Perception of Mandarin fricatives by native speakers of Taiwan Mandarin and Taiwanese

This perception study examines bilingual Taiwan Mandarin (Guoyu) and Taiwanese listeners ’ perception of Mandarin fricatives. Two female talkers and two groups of listeners, one from Taiwan and the other from China, were recruited. The participants listened to fricative pairs such as /sa/, /fa/ and then rated the similarity. The results show that bilingual listeners have difficulty in distinguishing the contrast between Mandarin /s / and /ʂ / no matter which talker they listened to. They also perceive /x / and /f / to be similar when listening to the stimuli produced by a bilingual talker. The results show that the lack of the retroflex fricative /ʂ / and labiodental /f / in Taiwanese influence how these bilingual listeners perceive Mandarin fricatives.