“Hama”? Reduced pronunciations in non-native natural speech obstruct high-school students’ comprehension at lower processing levels

Native speakers ‘reduce’ their pronunciations, i.e., they shorten and merge words. For instance, German native may say “hama” for “haben wir” (‘have-we’). We examined to what extent such reductions are problematic adolescent learners of a second language, after four years high-school training; whether the problems can be related inadequate bottom-up top-down processing. this, 39 Dutch 38 adolescents heard either reduced or unreduced full phrases part-phrases (phrase-intelligibility task) words (lexical decision task). The results show that (1) Learners perceive non-native speech less accurately than also judge it as intelligible; (2) This reduced-form disadvantage occurs separately from factors rate, orthography voice; (3) listeners is substantial larger in listeners. Therefore, probably reflects lack experience with (i.e., real-life) speech; (4) Non-native induce at least processing learners, make accessible. interpret findings supporting idea variants (here: variants) necessary strengthen linguistic (word) representations.