The aim of this leaflet

This leaflet provides information on what kind of pronunciation problems may occur and specific sounds in Japanese that Cantonese speakers may have difficulty with.

What kind of problems occur

1. Pronouncing problem: These are problems that may happen when pronouncing certain sounds in a foreign language because people are often used to making sounds which only exist in their mother tongue.
2. Listening problem: Some different sounds in Japanese may sound very similar for Cantonese people. This may happen because people are used to hearing sounds which only exist in their mother tongue.

There are many sounds in Cantonese and Japanese that are similar. Some, however, are only partially similar and others are totally different. When you hear or are trying to say the partially similar or totally different sounds, it’s easy to make mistakes because you are used to hearing and making sounds in your mother tongue. It is important therefore, to make yourself aware of how sounds in a different language are made and practise listening to them and saying them as much as possible.

How do you solve the problems?

1. Try to learn the differences in pronunciation between Cantonese and Japanese.
2. Pay much attention to the shape and position of your mouth, lips, and tongue when you try to pronounce Japanese words.
3. Compare the sound you make with the model sound in audiotapes attached to textbooks or those available on the web. If you have queries, check it with the Japanese-Chinese CD-ROM dictionary at the Language Commons.
4. Test if you are able to differentiate certain sounds, using the quiz in “Kurobi” and if you are mistaken, try to think why you cannot differentiate these sounds so that you can make the listening strategy of your own.

Japanese sounds, which can cause problems for Cantonese speakers

Vowels

Pronouncing vowels:

Compared with Cantonese vowels, Japanese has fewer vowels and they are not difficult to pronounce once you know how to produce them. Japanese has five vowels, namely “a”, “i”, “u”, “e”, and “o”. In pronouncing these vowels, you should pay attention to the following points:

1. “u” is pronounced, not with rounded lips (as you are going to kiss someone), but with rather flat lips (with lips open but relaxed).
2. “u” and “i” often disappear, or are devoiced, before voiceless consonants, keeping the same shape of mouth for those vowels. Thus “ha-ji-me-ma-shi-te” (nice to meet you) becomes “ha-ji-me-ma-sh-te”, and “ga-ku-se-i” (student) is often pronounced like “ga-k-se-i”.
3. “su” often becomes “s” at the sentence-final position (omission of “u”). Thus typical sentence endings in polite speech “ma-su” and “de-su” are pronounced as “ma-s” and “de-s” respectively.
4. When producing long vowels, you need to keep those vowels last longer than their short counterparts.
5. The spelling of long vowels in “hiragana” and “roma-ji” are often misleading. You should remember that the combination of “ei” is pronounced as “ee” (long “e”), and “ou” as “oo” (long “o”).

Listening to vowels:

Recognizing the five vowels are not difficult. However, when these sounds are prolonged, i.e. pronounced as long vowels, Cantonese people often find them difficult to tell from the short vowels. A difference in length may result in a difference in meaning. For instance, “ojiisan” (grandpa) and “obaasan” (grandma) are different from “ojisan” (uncle) and “obasan” (aunt) respectively. Although Japanese people regard one long vowel to be twice as long as its short counterpart, non-Japanese may find it difficult to tell the difference. Some researches show that in natural speech, a long vowel is only 1.5 times longer than a short one. Then how can non-Japanese tell the difference? In fact one of the best ways to differentiate them is to remember the pitch pattern used in one word. In the above examples “o-ji-i-sa-n”, the pitch pattern is low-high-low-low-low, while “o-ji-sa-n” is low-high-high-high. If you’ve heard a Japanese word and yet cannot find it as an entry in a dictionary, it is most likely that you have got the long and short vowels wrongly, in which case you should consider alternative spellings.

