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Phonemic confusions in L2 listening lead to three types of problem at the lexical level: inability to distinguish minimal pairs (e.g. write, light), spurious activation of embedded words (e.g. write in delighted) and delay in resolution of ambiguity (e.g. distinction between register and legislate at the sixth instead of the first phoneme) The statistics of each of these, computed from a 70,000+ word English lexicon backed by frequency statistics from a 17.9 million word corpus, establish that each causes substantial added difficulty for L2 listeners.