Resumen de The perception of estonian vowel categories by estonian L1 and spanish L1 listeners
This paper studies the perception of Estonian vowel categories by Estonian L1 and Spanish L1 listeners. Spanish has 5 vowels /i, e, a, o, u/. Estonian has 9 vowels /i, y, e, ø, æ, ɑ, o, ɤ, u/. The vowels /i, u, e, o/ are identical in both languages, while Estonian /æ/ and /ɑ/ are similar to Spanish /a/, Estonian /y, ø, ɤ/ do not have corresponding vowels in Spanish. In addition to the crowded vowel space, Estonian has a rather complex three-way quantity system. A vowel categorization task was conducted to investigate the perception of Estonian vowels. The results show that Spanish L1 listeners have difficulties in categorizing both new (/ɤ, ø/) and similar (/æ/) vowels. Also, Spanish L1 listeners’ reaction time is longer than that of the Estonian L1 listeners.
