An Acoustic Comparison of English Phonemes Between English Males and Male Japanese English Learners

Abstract

This research explores the salient acoustic features of some English vowels and consonants produced by English and Japanese speakers. The important findings include the differentially reduced vowel space for Japanese speakers, different spectral patterns for the sibilant /s, z/ and the affricate /〓, 〓/, and the far weaker intensity for /s, z, 〓, 〓/ among Japanese speakers. Some implications for the learning and teaching of pronunciation of these segments are presented.