Strange things happen in cross-language and second language vowel perception: Naïve nonnative listeners have been reported to rely on acoustic properties which are nonfunctional in their L1 and dysfunctional for the perception of nonnative vowels, naïve nonnative listeners’ perception is guided by a preference for vowels that are peripheral in the articulatory/acoustic vowel space, and, in general, naïve nonnative listeners’ perception is not well predicted by comparative analyses of vowels of the native and the nonnative language. This presentation reviews the accented perception of vowels by focusing on two forces which shape nonnative vowel perception: Universal perceptual preferences which nonnative listeners (and infants) bring to the task of vowel perception, and perceptual biases which nonnative listeners transfer from their native to the nonnative language. Strange and her colleagues have shown that these biases cannot be predicted from acoustic comparisons; rather, they have to be examined directly through assessments of the perceived cross-language similarity of vowels. This presentation addresses several of the still unresolved questions regarding the design and the interpretation of perceptual assimilation tasks used to account for the accented perception of vowels. [Work supported by: Danish Research Council for the Humanities; Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada.]

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