Ｊａｐａｎｅｓｅ English Pronunciation
BY
Sawako Kamizato
A FIVE PAGE PAPER
IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF
THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE COURSE OF
SEMINAR 1 (World Englishes)
Kumamoto Gakuen University Foreign Language Department
English Course
SUPERVISOR: Judy Yoneoka
Kumamoto Gakuen University
Oe 2-5-1 Kumamoto
Japan
December 20, 2002
This paper consists of approximately 1,130 words
1．Introduction
Japanese English has some special characteristics and,
pronunciation is one of them. Japanese English pronunciation is sometimes
not understood in English, and causes misunderstandings, because some
English phonemes are difficult for Japanese, and English has stress which
differs from Japanese English stress. This paper will discuss the
pronunciation differences between Japanese English and native English.
In this paper, I compare ①phonetic system and ②word stress, because
these are the most important characteristics of Japanese English
pronunciation.
2．Phonemic system (phonemic inventory) of Japanese and English
Japanese has 5 vowels, but English has more than 11 vowels, and more
than 25 consonants. This means that one must substitute for 2 or 3 English
vowels.
Vowels: The sound isn't interrupted when a sound comes out.
Consonants: The sound that a sound blocked off in some form when a sound
tries to come out.
Japanese vowel
あ
English vowel
a,u,∂,Λ,
い
i
う
u,
え
e,ε
お
o,
English pronunciation is centered around consonants. In a single syllable, many
consonants can be pronounced; for example, /strengths/ has six consonants in a
single syllable. On the other hand, Japanese is centered around vowels. Japanese
syllables (technically called mora) are made up of only one consonant at most, and
Japanese doesn’t have means to pronounce a consonant without a vowel. This is why
Japanese must divide some English syllables into many Japanese ones by inserting
vowels.
R, L
right, light
N, M
pan, pam
F, H
food, hood
J, Z
jeep, zip
SH, C
she, see
TH, S
thank, sank
Japanese, doesn’t differentiate these pronunciations, and Japanese doesn’t have
some pronunciations that are in English..
Additionally, English has 5 diphthongs. 「 ei ai oi au ou 」
English diphthongs begin the pronunciation of a low vowel. And end at a high vowel of
(i, e). This is English consonant pronunciation occurs after the vowel ends. (with some
exceptions) and which are pronounced in the closed jaw position. This jaw position is
easy to connect to the next consonant pronunciations naturally. The second vowel is
pronounced at half the strength of the first vowel. “ＤIPHTHONG” translates into
“２重母音(nijyuboin)”in phonetics terminology, but this translation is misleading
Japanese. This is because Japanese pronounce 2 重母音 at the same pitch. So
Japanese don’t have idea that the pronunciation changes the pitch of vowel. When
Japanese pronounce diphthongs at the same pitch, it sounds like Japanese
pronunciation.
3．Stress and rhythm
There are two levels of stress in English: word level stress, meaning for
“strength in the word” and sentence level stress or “strength in rhythm of the
sentence” (also called stress timing). While the Japanese react to “tone and
the length of the word” and they don't feel strength in the rhythm of the
sentence, because Japanese has the same strength in each syllable (=syllable
timing). They feel a “beat rhythm of syllables” strongly. However, English
features clearly “the stress beat of rhythm”. In English, when they pronounced
the stressed syllable, they pronounce it strong, long, and clearly in the word
and the sentence. Also, the pronunciation of non-stressed syllables is short,
weak, and vague in the word and sentence. Then the strong stressed parts
have a tendency to have a high pitch.
The stressed syllables don’t have loud voice only. They have high pitch,
long length of the sound, and slow speed. The stressed parts of the sentence
are generally words with new information and important meaning. (i.e.
content words: noun, verb, adjective, adverb, numeral, negative etc…) Words
which are possible to suppose from grammatical knowledge usually do not
have stress in the sentence. (function words: personal pronouns, relative
pronouns, auxiliaries, prepositions, articles etc…)
Instead of stress, Japanese uses pitch, and this is a big characteristic of
Japanese. Expressing the tone of the sound means that knowledge of the
word is bigger than structure of the sentence. In Japanese, there are many
syllables in one word, so the pitch of a single word is clearly set. If one
mistakes the pitch of the sound, this gives the listener incongruity (for
example, ame means rain, but ame means candy). This difference of
intonation causes dialect differences and so on, so this is important as a basis
for linguistic identity.
It is said that there is a big difference in syllables between Japanese and
English, but little is written about the fact that the Syllable is the cause of
Japanese Katakana English. A syllable is a sound pause. Basically, the
sound pause is decided by the number of vowels, and Japanese has many
vowels (see section 2 above). For example, in「すきやき」―「 su/ki/ya/ki 」
there are six sound pauses, so it’s a word of four syllables.
On the other hand, an English syllable has many consonants around a
vowel; for example: “bread” － [ br-ea-d ] It’s a word of one syllable. This
word is the combination of three consonant and one vowel but this word is
one syllable. So in English, one vowel is pronounced in one beat. This word
is one breath. But Japanese pronunciation is always accompanied by the
vowel. And, katakana English is「ブレット」－「bu- re- e-do」. Japanese people
misunderstand this as three or four syllables.
Japanese has a mechanism which puts a vowel between all consonant
clusters, so this is the problem of Katakana English for Japanese English
pronunciation.
4: Conclusion
It is said that the mother tongue is a strong influence to learn a
language. However there are big differences between the language of
Japanese and English. Many learner of languages don’t care or know about
them. Therefore, they make mistakes under influence from the mother
tongue.
The fact is that many mistakes can be prevented if they have
knowledge about the difference of Japanese and English. Especially this
paper aimed at pronunciation and considered the differences. There are big
linguistic differences about the pronunciation.
The culture has influences on the language learning too. Katakana
English is peculiar to Japanese culture. And these differences make
Japanese English pronunciation.
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