Perceived similarity of English, Korean, and Japanese consonants for the native speakers of these languages.

Abstract

The present study investigated how linguistic experience would influence the perceived similarity between native and non-native and between two non-native consonants. Three native speakers of English, Korean, and Japanese produced consonants of their respective L1 in /Ca/ context. Native speakers of these three languages served as listeners. They heard two stimuli per trial and rated how close the initial consonants of the stimuli are in seven-point scale. A two-way ANOVA yielded a significant main effect of consonant pairs and an interaction effect of consonant pairs and listener groups. The results generally show that the phonology of listeners’ L1 affects the perceived similarity. Japanese listeners rated English and Japanese voiceless stops, which are rather distant in VOTs, more similar than English and Korean listeners did. Korean listeners rated English voiced stops and Korean lax stops more similar than did the other two listener groups. English listeners rated Japanese liquid and English /r/ or /l/ more different than did Japanese and Korean listeners. All the listener groups rated English /s/ and Korean /*s/ as very similar. However, only Korean listeners rated English /s/ and Korean /s/ as rather distant while English and Japanese listeners rated them as similar.