The perception of phonemic contrasts in a non-native dialect

International audienceThis study examined the impact on speech processing of regional phonetic/phonological variation in the listener's native language. The perception of the /e/-/E/ and /o/-/O/ contrasts, produced by standard but not southern French native speakers, was investigated in these two populations. A repetition priming experiment showed that the latter but not the former perceived words such as /epe/ and /epE/ as homophones. In contrast, both groups perceived the two words of /o/-/O/ minimal pairs (/pom/-/pOm/) as being distinct. Thus, standard-French words can be perceived differently depending on the listener's regional accent