Spanish accented Dutch: Accentedness, Intelligibility and Evaluativeb Reactions towards accented Speech.

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2016-05-30
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en
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This study explores the relationship among language proficiency, intelligibility, accentedness and the evaluative judgments of native listeners towards foreign accented speakers. In total, 316 native speakers of Dutch listened to recordings of two native Dutch speakers and eight Spanish learners of Dutch with varying proficiency levels of Dutch. The listeners rated the records for degree of foreign accentedness, intelligibility and status. Furthermore, the participants completed a Language Background Questionnaire, so that their familiarity with Spanish could be compared to their ratings. The results indicated that the speech samples of all Spanish L2 learners were rated as more foreign accented than the recordings of the native Dutch speakers. Overall, the listeners found the native Dutch speakers to be significantly more intelligible than the Spanish L2 learners of Dutch, except for the male B1 speaker. Although there were some exceptions, the listeners tended to assign higher intelligibility scores as the language proficiency of Spanish L2 speakers increased. Furthermore, the native Dutch speakers received higher status ratings than the Spanish learners of Dutch. Familiarity with Spanish speakers of Dutch did not influence the listeners’ ratings of accentedness, intelligibility or status.
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