f/v sound - difficult for native Japanese speakers?

[Whodunit]

You can often recognize a Japanese's mother tongue immediately if he has to say an English word that contains an "f" or "v" sound. Is it really so difficult for native Japanese speakers to produce the English sounds "f" and "v?" In exchange, it is rather easy for me to produce the Japanese "ph" [φ] sound.

What do you think? Does "I love you" or "Fight for you love" said by a Japanese person sound natural to you?

 

[Outsider]

"I love you" does not contain the sound "f".

 

[Whodunit]

"I love you" does not contain the sound "f".

Not really. I should add that they seem to have problems with the "v," too. Sorry about the confusion.

 

[erick]

Interesting question. I think "v" is more difficult than "f" but there are a ton of other English sounds that are difficult for Japanese to pronounce.

I've seen "v" written as ヴ but often not used. There's a shop near my house called "Vivre" but it's written ビーブレ or something just as awful. Sometimes Japanese are capable of saying something well enough but it's transliterated poorly. How does "Beverly Hills" become ビバリーヒルズ？！ Wouldn't it sound much better as ベバリーヒルズ？

I think if Japanese only used the ヴ more often we could make a better pronounciation of アィ ラヴ ユー。 Wishful thinking on my part ...☃

 

[MarcB]

Mostly I hear v=b, l and r confused,f sometimes but wh sound as f sometimes.Sometimes u is added to a final consonant. Like anything else it varies with the speaker. English speakers have trouble with Japanese r and many vowel sounds are not pronounced correctly.

 

[petite marie]

I teach english to grade school kids in a public school once a week; and I tend to agree that it is nearly impossible for native japanese speakers to pronounce certain words correctly; as they have been used to a very slack translation from the beginning- you are right, Erick, about certain katakana characters fitting the translation of a word better.To help my students grasp the proper pronunciation I have had to work outside of the box frequently, and come up with my own version of katakana pronunciation that would sound the closest to the english word that I'm try to teach them. It is definitely a challenge. Try getting them to pronounce 'th'...

 

[sneeka2]

I think a main problem is that foreign words are almost always represented in katakana, but the Japanese alphabet simply does not contain letters with the proper sounds needed for many foreign words. And other languages often don't contain the same sounds as the Japanese ら, れ, る for example either.
Once, my girlfriend tried to tell me on the phone that I should bring my フード with me. It took about ten minutes until I understood that she didn't mean food or foot, but hood (it was about to rain then).

Since then I taught her to pronounce the hoo correctly and she managed it. Heck, I even managed to teach her a German R. So, I think Japanese are able to produce these sounds, they're just taught since childhood to pronounce the words poorly.

 

[Captain Haddock]

I think a main problem is that foreign words are almost always represented in katakana…

How a sound is spelled has nothing to do how easily you can pronounce it. Any sounds not within the set of phonemes your native language is built from will require training and practice to pronounce. Spelling 'photo' with a ph doesn't make it easier for English speakers to pronounce the Greek (and Japanese) sound [φ], even though it specifically represents this sound.

So, I think Japanese are able to produce these sounds

All people are capable of pronouncing all sounds from all languages. Most just lack motivation and a competent teacher. None of the English teachers I know understand or are capable of teaching phonetics.

I'm glad I'm not a teacher, but if I were, I'd have to realize that most students are not particularly interested in correctly learning a new language — and that's okay, not everyone has to.

 

[erick]

I think a main problem is that foreign words are almost always represented in katakana, but the Japanese alphabet simply does not contain letters with the proper sounds needed for many foreign words.

