Korean Speakers' Perception of Hindi Stop Consonants

한국인의 힌디어 폐쇄음 인식

The two specific research questions pursued in this paper are: (i) how Korean speakers perceive Hindi stops in terms of the three laryngeal categories of Korean stops; (ii) how well Korean speakers do with an ABX perception test that utilizes a total of 52 Hindi minimal pairs where all sounds are identical except for the laryngeal features of a stop in each word. A total of 45 university students participated in this experiment. The results showed that (i) Koreans tended to perceive Hindi voiceless unaspirated stops as Korean fortis ones, voiceless aspirated stops as aspirated ones, voiced stops as lenis ones, and breathy stops as aspirated ones, and (ii) Koreans had difficulty in distinguishing between voiceless aspirated and breathy stops in Hindi.