The effect of first language (L1) dialects on the identification of Vietnamese word-final stops

This study examined the extent to which speakers’ first language (L1) dialect affects the identification of word-final stops in Vietnamese. Stops in the word-final position are unreleased in Vietnamese. Further, there is a /t/-/k/ merger in the Southern, but not the Northern dialect. We tested the hypothesis that the stop tokens produced in the Southern dialect are identified less accurately than those in the Northern dialect. The results showed that the speakers’ dialect influenced the intelligibility of the final stops and the Northern dialect was more intelligible than the Southern dialect.