Auditory Images of Japanese by Koreans

Abstract

The objective of this study is to analyze and to provide models of Korean speakers' pronunciation patterns when they speak Japanese. This is part of an ongoing research that aims to propose a useful method of teaching of the Japanese pronunciation to Koreans. The experimental data consist of /k/[k] phonemes in word initial, word medial, and word final positions. There were 24 different phoneme positions. They were pronounced by 30 Japanese non-majors students(15 females and 15 males), who were in their twenties and were raised in Daejeon and the surrounding area. The individual pronunciations were collected 720 files. The results show that Koreans who do not have any knowledge of the Japanese, pronounced the Japanese phoneme /k/ in a variety of ways, according to the auditory environments in which the phoneme was tested. First, auditory analyses show that they pronounced the phoneme as either /kk/ or /k/ in Korean. Secondly, analytical result of both in "word medial and after 'yoon'“ does not differ much from that of "classification on phonetic features", suggesting the case can be omitted from the study. Thirdly, in most cases, one phonetic feature appeared twice or more than the others. The most frequent feature /k/ or /kk/ in each case, was heard twice or more than the second most frequent one. Furthermore, the second most frequent one appeared twice or more than the least frequent one. Fourth, both in "word middle and after 'yoon'“ and in "classification on phonetic features," the frequency of the second most frequently used and that of the least do not show much difference. Analysis according to sexual classification provides with us an interesting results. When it comes to /kk/, female subjects responded to it more often than the males, but in case of /kh/, male subjects responded more than the females.