Foreign accent in L1 (first language) Case of Korean immigrants in North America

This study builds on Flege et al. (2006) and evaluated the influence of chronological age and length of residence in North America on degree of foreign accent in first language (L1) Korean by Korean adults and children in immigrant settings. The adult (A4/6) and child (C4/6) immigrants lived in the host countries for 4 or 6 years, respectively. Their Korean utterances were compared to those of age-matched controls in Seoul, Korea. The purpose was to examine the cross-linguistic influence of English on the degree of foreign accent in L1 Korean by the immigrants. Eighteen native-speaking judges rated four Korean utterances for overall degree of perceived foreign accent. Both adult and child immigrants were more strongly foreign accented than the controls. However, (1) stability of L1 Korean was greater (less foreign-accented) for the adult than child immigrants; and (2) there was no significant difference between the A4 and A6, and C4 and C6 groups. This suggests that by the time the Korean immigrants lived in North America for four years, they have diverged audibly from the predominantly monolingual speakers in Seoul. The results have implications for L1 maintenance/attrition and plasticity in spoken language processing.