The ease or difficulty of learning phonological categories, experienced by a speaker of language X attempting to learn language Y, has been attributed by linguists to (1) the competing phonemic categories of native language (N) and target language (T) systems, (2) the allophonic membership of these phonemic categories, and (3) the distributions of these categories within their respective systems. It has been noted that the higher the degree of similarity between the N and T phonological categories, the easier it is for the speaker to learn the T phonological categories, and the converse has been held to be true.
No takes yet. Share an insight, caveat, or question.
Eugène J. Brière (1966) studied this question.
Synapse has enriched 5 related papers. Consider them for comparative context: