Orthographic depth in different languages - how does it affect the development of second language pronunciation?

Based on the orthographic depth hypothesis we wanted to test the effect of orthographic depth on the development and the intelligibility of second language pronunciation. In this pilot study one impersonator (Swedish) read a short text in languages, unknown for him, with different orthographic depth and syllabic complexity. Finnish was chosen as an example of a shallow orthography and Dutch as an example of a deeper orthography and syllabic complexity. Our hypothesis is that a language with a shallow orthography is easier to acquire and more intelligible for L1-listeners in our test setup. The impersonator read a short passage from a novel in both languages without any training session or instructions. Later on, he listened to the same texts read by native speakers.

He was requested to listen to, imitate and, when he thought he was ready with this task, read and record the same text again. A listener test was constructed, with his recordings before and after training. Native speakers of Finnish and Dutch participated and the aim was to get the listeners' opinion about intelligibility and the goodness of pronunciation. Preliminary results of this ongoing research reveal that there is a clear progress in the second recording both concerning intelligibility and the pronunciation of segments, rhythm and speech tempo, in both Finnish and Dutch. However, the expected effect of the differences in orthographic depth and syllabic complexity is not obvious.