Perceptual similarity of American English and Japanese vowels for native speakers of American English and Japanese

Abstract

Native speakers of American English and Japanese chose American English vowels that best represented Japanese vowels uttered in two different consonantal contexts. The two groups of subjects’ responses differed noticeably, showing the effects of linguistic experience. The Japanese subjects tended to match Japanese long two-mora vowels with long, tense vowels and short one-mora vowels with short lax vowels, but the English subjects were relatively unaffected by durational differences. The Japanese subjects matched /a/ and /e/ to /æ/ and /[g\/]/, respectively, but the English subjects matched /a/ with /■/ or /■/, and /e/ with /■/ as well as /[g\/]/. The Japanese subjects matched /o/ with /■/, while the American subjects matched it with /o■/. The Japanese subjects took part in two other experiments. They equated American English vowels to Japanese vowel categories and they also identified American English vowels. They equated English /■/ to Japanese /a/, and /■/ was often misidentified as /æ/. The results of the three experiments show that there are discrepancies between how an American English vowel is mapped into Japanese vowel categories and how the Japanese subjects expect it to sound, which may result in the poor identification of American English vowels.