I have to agree with you on this one. My cousin, who speaks French, speaks with a katakana version of it and I sometimes can't understand it (I too speak French). I can tell that her French words are constructed from katakana. ジュテム or whatever she says doesn't sound like "je t'aime." I can't tell if my mother is saying "butter" or "batter." When I was a kid I went to see a movie in Tokyo with some Dutch friends, and in the previews was a trailer for "the Firm" ... no, 「ザ　ファーム」and my friends starting yelling, "mooo, where are the cows?!" It does sound closer to "the farm" and the reason for this is that the use of katakana approximations can only get so close. It'd be great if characters were added to katakana, as ヴ was, to give Japanese kids the basic pronounciation tools to speak western languages. Good luck getting the 文部省 to do anything about it! The problem is that once the system of kana is internalized it's impossible to unlearn it and it becomes a permanent crutch. Another possible culprit: perhaps Japanese don't care that their pronounciation is way off? That's my impression. At least Italian is easy for Japanese to pronounce perfectly.

 

[Whodunit]

Hi folks,

First off, thanks for all your answers. They are all interesting and helpful. However, could we stick to the main topic, please? I was asking whether or not the English sounds "f" and "v" are so difficult to pronounce for native Japanese speakers, so that many of them aren't even able to pronounce it perfectly? I guess, it is totally easy for us Westerners to pronounce the Japanese and Ancient Greek "ph" [φ] sound, so why should it be more difficult the other way round?

I'm asking this, because when I listened to this song, I got the impression that it must be a pain to say "I love you" or "Fight for your love" for the Japanese. Is this true?

 

[sneeka2]

However, could we stick to the main topic, please? I was asking whether or not the English sounds "f" and "v" are so difficult to pronounce for native Japanese speakers, so that many of them aren't even able to pronounce it perfectly?

I thought we were getting there!?

Katakana simply doesn't have these sounds and since most people apparently find it difficult to part with their kana roots, they have troubles picking up the f and v. And the r and l too for that matter. I have observed that most even have troubles with the concept of a consonant without tagged on vowel. So even if they get the v right, still a "Loveu" comes out. Katakana themselfs aren't the problem I suppose, but the fact that they grew up with nearly every English word "katakanarised", even to the point were they use it like furikana for Kanji. So the believe that Love = ラブ/rabu is very deeply rooted and as such hard to change.
Not impossible though, for anybody who cares enough.

 

[Captain Haddock]

I guess, it is totally easy for us Westerners to pronounce the Japanese and Ancient Greek "ph" [φ] sound, so why should it be more difficult the other way round?

I wouldn't say it's easy; I suspect most foreigners pronounce Japanese ふ with an English F.

Very few English speakers who learn Japanese also say the vowels correctly. Most turn おう and えい into dipthongs and round う too much, because that's how they're used to pronouncing English.

The thing about language is that you hear what your native language has taught you to expect, unless you work hard to learn a language's true phonetics.

 

[karuna]

I guess, it is totally easy for us Westerners to pronounce the Japanese and Ancient Greek "ph" [φ] sound, so why should it be more difficult the other way round?

Not necessarily. Even for me Japanese pronunciation is very easy whereas many English sounds are very difficult. I had already been studying English for many years when finally one English teacher explained that English v is not the same as the Latvian v. Latvian pronunciation falls somewhere between middle of English v and w, and Latvians tend to pronounce v and w equally. Apparently for Japanese these are v – b and l – r pairs that merge in one.

I don't see how it is connected with kana. If rabu (=love) sounds ok to Japanese then good for them. Unless the phonetic properties of the language itself changes, speakers shouldn't care about pronouncing loan words in the same way as in the original language. As for learning English I agree to Captain Haddock that it all about teachers and desire to learn.

 

[sneeka2]

Very few English speakers who learn Japanese also say the vowels correctly. Most turn おう and えい into dipthongs and round う too much, because that's how they're used to pronouncing English.

Even for me Japanese pronunciation is very easy whereas many English sounds are very difficult.

I think it's very simple: English E ≠ Latvian E ≠ German E ≠ Japanese え.

