Perception of vowel length contrasts in Arabic and Japanese

This study examined the discrimination of short and long vowels in two quantity-sensitive languages (Arabic and Japanese) by five groups of listeners differing in their first language (L1) backgrounds and experience with Japanese. Listeners’ L1s were American English, Japanese and Thai. One group each of American and Thai listeners was studying Japanese in their home countries (US and Thailand, respectively) and the other group had no experience with Japanese. None of the listeners had any experience with Arabic. As expected, the native Japanese (NJ) listeners discriminated the Japanese length contrasts more accurately than did non-native listeners (95 vs. 77-84%). Five groups did not differ in their discrimination accuracy for the Arabic vowels. The between-group difference in the response patterns suggests that only American learners of Japanese have experienced a shift in their long-term cognitive representations and approximated to the NJ group to a greater extent than the other groups.