Abstract
A series of three experiments were conducted to examine the behaviour of Japanese-speaking learners of French (JSL) concerning the perception and production of French /u/, /y/ and /o/, compared with English-speaking learners of French, in order to examine how L2 (second language) vowels which do not have phonemic and/or phonetic equivalents in L1 (native language) are acquired by learners.The results indicate that JSL tend to produce French /u/ with a high F2 (> 1000 Hz), which is heard as /o/ by native French (NF) listeners. They suggest that French /u/ is considered by JSL as phonemically similar to Japanese /u/ (as a high back vowel) and produced as such, while the phonetic realisation of French /u/ is new and different; and that /y/ is considered as both phonemically and phonetically new, and /o/ as phonemically new but phonetically (acoustically) similar. Phonemically similar but phonetically new vowels seem to be most difficult to learn to produce accurately for foreign/second language learners.
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