Voice onset time (VOT) was measured in the production of /t/ in the initial positionof 60 English words spoken by native English (NE) speakers and native Spanish (NS) speakerswho began learning English before or after the age of 21 years. The subjects rated the words forfamiliarity, age of acquisition, imageability, and relatedness to word(s) in the Spanish lexicon.The subjects in all three groups showed two well-known phonetic effects: They produced longerVOT values in the context of high than nonhigh vowels, and longer VOT in one- than intwo-syllable words. As expected, the NS subjects who learned English prior to the age of 21years judged the English words to be more familiar and more like a Spanish word than did thesubjects who began learning English later in life. Also, many but not all of the NS subjectsproduced /t/ with shorter VOT values than did the NE subjects. However, regressionanalyses showed that none of the lexical factors mentioned above or the text frequency of the 60English words examined affected the NS subjects' VOT values. Thus, variation in theaccuracy with which NS subjects produce English /t/ must be accounted for by factorsother than the lexical status of the words in which /t/ occurs.