Consonants

Pronouncing consonants:

Cantonese people may have the following difficulty:

1. “na/ni/nu/ne/no” versus “ra/ri/ru/re/ro”
   Japanese “n” and “r” are completely different sounds. Since Japanese “r” is pronounced like “l”, and since Cantonese people often use “l” as a substitution of “n” in speaking Cantonese, they tend to say “ra/ri/ru/re/ro” instead of “na/ni/nu/ne/no” in speaking Japanese. In fact, Japanese “r” is not an English “r”, but a flap sound. The movement of your tongue in pronouncing “r” is similar to that of “d”. See if you can say “da/di/du/de/do”. Then, with the same tongue position, try to say “l”. To test if you are pronouncing “na/ni/nu/ne/no” and “ra/ri/ru/re/ro” correctly, you can pinch your nose with your fingers: if you feel your nose vibrating or itchy, they are “na/ni/nu/ne/no”; if you don’t, they are “ra/ri/ru/re/ro”.
2. “chi” versus “tsu” (also “ji” versus “zu”)
   “ch” is a sound similar to “ch” as in “cheese”, but pronounced with lips not rounded. “ts” is a sound you hear when saying “it’s” in English. Since Japanese “u” is a flat “u” and the shape of lips are similar to that of “i”, Cantonese people may pronounce “chi” and “tsu” almost in the same way. The key to differentiating these two sounds is to know how your tongue works. With “chi”, the front part of your tongue is flat and the air escapes mostly from both sides of your tongue. Remember to pull back the tip of your tongue so that it won’t touch your upper teeth. However, “tsu” is made with the tip of your tongue touching the back of your upper teeth once very lightly, feeling the air escaping from the top of your tongue. “ji” and “zu” are the voiced equivalents, so if you pronounce “chi” and “tsu” with your vocal cords vibrating, they will be “ji” and “zu”.
3. “tsu” versus “chu” (also “su” versus “shu”)
   As explained in 2, “ts” as in “tsu” is produced with the tip of your tongue. However, Cantonese people often pronounce “u” with slightly rounded lips, which leads to “tsu” sounding like “chu” to Japanese ears. The use of “chu” instead of “tsu” is often heard in Japanese young children’s speech, and therefore considered childish. To avoid this, it is important that when pronouncing “tsu”, you feel the air stream coming out between the upper teeth and the tip of your tongue. “su” and “shu” should also be differentiated in the same way except that the tip of your tongue does not touch your upper teeth.
4. “shi”
   “shi” is pronounced differently in the consonant row of “s”. It’s like English “she” with your lips spread.
5. “hi” and “fu”
   In the Japanese syllabary table, you may realize that “f” is used in the consonant row of “h”. In fact, this is how it is often spelt in “roma-ji”, but the sound is not the same as English “f”. English “f” is produced with your upper teeth and lower lip, letting air escaping between them, whereas Japanese “fu” is a sound made by narrowing both lips and letting the air strongly coming out as if you are going to swell a balloon. “hi” uses the letter “h”, but it is a sound made with the back of your tongue placed close to the roof of your mouth. It is similar to a laughing sound “hee, hee”. Or, if you know German, the ending sound in the German first person singular pronoun “Ich” is the consonant used in Japanese “hi”.
6. “n”
   “n” forms a syllable on its own. Because of the spelling, Cantonese people simply pronounce it as “n”. However, this “n” can become a lot of different sound depending on where it is used:
7. “n”
   à“m” before “b”, “m”, “p”, e.g. “ga-n-ba-t-te” (good luck) becomes “ga-m-ba-t-te”.
   à“n” before “d”, “n”, “s”, “t”, e.g. “sa-n-se-i” (agree) remains the same.
   à“ng” before “k”, “g”, e.g. “sa-n-ka” (participate) becomes “sa-ng-ka”. (Cf. “ng” is a sound heard in the English word “ink”.)
   à there is no “liason” when followed by “a/i/u/e/o”, e.g. “sen-en” (thousand years) never becomes “sen-nen” (thousand yen). (Cf. “n” together with its prior vowel slightly become nasalised.)
   àsomewhere in between when pronounced at the end of sentence. Cantonese people sometimes drop this sentence-final “n”, but it is necessary to produce an “n”-like sound clearly, e.g.”hon” (book) or “dekimasen” (can’t).
8. “g”
   A lot of textbooks explain that “ga/gi/gu/ge/go” become “nga/ngi/ngu/nge/ngo” when “g” appears within a word, e.g. “ka-ga-ku” (science) may become “ka-nga-ku”. (“ng” sound is a sound you hear when you say “singer”.) However, in Cantonese, sounds with “ng” consonants (“ng” initials) can freely be replaced by sounds with no consonants (so called “zero” initials). The example of this is the Cantonese first person pronoun “ngo” 我, which is often pronounced as “o”. Cantonese people tend to apply this rule when speaking Japanese, and thus pronounce “da-i-ga-ku” (university) as “da-i-a-ku” (big evil). Japanese people regard “ga/gi/gu/ge/go” and its nasal equivalents “nga/ngi/ngu/nge/ngo” to be the same sounds, but they don’t consider “nga/ngi/ngu/nge/ngo” and “a/i/u/e/o” to be the same. So it is recommended that you always use “g” in any circumstances to avoid misunderstanding.
9. Double consonants
   Cantonese people tend to simplify Japanese sounds expressed by double consonants “kk”, “pp”, “ss”, and “tt” as “k”, “p”, “s” and “t”. There has to be a slight pause between the previous and following sounds to pronounce them properly, thus “chotto matte” (wait a moment), not “choto mate” (no such word), and “kitte kudasai” (please cut) not “kite kudasai” (please come).
10. Aspirated and unaspirated voiceless sounds
    See the section below for making distinctions between “aspirated” voiceless sounds [k‘], [p‘], and [t‘] and “unaspirated” voiceless sounds [k], [p], and [t].”

