asian Englishes. This research gap provides the impetus for the current study. Before the relevant literature is reviewed, it is crucial to define the three constructs of the study and examine how they have been operationalized in previous research. Most research on accentedness, comprehensibility, and intelligibility has emerged from second language (L2) acquisition research. Many researchers (Derwing & Munro, World Englishes 2018;1–20. wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/weng c  2018 John Wiley & Sons Ltd 1