The present study investigated whether learners of Japanese with different L1 orthographic backgrounds differ from each other in processing Japanese words. Based on previous findings that visual information processing in L1 varies to some extent depending on the type of orthography, it was presumed that L1 orthographic variation might have effects on L2 word processing. In the present study, English-, Chinese-, and Korean-speaking learners of Japanese performed a lexical decision task and a sentence judgment task. The target words were basic verbs written either in sound-based Hiragana letters only or in a combination of a meaning-based Kanji character and Hiragana letters. A statistical analysis indicated that Chinese-speaking learners were faster than English- and Korean-speaking learners in both orthographic conditions. There was no significant difference between English- and Korean-speaking learners. Subjects' comments in a questionnaire about how they processed Hiragana and Kanji revealed considerable individual differences in terms of preference for either orthography. These results are discussed in terms of reliance on either phonological information or visual/orthographic information in the process of L2 Japanese word recognition.
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