The Sound of German: Descriptions of Accent by Native and Non- Native Listeners

This paper presents a study of factors affecting judgments of native and non-native accent in German. The data suggest that listener status (native or non-native speakers) and degree of experience with Germanplay a role in the aspects of speech which raterscite as salient. Interestingly, thesamedescriptive terms used by raters were shown tomeandifferent things for different raters, raising questions about the relationship between perceptions of accents and the ways people describe them, which, in turn, hold implications for language teaching.