Relative Difficulty of Understanding Foreign Accents as a Marker of Proficiency |
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| Authors: | Shiri Lev‐Ari Marieke van Heugten Sharon Peperkamp |
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| Affiliation: | 1. Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics;2. Laboratoire de Sciences Cognitives et Psycholinguistique (ENS, EHESS, CNRS), Département d'Etudes Cognitives, Ecole Normale SupérieurePSL Research University;3. Department of Psychology, University at BuffaloState University of New York |
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| Abstract: | Foreign‐accented speech is generally harder to understand than native‐accented speech. This difficulty is reduced for non‐native listeners who share their first language with the non‐native speaker. It is currently unclear, however, how non‐native listeners deal with foreign‐accented speech produced by speakers of a different language. We show that the process of (second) language acquisition is associated with an increase in the relative difficulty of processing foreign‐accented speech. Therefore, experiencing greater relative difficulty with foreign‐accented speech compared with native speech is a marker of language proficiency. These results contribute to our understanding of how phonological categories are acquired during second language learning. |
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| Keywords: | Foreign accent L2 learners |
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