Perception of English vowels by native speakers of Japanese

Abstract

Japanese children and adults living in the United States took the English Vowel Perception Test. Fourteen vowel contrasts were chosen. All the subjects heard the digitized stimuli through headphones, which were tokens of English vowels spoken by multiple talkers. American children and adults also took part in this experiment as control groups. A′ scores were computed for each vowel contrast. A′ scores for Japnese subjects were significantly lower in all contrasts but one (/i/ vs /ε/), and for Japanese subjects significant difference in A′ scores among vowel contrasts were found. It was expected that Japanese children would do it better than adults, but their A′ scores were no better than adult Japanese. Since American children did as well as American adults, the poor performance of those Japanese children was not attributed to the experiment design. To see if and how the exposure to English changed those Japanese subjects’ perception of English vowels, Japanese teenagers who had never lived out of Japan were brought in. Though some subjects were exceptionally good, no significant difference was observed in A′ scores between Japanese living in the United States and those who study English in Japan.