Comparative Study on Perception of Foreign-accented Japanese by L2 Japanese listeners Having Different L1 Background: English, Chinese and Indonesian

Abstract

This study concerns good pronunciation from the L2 Japanese listeners’ point of view. More precisely, focusing on prosodic variations, this study investigates whether L2 Japanese listeners from different L1 backgrounds perceive foreign-accented Japanese differently. The experimental results obtained from the two L2 Japanese groups who speak Mandarin Chinese and Bahasa Indonesian, respectively as L1 are presented in this study, and then are compared with the results of previous studies on native Japanese listeners and L2 Japanese listeners whose L1 is English. Keywords: L2 speech, non-native listeners, Japanese, timing error, pitch error 1. INTRODUCTION Native speakers can detect foreign accents in