Dear all,

We are looking to select an ‘easy’ phonetic contrast to train native English speakers with (as a control for a difficult one). I seem to remember that there is a Spanish contrast (voiced vs prevoiced bilabial stop consonant?) which is relatively easily learned by English speakers, and which is lost relatively late during development (i.e. as compared to say the dental-retroflex contrast).

Alternatively has anyone had experience with or know of references on the ease of training a voiced alveolar-dental contrast in English speakers?  Given that the dental variant occurs allophonically in English, I’m guessing that adults could learn to perceive this contrast relatively easily.

Many thanks and all the best,

Narly Golestani.