# Perceptually Easy Second-Language Phones Are Not Always Easy: The Role of Orthography and Phonology in Schwa Realization in Second-Language French

## TL;DR

This study explores how written language influences the pronunciation of a French vowel by German-speaking learners, showing that spelling affects pronunciation but is not the main factor.

## Contribution

The study reveals that orthography influences L2 phonological encoding but is not the dominant factor, highlighting complex interactions with lexical and speaker-specific factors.

## Key findings

- Production patterns are more influenced by L1 grapheme-to-phoneme correspondences when orthographic input is present.
- L2 development is strongly shaped by lexical items and speaker-specific factors, not just orthography or phonology.
- Schwa realization in French is affected by a complex interplay of internal and external factors.

## Abstract

Encoding and establishing a new second-language (L2) phonological category is notoriously difficult. This is particularly true for phonological contrasts that do not exist in the learners’ native language (L1). Phonological categories that also exist in the L1 do not seem to pose any problems. However, foreign-language learners are not only presented with oral input. Instructed L2 learning often involves heavy reliance on written forms of the target language. The present study investigates the contribution of orthography to the quality of phonolexical encoding by examining the acoustics of French schwa by Austrian German learners—a perceptually and articulatorily easy L2 phone with incongruent grapheme-phoneme correspondences between the L1 and L2. We compared production patterns in an auditory word-repetition task (without orthographic input) with those in a word-reading task. We analyzed the formant values (F1, F2, F3) of the schwa realizations of two groups of Austrian high-school students who had been learning French for 1 and 6 years. The results show that production patterns are more likely to be affected by L1 grapheme-to-phoneme correspondences when orthographic input is present. However, orthography does not appear to play the dominant role, as L2 development patterns are strongly determined by both the speaker and especially the lexical item, suggesting a highly complex interaction of multiple internal and external factors in the establishment of L2 phonological categories beyond orthography and phonology.