TEFL Ciudad Guayana

As it is well known, there are many languages throughout the world. Some coincide, have identical words, or take their pronunciation from each other. Although this may be the case, there are still languages throughout the world that don't share the same pronunciation. With this being the case, when a person studies a language foreign to them, they have trouble coming up with the right way to say a word. A number of Asian languages share similar difficulties in pronouncing certain letters, but this article will focus specifically on japanese speakers learning english. One very common problem that japanese speakers have with english is pronouncing either the letter "R" or "L" correctly in words. "It's very difficult for japanese to recognize the difference between L and R because these sounds fall into the Ra, Ri, Ru, Re, Ro liquids category in japanese. Therefore, in japanese both L and R are pronounced as one phoneme, but in english L and R are two distinct phenomes." (www.topics-mag.com). These letters, namely ?, ?, ?, ?, and ?, have a sound that english does not have. It is somewhere between an english "L" sound and an english "R" sound. Therefore, japanese do not speak with a direct "L" or "R" sound in common speech as english speakers do. Because there is no letter for this sound in english, it can be either transliterated as an "R" or an "L". Examples are "karenda" for the word "calender" and "kyanselu" for the word "cancel." Another problem that japanese speakers have is pronouncing the english "th" sound. Now, there are two "th" sounds in english, namely the voiced "th" and the unvoiced "th". The unvoiced "th" is pronounced in words like "thought" and "thorough," whereas the voiced "th" is pronounced in words like "that" and "this." Neither of these sounds are in japanese, and japanese speakers tend to pronounced these sounds as an "s" or a "z". In fact, some english words that are transliterated in japanese simply carry the "z" or "s" sound. Examples are "Ro-do obu za ringu" for "Lord of the Rings" and "sankyuu" for "thank you." One more common problem that japanese speakers have is pronouncing words that end in consonants. Although japanese has Kanji (symbols with that aren't "letters" and could very in pronunciation), japanese also has letters that do indicate pronunciation. The way that letter system works, aside from some exceptions, is that the sounds are composed of a consonant and a vowel. The letter system starts with vowels, a, i, u, e, o, and then progress by adding a consonant in front - ka, ki, ku, ke, ko; sa, shi, su, se, so, etc... Where this becomes a problem in learning english is when japanese native speakers try to pronounce words like "music" and "taught." Because such an abrupt ending is not usually present in their language, most japanese speakers will tend to add a vowel to the end of words. Examples are "hotto" for "hot" and "stackku" for "stack." Surely, there are a number of issues that learners of other languages can run into while learning. These three examples though, are the most common that a japanese speaker might run into while learning english. With practice, japanese speakers can get these words down, but because of the nature of their own language, it is not so, as japanese speakers might say, "????”(atarimae, natural).