Hi! I need a bit of help for my new and first fanfic!

1) I would like to know what letter's and/or sounds native Japanese speakers have trouble pronouncing. I know that the 'r' and 'l' sounds in English are sort of blended in Japanese. (That's how you get the two spellings of "Kirara"/"Kilala".) However, that's about the extent of my knowledge on that subject.

2) I would like to know what Japanese sounds/characters/letters a native French speaker would have trouble pronouncing.

3) What French sounds/letters a native Japanese speaker would have trouble pronouncing.

Any information would be really helpful! Also, if you know even just a little bit French of Japanese, please PM me!

Much love and Thanks!

EDIT: Pronunciation for these names and words in French/Japanese would be very, very helpful!

In French:
Kagome
InuYasha
Shippo
Sango
Miroku
Sesshomaru
Kirara
Kikyo
Naraku
Kanna
Kagura
Kaede
Myoga
Jaken
Kohaku
Rin
Totosai
Koga
Ah-Un (I don't think there would be too much difficulty with this one but just to be sure, it's up here.)
Sake
Tokyo
Shinkansen (Bullet trains)
Higurashi
Well
Souta

In Japanese:
vodka
whine (Specific types would be nice)
Any type of Alcohol you can think of ^.^
France
Chartres
Georgette
accordion
Ballet

NOTE: This list will probably expand as I write. (Still haven't gotten the first chapter finished but it's coming along!)

Thank you for your help!

French I don't know about, Japanese I know about somewhat.

The "th" sounds gives them trouble, it always becomes closer to a sound that has a soft 's' in it.
As you may know, Japanese is a syllable language, and in general (with a very few exceptions) a vowel always follows a consonant. 'N' is the only consonant that can appear on it's own, and they have three syllables where there are two consonants in a row, 'shi','chi' and 'tsu'. This is why the Japanese easily add short vowel sounds in between the letters in a word, mostly 'u'. Also words ending in a consonant or a group of consonants give trouble, I can't come up with any Japanese word that would not end with a vowel. Thus for example "spiral" would become "supairaru" and "heart" becomes "haato".

The 'v' might give trouble too, since that letter doesn't appear in Japanese. They have 'w' in two syllables that are 'wa' and 'wo', and even there, the w of 'wo' is pretty much silent.

These are just some examples, I think the heart of the problem lies that in English there are simply so many phonemes that do not exist in Japanese. Hope this helped a bit.

One more thing~ You could always try to listen to Japanese people speaking English, search videos online or something, and spot yourself the phonemes that give the Japanese trouble. :3

A good rule of thumb for pronouncing Japanese is to know that unless modified, all Japanese vowels are pronounced short. So, an 'a' as in father, 'i' as in bee, 'u' as you, 'e' as in Kent, and 'o' as in throw. Those vowels are the same in all of the unmodified Japanese syllables. To modify a vowel sound, another vowel must be added to it. You get our version of an 'I' by using the combination 'ai' for example, and you get a longer 'o' by making either 'oo' or 'ou' (the latter is more popular). As Chiera said, all of the syllables save the 'n' end in a vowel, so the main difficulty that Japanese people have with English (and presumambly French) is ending on a consanent. From my experience, I've learned that most of them just can't do it (my Japanese teachers did have a little skill at this, so if they've spent a lot of time learning English or French they get better at it). So, the word light for instance becomes 'raito' because they can't cut that 'o' at the end from the syllable 'to'. An ending 'ing' sound becomes 'ingu', the ending 'er' sound becomes 'a', and combined consanents like 'pr' become 'pura'. So, an ordinary word like platter becomes 'puratta'. Further complications that might be useful to know are that 'v' becomes 'b' (baiorin=violin) and 'th' becomes 's' (sa bairoin=the violin).

In general, a French person can pronounce these sounds with the same sort of skill that a English speaking person could (they'll probably be a little more nasally while doing it, though). They generally trip over the same things that English speakers do, like not hearing the subtle difference between a tsu and su or not hearing the difference between an elongated vowel or double consonant when a Japanese person is speaking too quickly (it's really very hard). The only thing that would be really hard for a French person in particular would be pronouncing the syllables that have an H. The H is generally skipped over in French, so the Japanese words that do use it would give a French person some difficulty. Also, I don't think French particularly likes using a 'Y' or a 'Z', so those might be difficult as well (can't remember, took French far too long ago). Also, the French people speak in a syllable-timed language, in which each syllable is perceived to take up the same amount of time (this way of speaking is sometimes referred to as a 'machine gun' language). English speakers use a 'stress-timing' language, in which syllables, while on average taking up the same amount of time, are perceived as having different stresses on the syllables. Well, Japanese people don't speak in either of those forms. Japanese is a pitch-accent language, with certain combinations and sentence stuctures determinine if a syllable has an upwards or downwards pitch. Getting out of the stessed-pattern is generally the hardest thing for any English person to do (and learning the changing Japanese pattern), so I'd imagine it's equally hard for someone who speaks French.

I agree with Chiera, listen to Japanese people speaking English and you'll spot all of these things very quickly, particularly if they are new to English.

E^2 wrote:


In Japanese:
vodka
whine (Specific types would be nice)
Any type of Alcohol you can think of ^.^
France
Chartres
Georgette
accordion
Ballet

NOTE: This list will probably expand as I write. (Still haven't gotten the first chapter finished but it's coming along!)

Thank you for your help!

vodka would have a slight 'u' sound after the 'd', also since they have trouble with 'v', it would probably be something close to 'uoduka', neither of the 'u' sounds are a full 'u' but both 'u's really short.

France would be Furansu, again with the 'u's real short, since their only purpose is to add a vowel sound after a consonant so that they can pronounce it easier.

Chartres - This I'm not sure about, 'cause it might depend on how you pronounce it in French. It might be Sharutoresu or Sharutotree.

Georgette again I'm not sure about. I guess it would become something like "Zooruzetto", 'Z' being the closest japanese sound to how 'g' is pronounced here, in Japan, 'g' is always pronounced like in the English word 'gather'.

Accordion - akkoodion

Ballet - I think this one would be baree or maybe barei

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I can't be sure of any of these, since I'm only a beginner in Japanese, but I've studied how to spell foreing words on katakana, one of their syllable-based characters, so that's a help in understanding as to how a Japanese person might pronounce these words. Hope it helps ^^

Ah! You guys are being really great! This is helping a lot! Thank you thank you! Keep it coming, I like to write really long stories so I'll need all the material I can get >.<