Effect of L2 phonetic learning on L1 coronal fricative in Chinese learners of L2 Korean*

This study aimed to explore the phonetic effect of L2 on L1, focusing on coronal fricative consonants in L2 Korean and L1 Mandarin Chinese. In total, the acoustic experiments had 36 participants and 24 Chinese learners of Korean were included in the experimental groups, which were further divided into beginning and advanced subgroups. The control group consisted of six Korean and six Mandarin Chinese monolinguals. Two acoustic parameters were analyzed: the center of gravity for the three positions of the fricative and H1-H2 of the vowel following the fricatives. The results of the production experiment showed that the Korean learner groups had L1 fricative consonants in approximation to the plain fricative of Korean, which deviated from the norms of Mandarin Chinese monolingual speakers. In particular, it was found that beginner L2 learners also experience an effect of L2 on L1 phonetics.