Still, when people are taught a foreign language it's always done by using their native alphabet first. It can't be helped with Latin based languages, since they all use the same alphabet. But Japanese Kana and Latin letters are simply not the same thing, still every single beginners book transcribes あ as A, い as I and so on. This is more of a problem for English speakers, since the English E is miles away from the Japanese え. The German E however is almost the same (and I guess it's the same for the Latvian E), which makes it a lot easier for native Germans and Latvians to get the Japanese え right.

The problem also exists vice versa: Every Japanese foreign language book transcribes the Latin alphabet into katakana, which really is only a very rough approximation of the real pronunciation. And since the kana syllables are somewhat more inflexible than the Latin alphabet (no single consonant, except for ン), it's hard for Japanese to pick up the correct pronunciation. In the end it all depends on a good teacher, or an individuals willingness to listen closely to native speakers. "The English language" simply is not 「ザ　イングリッシュ　ランゲージ」, just as 「ありがとう」 is simply not "arigato". In the end Americanised Japanese sounds just as horrible. =)

 

[Captain Haddock]

One other comment: children and illiterate people (Japanese or otherwise) have just as much trouble mimicking the sounds of a new language by ear, and they'll make the same mistakes. One's native writing system isn't really a factor.

 

[karuna]

I thought that the problem with transcription unable to adequately teach proper pronunciation was the thing of the past when often the only language learning materials one could get were books. Today, if not possible to study from teachers who are native speakers then there are a big selection of audio tapes and cds, even videos are often available.

Actually the task is not so much about how to pronounce properly but how to hear or be able to distinguish the sounds. Then the pronunciation will follow automatically. But it may be difficult to recognise which sound it is if there is no distinction in your native language because the brain has already been conditioned. And sometimes you don't even know what you cannot hear. When I couldn't tell whether it was v or w sound in English it was difficult to pronounce it correctly even though I knew the correct spelling.

I read somewhere that there is a simply method to teach proper hearing. Let's say, you start with pairs of words wich differs only in sounds in question, i.e., read and lead, but artificially emphasize these sounds to unnatural level so that they are clearly recognised as different by a student. When a student has got used to this you decrease the emphasis little by little so that at the end the student can clearly hear different sounds at normal level. One who has a good hearing will try to mimic the precise pronunciation automatically.

 

[sneeka2]

True, transcription problems should be a thing of the past, but most Japanese get to hear very little English and speak it even less, so their own kana system (written or heard) is stuck in their head. And having every foreign word transcribed to kana everywhere surely doesn't help.

I had to teach the difference between the German vowels, A, Ä, E, I, U, Ü, O and Ö to some people. I just wrote them on a piece of paper, pointed at them and pronounced them loud and clear. Then I had the student point to which one I was saying. Then I had them practice the sounds and I pointed to what they were saying etc...

Apparently a lot of these sound almost the same to most people, but this was a good exercise, too.

 

[erick]

I don't see how it is connected with kana.

I disagree. Japanese are capable of saying western words in a manner that's more accurate (not perfect) than they presently do. It's because Japanese are surrounded by katakana approximations everywhere: newspapers, advertisements, television, etc that the katakana versions are internalized. With kana there is only one way of reading characters, while reading English is more phonetic (? linguists, correct me if I used the wrong term: one pronounces as he goes along). I've taught my cousins English, often times helping them when they were jikensei. They'd use katakana for English words. But I've taught some of them to improve their English pronounciation by dropping the kana crutch.

Take a look at Step 2 from this article.

Most Japanese will say 「ベッド」or「ボックス」because it's propogated in this way. Yet I taught my cousins to say "bed" rather than "beddo" or "bokkus" rather than "bokkusu" by letting go of the katakana version that they know and simply cutting it short. When I was in Italy learning Italian there was a not-so-bright student from Japan who kept pronouncing "si" ("yes" in Italian) as 「シ」。 Obviously when a Japanese sees "si" or "shi" in romaji there is no difference, they both become 「シ」in katakana. I asked him if he was capable of mimicking "si" and he could do it, with concentration. He said that it was because of the kana syllabary in his head that it didn't come naturally. All of my other (younger) Japanese friends in Italy had no problem getting over「シ」and through repetition and exposure pronounce "si" perfectly.

