Analysis of Pronunciation of /e/ Preceding /N/ by Turkish Learners of Japanese

Abstract

The present study investigated the tendency of the pronunciation of /e/ preceding the moraic nasal (/N/) by Turkish learners of Japanese (TL). We analyzed the transcriptions of Japanese speech of 50 TL and of 650 other learners of Japanese with different native languages in the International Corpus of Japanese as a Second Language. Results showed that although the frequency decreases with level of proficiency, /e/ preceding /N/ is sometimes transcribed as /a/ even in speech by advanced TL. Furthermore, this transcription was hardly seen in speech by other language speakers. These results suggest that TL tends to pronounce /e/ preceding /N/ as /a/, and this tendency, which seems to be caused by phonetic features of the Turkish language, is particularly unique to TL.