  In this paper we present an automated method for the classification of the
origin of non-native speakers. The origin of non-native speakers could be
identified by a human listener based on the detection of typical pronunciations
for each nationality. Thus we suppose the existence of several phoneme
sequences that might allow the classification of the origin of non-native
speakers. Our new method is based on the extraction of discriminative sequences
of phonemes from a non-native English speech database. These sequences are used
to construct a probabilistic classifier for the speakers' origin. The existence
of discriminative phone sequences in non-native speech is a significant result
of this work. The system that we have developed achieved a significant correct
classification rate of 96.3% and a significant error reduction compared to some
other tested techniques.