Jump in any time Flam!

 

[sneeka2]

I second everything erick said and would like to add a thought:
Thanks to being used to the kana system, the Japanese are not as flexible in combining sounds as speakers of Latin based languages are. Kanas only include five vowels and approximately 11 consonant sounds (more or less, correct me here if you want), but all of the latter ones only in combination with a vowel, except for ン.

I've seen "v" written as ヴ but often not used. There's a shop near my house called "Vivre" but it's written ビーブレ or something just as awful. [..]
I think if Japanese only used the ヴ more often we could make a better pronounciation of アィ ラヴ ユー。

Still ヴ is only a "vu". There's no "va", "vi", "ve" or "vo" in kana. And certainly no Vivre. Unless a Japanese speaker understands that other languages use a "finer grained" system of combining sounds they have a hard time getting the pronunciation right.

 

[Anatoli]

I think it's important for Japanese to learn the sounds when they speak English or other foreign languages, otherwise why should they bother? L, V and other sounds are not native to Japanese and they don't feel the need to pronounce them 100% correctly. Even if they know the original foreign English spelling, they still mix up L/R, B/V, etc. If you compare how foreign names are rendered in Mandarin Chinese, you'll think Japanese rendering is perfect .

English is quite rich in consonants but there are sounds in other languages that English doesn't have. Does it bother anyone that English speakers can't pronounce palatalised sounds (e.g. as in Russian) or Russian sound "X" (German CH used in many other languages), Arabic pharyngeal fricative sound `ayn (ع) (`Ammān (Amman - capital of Jordan), `Umān (Oman - country in the Persian Gulf) or velar fricative ghayn (ﻍ) - Baghdād, other sounds? Japanese approximate foreign words to the Japanese words but doesn't it happen in any other language? Some sounds and new letters get created but they are not absorbed so well, as we see with ヴ. Japanese can't have syllables end in consonants (except for n) and the language might be considered poor phonetically (not a large variety of consonants) but it's a very rich in words, history and expressions and beautifully sounding language. I like Japanese songs.

 

[Outsider]

I have observed that most even have troubles with the concept of a consonant without tagged on vowel. So even if they get the v right, still a "Loveu" comes out.

I've noticed that, too. I once had a conversation with a Japanese friend where we talked about "sounds", and halfway through the conversation I realised that I was talking about phonemes, and she was talking about syllables! I didn't even try to explain.

I had to teach the difference between the German vowels, A, Ä, E, I, U, Ü, O and Ö to some people. [...]

Apparently a lot of these sound almost the same to most people, but this was a good exercise, too.

No kidding... Ä and E are different?!

 

[karuna]

Japanese are capable of saying western words in a manner that's more accurate (not perfect) than they presently do.

Yes, but it takes effort as you say yourself (my emphasis):

I asked him if he was capable of mimicking "si" and he could do it, with concentration. He said that it was because of the kana syllabary in his head that it didn't come naturally.

I don't quite believe that the difficulty arises from knowing kana alphabet, it may just be a convenient excuse. It is the same type of difficulty to anyone who is learning dissimilarly sounding foreign language regardless of writing systems in use.

I would argue that transcribed words as ベッド really are Japanese words by all counts despite being borrowed from English. They are pronounced differently, they mean different things and are used in different contexts. Maybe that is the mistake the Japanese make that by reading katakana they are speaking English. Borrowed foreign words abound in my native language too, probably even more than in Japanese, yet I would never think that I can use these words in the same way in English even if they are spelled excatly the same.

 

[Captain Haddock]

I don't quite believe that the difficulty arises from knowing kana alphabet, it may just be a convenient excuse.

