Arabic speech intelligibility: Perception of spoken Arabic by native and non-native speakers

Previous studies have shown that native language backgrounds of both talkers and listeners affect speech intelligibility. This study investigated the interlanguage speech intelligibility benefit (ISIB) that is also known as the advantage in understanding second language (L2) speech that non-native listeners have over native listeners when both groups listen to speakers with the same first language (L1). More specifically, it looked into the ISIB in relation to the Arabic language spoken by both native Arabic (NA) and English speakers. To this end, 15 NA and 15 native English (NE) subjects listened to Arabic produced by two groups of talkers (5 NA talkers and 5 NE talkers) and were asked to identify the words they heard. Results showed evidence for the interlanguage speech intelligibility for listeners (i.e. NE listeners were more accurate than NA listeners at identifying English-accented Arabic speech). However, no evidence for the ISIB for talkers was found. That is, NE listeners did not find English-accented speech more intelligible than NA speech. By examining L2 learners’ recognition of L2 consonant contrasts, the study contributes to the body of knowledge on L2 sound acquisition as well as the ISIB literature. It also provides some insight into the problem of adult L2 learners’ ability to learn novel L2 consonants.