In an increasingly multicultural society, many infants frequently hear foreign-accented speech alongside the native community accent. How does this impact on early language acquisition? During the first year infants learn the sound categories of their native language, knowledge that is crucial for further language development. The infants? environment plays a critical role in this development, yet previous research has assumed uniformity in infants? linguistic environments, ignoring the variation between sub-populations within the community. The proposed project focuses foreign-accented speech, which is characterised by transfer of acoustic elements from the native language into the target language, as a source of infants? linguistic input. Adults emphasise relevant, language-specific acoustic cues when talking to infants, and the acoustic properties emphasised in infant-directed, foreign-accented speech will be examined. This is the first investigation into the influence of foreign-accented speech on infant language acquisition. Combining insights from phonetics, psycholinguistics and language acquisition, it approaches the issue from the perspective of both adults and infants, by looking at acoustic characteristics of foreign-accented infant-directed speech and how infants respond to these cues. A longitudinal element addresses the role of variability by examining how infants? differential weighting of ?home? vs. ?community? accent cues develops over time.