Exactly.

If anyone's not convinced, the Latin alphabet itself doesn't have enough letters to represent all English phonemes; yet that doesn't stop an English speaker from being able to say those sounds. Conversely, there are many sounds representable by the Latin alphabet that Engish speakers cannot say without training.

The alphabet one uses for one's native language has nothing to do with the difficulty or ease of learning new sounds.

Now, it's certainly true that using kana to teach the pronunciation of a foreign language is a bad idea. One should use the IPA to accurately teach new phonemes. Unfortunately, relatively few teachers know the IPA or how to teach phonetics, so language teachers persist in using the sounds and symbols that students are already familiar with.

I would argue that transcribed words as ベッド really are Japanese words by all counts

This is also entirely true. It is completely appropriate that loanwords be naturalized with Japanese sounds and spelled with Japanese kana when used in Japanese. ベッド is not the same word as the English "bed", even if it has the same origins.

 

[Whodunit]

No kidding... Ä and E are different?!

Yes, frankly, the difference between these two phonemes is as big as the one between o and u, although e and ä do not differ in spoken German.

One should use the IPA to accurately teach new phonemes. Unfortunately, relatively few teachers know the IPA or how to teach phonetics, so language teachers persist in using the sounds and symbols that students are already familiar with.

This reminds me of the Japanese couple in the series "Lost." The man doesn't know any English, but his wife does. In order to communicate with his fellow survivers. Instead of showing him the English words in katakana, she uses the IPA. I find this much more useful than trying to explain it in katakana.

Erick, I can see why someone can't pronounce si correctly, but always wants to say shi. Whenever I see "chi," I could not say [xi], because German assimilation determines that it's pronounced [çi]. If the Japanese rules claim that [si] is impossible, a Japanese brain wants to say [∫i]. That's totally human.

 

[sneeka2]

Yes, frankly, the difference between these two phonemes is as big as the one between o and u, although e and ä do not differ in spoken German.

Not sure where you are from, but I do make a difference between E and Ä. They're similar, but sure as anything different. This is getting off-topic though. =)

 

[Flaminius]

The thread is a very interesting discussion of phonetics but I am afraid concentration on the topic is getting loose. Please try to define what is the topic again and refrain from off-topic remarks.

Flaminius,
moderētā

 

[Whodunit]

Not sure where you are from, but I do make a difference between E and Ä. They're similar, but sure as anything different. This is getting off-topic though. =)

Of course, this is totally off-topic. If you want to continue the discussion about e/ä, please read this first.

The thread is a very interesting discussion of phonetics but I am afraid concentration on the topic is getting loose. Please try to define what is the topic again and refrain from off-topic remarks.
Flaminius,
moderētā

ﾓﾃﾞﾚーター、 you're right. I'm sorry that this interesting discussion has grown somehow off-topic. I'd also like to remind all posters to stick to the original question: Are the English sounds f/v difficult for native Japanese speakers? And I'd like to emphasize that I've never had any problem in pronouncing the Japanese ふ, because this is almost the sound every child produces when blowing out a candle.

 

[cheshire]

I'd say the labio-dental is one of the rarest pronunciations of all languages. It's quite natural that many Japanese find it difficult to pronounce! But it is only mildly difficult for most of us, and can be quite easy compared to the distinction of R and L.

 

[Whodunit]

Cheshire, it might be rare within a single language, but the labio-dental fricative occurs in very many languages, such as:

English (v/f)
German (v/w/f)
French (ph/v)
Spanish (f)
Latin (v/f)
Arabic (ف - f)
Hebrew (פ - f)
...

..., whereas the voiceless bilabial fricative occurs only in three languages, amongst them Sanskrit, which lost this sound.

Is it difficult to press one's upper teeth to the lower lip and say [ɸ]? It should automatically become [f].

