The purpose of this investigation was to study speech recognition among Spanish-English bilingual and monolingual English-speaking individuals in two, separate yet related, studies. The first study examined phonotactic aspects and age of arrival on speech perception among three groups of bilingual individuals, thereby investigating the effects of age limitations on second language learning. The second study addressed whether fluent and proficient bilingual speakers showed equal perceptual abilities when compared to monolingual English speakers on only English gated words, thus measuring their ultimate attainment in English.