Japanese Accent

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       I listened to HU English Podcast (363) "A trip to India" today. In the beginning of the podcast, they were talking about Indian Accent of English. I got some knowledge about how Indian people speak English, which was interesting and fun to listen to.

     When it comes to accent, we have Japanese accent of English. We will be talking about Japanese Accent this time.

     Let me explain typical Japanese Accent's pronunciation shift. (although I'm not sure about this term is correct or not.) 

Some sounds (especially consonants) are not distinguishable to  Japanese people (Japanese speaker):

  • L and R (There are not L or R in Japanese)
  • th and s, sometimes th and z (There is not th in Japanese)
  • v and b (There is not v in Japanese)
  • n and m (unless being followed by voels)
  • si and shi (Japanese doesn't have "si" sound... Spanish speakers will laugh at this!)
  • run and ran (There is not this "a" sound in Japanese.)
  • rich and reach (There is not this "i" sound in Japanese.)
As results, these words change :
  • read and lead into the same
  • think into sink (or shink)
  • that into zat
  • vase into base...

     And then, other than these "sound shift" (This quotation mark is for its uncertainty), typical Japanese Accent has a very unique feature as following :
A consonant will followed by a vowel and every syllable is open. 
This is difficult for my English skiles to explain, so let me show you some examples :
  • English -> In-gurishu
  • Japanese -> Japanizu
  • this -> disu
  • international -> in-tanashonaru
     The reason I put "-" after n is "n" (ん) is a independent syllable in Japanese. I think this is the most responsible thing to why Japanese Accent is hard to make out.

     And, there is a feature of Japanese Accent which is seldom mentioned. Typical Japanese Accent doesn't have stress (accent) and instead of that, it has pitch (high-low) accent. This is because Japanese has pitch accent. (needless to say). A certain number of Japanese students, even university students don't know that.

     By the way, we Japanese (and maybe other English speakers) think this accent is not correct English, and is wrong. However, I doubt it. Is Japanese Accent really wrong? Then, how about Indian Accent or Australian Accent? British English and British English are so different, so either of them is not correct?

     Well, I think we should try not to speak English with Japanese Accent, regardless of whether it is acceptable or not. This is because nobody can make them out... Even Japanese won't be able to.

     In the future, should Japanese Accent be widely known all over the world, then we will speak in the accent!

Comments

  1. B202068October 26, 2020 at 12:36 AM

    Hello! I am Kayoko!
    I read your blog interestingly. I did not know about Japanese Accent, and your statement is interesting. I also think that it is more important to try to tell what we want to say than to persist to speak correct English.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. KeitaOctober 26, 2020 at 7:32 AM

      Yes, that's what "language" is expected to be!

      Delete

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