Differences between English and Japanese (part1)

The moment Japanese children learn 50 letters of Hiragana, they can read an illustrated book, but in English children can't read an illustrated book as soon as they learn 26 letters of the Alphabet. There are a variety of differences between Japanese and English.


1. Difference of the letters
Japanese has kanji, which has a meaning one each and plural readings.

Japanese expresses with ideograms, so if a reading is wrong a little, we can easily understand a meaning. For example, when I explain about languages, I made a mistake about 母音(a vowel). I pronounced "bo-on"(The correct one is bo-in).

However, they could understand that. Like this, Japanese doesn't give weight to sound. Existence of kanji let us speak so. Yet in English, that doesn't work.
When I wanted to buy a thermos, I told a clerk to "I need a thermos" repeatedly, I couldn't make myself understood. I drew a picture of thermos and the clerk could understand, though.
That was the worst, when I tried to say "Sit there". The American's face looks questioning. He understood it as "Shit there".

To pronounce "Th" of "thermos", place the tip of my tongue between my top and bottom teeth, but I imagined the Katakana "サーモス"(sa-mosu). I actually pronounced "s", so I couldn't make myself understood. I spoke English as if I wrote the pronunciation above characters. The worst case was "sit" and "shit". English sound has meaning, I noticed that a wrong sound change a meaning.




2. Difference of the sounds
A Japanese word finish with a vowel(Japanese vowels are a, i, u, e, and o) For example, やま(mountain) is "ya ma" in Alphabet. Conversely, most of English words finish with a consonant.
My first English was "This is a pen", PEN is Consonant-Vowel-Consonant. English is based on 3 sounds, CVC. THIS has 4 letters, 2 letters "th" show 1 sound. They pronounce 1 sound in 2 vowels(like KEEP), and sometimes don't pronounce letters(like E of DATE). English has these rules, I teach it children as "Phonics".

Talking about that I was talking, Japanese finish with a vowel and English finish with a consonant. Vowel use one's vocal cords much so the sound is clear, but consonant don't use it much so consonant is like a breath. Japanese is sound of voice, English is sound of breath. I will show you some examples.


connected sounds
Because English has many words that finish with a consonant, words are connected if a hind word starts with a vowel. When I took a class in America, I was spoken to by the student who sat next to me, "Yugari?"(in fact the pronunciation was "You god-dit?"). I didn't notice whether he tried to speak to me in Japanese or English. I couldn't understand his word at that time, I noticed about it afterwards.

Other examples:
get in -> ge-din
get out -> ge-dout
good idea -> goo-di-dia
hang around -> han-ga-round

It seems that a consonant can connect with a vowel peacefully. "d" is a voiced sound of "t", pronounce with the same shape of mouse. When voices are connected, a voiceless sound often becomes a voice sound. "g" has a sound already so doesn't change.
In this way, We often hear some words as unknown even though we already know every single words. Even the native kids can't understand at first. They're conscious of connections of words.


Frequency
Japanese: 125-1500Hz
English:750-5000Hz (British English is 2000- 12000Hz)

This is why Japanese people can't listen English sounds easily. I let students watch movie, they also said that they can't hear some sounds well. A brain that got used to Japanese ignores high frequency and catch low frequency of Japanese vowels. It is important for learning English to listen English and arouse one's brain. Children can get used to it easier than adults. Human's ear can hear 16-16000Hz at most.


Accent
Accent is emphasis between words, both languages have it. However, English accent is stress and Japanese accent is pitch. English has no pitch so Japanese people can't see where to pay attention.

To be continued...

The original http://www.seattle-english.com/appendix2.html