The current study examines the production of Greek vowels by native speakers of Egyptian Arabic. In

experiment 1, 20 participants (10 female, 10 male), all attending Greek courses at their home universities

in Egypt, produced the five Greek vowels in words embedded in a carrier sentence. Vowels were

acoustically analysed in terms of the first two formants (F1, F2) and duration. In experiment 2, native

Greek speakers rated a sample of the recordings in terms of accentedness, using a 5-point Likert scale.

The acoustic analysis showed strong influence of native language (L1) on learners’ production of Greek

vowels, as /e/ and /o/ (which do not occur in Egyptian Arabic) almost merged with /i/ and /u/, respectively.

Regarding duration, Egyptian Arabic speakers produced short vowels when speaking Greek. Experiment

2 showed high levels of perceived accentedness for Greek /e/, /o/ and /u/ produced by Egyptian Arabic

speakers. While this was expected for /e/ and /o/, the results for /u/ (which occurs in Egyptian Arabic)

demonstrate that a phonemic comparison of the L1-L2 vowel systems cannot always predict the degree

of accentedness of an L2 sound.