The interlanguage speech intelligibility benefit

This study investigated how native language background influences the intelligibility of speech by non-native talkers for non-native listeners from either the same or a different native language background as the talker. Native talkers of Chinese (n = 2), Korean (n = 2), and English (n = I) were recorded reading simple English sentences. Native listeners of English (n = 2 1), Chinese (n = 2 1), Korean (n = 10), and a mixed group from various native language backgrounds (n = 12) then performed a sentence recognition task with the recordings from the five talkers. Results showed that for native English listeners, the native English talker was most intelligible. However, for non-native listeners, speech from a relatively high proficiency non-native talker from the same native language background was as intelligible as speech from a native talker, giving rise to the matched interlanguage speech intelligibility benefit. Furthermore, this interlanguage intelligibility benefit extended to the situation where the non-native talker and listeners came from different language backgrounds, giving rise to the 'mismatched interlanguage speech intelligibility benefit. These findings shed light on the nature of the talker-listener interaction during speech communication. (C) 2003 Acoustical Society of America.