Abstract
One important aspect of the acquisition of a foreign language is the successful mastering of its sound form. A segment-level phenomenon that causes problems for learners of Czech as a second or foreign language is vowel quantity.
In contrast to languages such as English or Russian, Czech vowel quantity is phonological - it distinguishes between lexemes or between grammatical forms of the same lexeme (pasu - pásu, růži - růží). Its improper realization may make it difficult to understand or may change the content of the message.
Learners of Czech can transfer different patterns related to vowel quantity from their mother tongue or from another foreign language. Its inappropriate realization is marked by Czech listeners as disturbing and contributing to foreign accent (Veroňková, 2012; Romaševská - Veroňková, 2016).
As is evident from empirical analyses and teaching experience, estimation of the adequate duration of the vowel is also a problem. The answer to the question of what is still a short vowel and what is the duration of the vowel that is considered long is not trivial.
The perception of quantity is infl uenced by a number of factors, such as vowel quality and speech rate (cf. Rosner - Pickering, 1994).
The individual subject and their perceptual apparatus, however, also play an important role. The objective of this experiment was to verify the degree of consistency in the perception of the quantity of vowels in the respondents who were teachers of Czech as a foreign language, both native and non-native speakers.
The initial material consisted of recordings of texts read by Russian-speaking speakers of Czech, analyzed in the study by Gersamia (2017). Parts of the recordings were used in the creation of the pilot listening test, in which listeners detected the phonetic realization of quantity on the short - half-long - long scale.
The results show that listeners perceived the implementation of the samples with a high degree of conformity. However, some individuals' ratings were diff erent from the group ratings.
In their perception of quantity in target words, there were variants with unambiguous agreement among the audience, as well as hesitation between the two variants, while some assessments were inconsistent.