Pronunciation of Italian and English words by Japanese subjects of different ages: the results of an experiment
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[1] Università Roma Tre
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- Localización: Lingua: International review of general linguistics, ISSN 0024-3841, Nº 235, 2020
- Idioma: inglés
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Resumen
The paper reports an experiment aimed at verifying the performance in the pronunciation of foreign sequences (in Italian, English and invented words) by Japanese in preschool, school and adult age. The results show that progress through age, even for the same phonetic sequences, is greater in English words, suggesting that the word, rather than the phonetic sequence, is the language unit that speakers learn to pronounce correctly. It is proposed that there may be a minor disturbing role of the katakana syllabic writing, which causes a slight decrease in the performance of school-age children. A strong interference is observed from the most frequent English loanwords, which leads to pronouncing the original English word with the same adaptation it receives in Japanese phonology.
