(2007-08) de Leeuw, Esther; Schmid, Monika; Mennen, Ineke
The results of this study suggest that German
monolingual listeners were more likely to perceive
a global foreign accent in the native German
speech of consecutive bilinguals in Anglophone
Canada and the Dutch Netherlands than in the
speech of a control group of monolingual Germans
in Germany.
The results furthermore suggest that contact
with the native German language may have a more
significant effect on predicting global foreign
accent in native speech than age of arrival or
length of residence. More specifically, for both
English and Dutch second language groups, a
global foreign accent was more likely to be
perceived in immigrants who had less contact with
their native German language than in those who
had more contact, although this effect was more
evident in consecutive bilinguals who immigrated
after 22 years of age.