Listening to consonants:

The difficulty Cantonese people may have in recognizing some sounds are in fact closely related to their difficulty in producing these sounds. A lot of problems are often the result of the fact that people tend to use the strategy they use in pronouncing or recognizing different sounds in their own native language. Therefore, the above pronouncing problems should also be regarded as your potential weak points in recognition. In this section, the most common problem that Cantonese people have when recognizing Japanese sounds is discussed.

Voiced/voiceless sounds versus aspirated/unaspirated sounds:

Japanese make a distinction between “voiced” consonants and “voiceless” consonants whereas in Cantonese, a distinction is made between “aspirated” and “unaspirated”. When you produce “voiced” consonants, you should feel the vocal cords in your throat vibrate. The consonant sounds that don’t cause this are known as “voiceless” sounds. However, Cantonese people are used to making consonant sounds that are either “aspirated” (such as 怕/替/扣/次) or “unaspirated” (such as 霸/帝/夠/至). Thus they often regard “aspirated” as “voiceless” and “unaspirated” as “voiced” although “aspirated” and “unaspirated” sounds are all “voiceless”. However, when Japanese say “voiceless” consonants, they pronounce them either “aspirated” or “unaspirated”, depending on the circumstances where these consonants appear (Cf. Note the similar difference in English “t” in “top” and “stop”, or “p” in “pot” and “spot”). As a result, Cantonese people are likely to regard the Japanese “unaspirated” voiceless sounds as “voiced”. For example, Japanese aspirated and voiceless consonants [t‘] and [k‘] as in “taihen” (very) and “kaisha” (company) may be recognized correctly, while unaspirated and voiceless consonants [t] and [k] as in “arigatou” (thank you) and “soudesu ka” (I see) may be recognized as “arigadou” (no such word in Japanese) and “soudesu ga” (that’s true, but…) respectively. What makes it even worse is that Cantonese “unaspirated” sounds get slightly “voiced” in some phonological circumstances, and it means they can’t use their intuition to judge whether some sound in Japanese is “voiced” or not. To improve your listening comprehension, you should first know of above differences. Also, be aware that “voiced” sounds you hear may be two different kinds of sounds, e.g. when you hear “d”, think it may be either “d” or unaspirated “t”.

Learning Tip

The quick way to check the pronunciation of words is to listen to any music CD that has lyrics of some songs. You can also check if you can hear correct pronunciation by looking Japanese words you’ve heard up in a dictionary to see if you can find them.

After getting the hang of differentiation of these sounds, you can proceed to a next step, which is understanding and practising the Japanese word accent (pitch pattern) and sentence intonation, as it will help you with speaking and understanding spoken Japanese with confidence.

Note

This advice sheet is part of the Japanese Pronunciation series of leaflets supporting independent language learning, produced by the HKUST Center for Language Education Language Commons team. This leaflet was written by Shin KATAOKA in 2002. If you copy from this leaflet, please acknowledge the source. Thanks.