| Summary: | The perception of foreign speech is a complicated process from acoustic and visual cues as well as the attitudes we have towards linguistic variation. We also make judgments about the speech of others, such as accentedness. While most research to date has investigated the accentedness of English as an additional language (EAL) from a native speaker’s (NS) perspective, relatively few studies have considered what EAL users think. Therefore, this study asked 100 EAL users to judge the accentedness of Japanese English, French English, Mandarin English, and German English. Using an online survey, this paper investigated the accentedness rating EAL users give their own accent as well as speakers with the same first language typology, such as Tone, Syllable, Mora, and Stress. The findings show that nonnative speakers (NNS) do not find their own accent to be weaker than other varieties of EAL accents. Likewise, sharing a language typology with one’s interlocutor does not lead to weaker ratings of accentedness. If there is any advantage of sharing a first language typology with one’s interlocutor, the benefits appear to be more speaker-dependent than listener-dependent. Finally, listeners from the same group did not agree on the accent strength of each speaker.
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