마그레브 아랍어와 프랑스어 이중언어 화자의 한국어 모음 지각

Perception of Korean vowel contrasts by Maghrebi Arabic and French bilinguals-a preliminary study for classification of Arabic-speaking Korean learners

This study aims to show the heterogeneity of native Arabic speakers based on their linguistic background. To this end, bilingual speakers of Arabic and French, from Morocco and Tunisia, were examined their discriminability of Korean monophthongs. Considering the facts that each colloquial Arabic has a distinctive vowel system, and the French vowel system is what they can exploit in common, we could hypothesize that either two groups have discrepancies in perceiving Korean vowel contrasts due to the dialectal effect or they show some commonalities based on French influence. Overall, the participants across the groups discriminated the contrasts accurately, but two groups showed differences in perceiving /a-ʌ/ and /o-u/ contrasts. The results are distinct compared to Arabic speakers from other regions(e.g., Egypt) in the previous study(Hong and Jun 2013). Although their higher sensitivity in common might reflect the French influence, the Arabic dialects are still involved in their perception of novel contrasts. This suggests that Korean learners from Arab region shall not be treated as a single community, but instead they need to be classified more carefully based on their linguistic background.