Listening to regional accents: Dutch and French Listeners’ Perception of Phonetic Vowel Variation in Belgian Dutch

This study sets out to examine how first (L1) and second language (L2) listeners perceive vowel variation in standard versus regional accents. We investigate whether phonetic variation in a regional accent in Belgian Dutch affects the perception of Belgian Dutch versus French listeners. A total of 40 listeners (20 L1 Dutch and 20 L1 French speakers) took part in the study. All listeners completed a categorization task with isolated words containing Dutch /ɪ, ɑ, i, a/ and a transcription task assessing the intelligibility of the same stimuli embedded in sentences. Stimuli were produced by 4 native speakers of Dutch. Two speakers read the stimuli with a Standard Dutch and two with a regional Dutch accent. The results revealed that the Belgian French listeners, who are exposed to the Standard Dutch accent in their foreign language classrooms, did not experience difficulty categorizing or transcribing regionally accented vowels than Standard Dutch vowels, though they were outperformed by native Dutch listeners. The results suggest that a regional accent does not necessarily present an additional challenge to non-native listeners and that the acoustic properties of L2 accented vowels and their relation to L1 vowels are decisive in the listeners’ success at identifying L2 vowels.