 

[cheshire]

I'm sorry I was quite mistaken!
It is "interdental or dental (th)" that are quite rare. "F" or "V" is quite common as you say!

No, it's not so difficult to just press one's upper teeth to the lower teeth. But most of them will pronounce it with a plosive instead of a fricative. As a result, their pronunciation come out sounding like a plosive "hu." (Notice the "u" to boot).

Problem is there are few teachers able to effectively teach children how to pronouce English.

 

[Flaminius]

No, it's not so difficult to just press one's upper teeth to the lower teeth.

Perhaps you wanted to say pressing one'e upper teeth to the lower lip?

But most of them will pronounce it with a plosive instead of a fricative. As a result, their pronunciation come out sounding like a plosive "hu." (Notice the "u" to boot).

Are you saying English /f/ tends to be realised as labiodental plosive (no IPA symbol exists for this phoneme)? I would like an example for this interesting phenomenon. Could you provide one please?

Whodunit provided us with a link to a video clip where a Japanese female singer sung "love" with a trace of vowel after the consonant [v]. He did so in order to show Japanese people might have hardship with uttering [f] and [v]. I listened to the song and, to my despair, could not find the vowel he pointed at. I just make two points here:
- The articulation of the singer is very poor in Japanese, thus leaving little hope for good articulation in English.
- Codal consonants "elongated" by an extra vowel after them are commonly practised in singing. A very conspicuous example is a line from the French Chanson pour l'Auvergnat, "Elle est à toi cette chanson. . . ."

When uttered in the framework of Japanese language, /f/ is realised by the Japanese either as [f] ~ [ɸ], [ɸu] or . E.g., "film" can be [firumu], [ɸi rumu] or [ɸuirumu]. Older people can be heard saying [hensu] for "fense" but this does not seem to be a common practise any more. Uttering for [v] is much more common even among those who use ヴ kana.

[Moderator: A thread has been branched off for a discussion of if the Japanese should be trained to pronounce some foreign sounds.]

 

[VirtuousV]

This reminds me of the Japanese couple in the series "Lost." The man doesn't know any English, but his wife does. In order to communicate with his fellow survivers. Instead of showing him the English words in katakana, she uses the IPA. I find this much more useful than trying to explain it in katakana.

I am sorry my very first post is off-topic, but if the couple you mentioned in Lost are Sun and Jin Kwon, they are Koreans, not Japanese.

By the way, I myself learned the IPA when I first learned English in middle school. Although I still have accents in my English pronunciation, learning the IPA (with all the crazy tongue pictures and vowel charts) helped a lot distinguishing different sounds. (Actually the system helped even more when I learned French in high school.)

 

[Aoyama]

In simple terms, it is difficult for Japanese to pronounce the f/v sound(s) for the following reasons :
- real f exists only in the fu combination (almost entirely chinese words and chinese pronounciation), the rest being h (ha,hi,FU,he ho), though it is also true that fu/hu as in fujisan is a "mild f", half way between f and h.
This can be seen if you place a sheet of paper in front of your lips : pronounce the fu the japanese way and the paper will move (because of air flowing out of your mouth -cf : kaze ga fuku), pronounce it the "occidental" way, it will hardly move, because the air is stopped by a light "biting" of the lips. In japanese, mouth remains narrowly opened.
- for the v sound, this sound is alien to japanese, it is derived from w (or u) and requires an effort by native japanese.
All this is changing among the young generation because of trips abroad and contact with western languages through songs, movies, TV etc. Katakana transcription will give different phonetic (pronounciation) results, according to the age of the given reader.

 

[Aoyama]

Once again also, as Flaminius already pointed out, more information or food for thought can be found in this thread :
Should Japanese people be trained to pronounce some foreign sounds?

 

[konungursvia]

I find all my Asian students have difficulty with f and v sounds, particularly because their (non-native) teachers use and tolerate a soft /b/ or /p/ as substitutes. They can do it, however, it's just hard to break a habit.