Japanese Phonetics

Japanese Pronunciation gives a detailed description of both the segmental elements in terms of articulatory phonetics and suprasegmental elements of standard (Tokyo) Japanese pronunciation and is intended for both professional specialists of Japanese and advanced foreign learners of Japanese interested in acquiring an in-depth knowledge of facts about Japanese pronunciation. Hints and advice for acquiring 'intelligible' Japanese pronunciation are also found here and there as appropriate. Chapter 1 is provided for the benefit of those readers who are not sufficiently familiar with articulatory phonetics. Full articulatory description of the vowels follows (Chapter 2). Full treatment is given of inter alia 'nasalized vowel', which is well known to present substantial and notorious difficulty to foreign speakers of Japanese.

The Japanese consonants are individually described (Chapter 3). Then all types of combination involving vowels, semivowels and consonants are studied (Chapter 4). Chapters 5 to 8 deal with suprasegmental elements like rythm, accent and speech melody; the moraic structure of Japanese words is also treated as it relates to the question of rhythm. Finally, a summary of guideline is provided to help towards the acquisition of 'intelligible' Japanese pronunciation (Chapter 9). The book ends with Conclusion, References and Index.