Dutch abundantly employs modal particles, frequent, polysemous, unaccented adverb-like elements contributing meaning nuances in various areas such as modality, evidentiality and aspect. There are reasons to hypothesize that acquisition of modal particles is hard for learners of Dutch as a second language (DSL-speakers). This hypothesis was tested in a perception experiment in which unaccented modal particles and their accented – adverbial – counterparts were contrasted. The results indicate that DSL-speakers, compared to native controls, indeed have problems with selecting the best fitting stimulus (on average 43% incorrect responses).