Deutsch nach Englisch in Italien: Welches Sieb für den Phonetikerwerb?

This paper is concerned with the acquisition of German after English in Italy, focusing on phonetic and prosodic aspects. Against a background of contrastive analysis, it illustrates differences and similarities between Italian, English and German phonetics and phonology at the segmental, intersegmental and suprasegmental level. As German is more closely related to English than Italian from a typological perspective, it is assumed that cross-linguistic phonetic influences originating in the L2 have a positive effect on L3 acquisition. Referring to teaching methods based on receptive multilingualism and intercomprehension in written communication, it will be argued that we can assume the existence of sieves which encourage comprehension in oral communication and L3 phonetic acquisition.