Perception of English /r/ and /l/ by Japanese Students

In the Light of Their Linguistic Backgrounds and Motivations

Abstract

It is well known that native Japanese speakers have difficulty in discriminating English /l/ and /r/ sounds. Most previous studies of this issue, including Aoyama et al. (2004), were targeted at native Japanese living in English-speaking countries, and little research has been conducted on Japanese who are learning English in Japan. This study examined how native Japanese living in Japan perceive English /l/ and /r/ sounds, to determine not only the differences from Japanese in other countries but also the relationship between learners’ abilities and their experiences, characteristics or motivations as determined by a questionnaire. In an experiment on perception, test subjects in Japan received as high a score on average as the subjects of Aoyama et al. (2004), who had lived in the US for an average of two years. The subjects who had special linguistic experience before the age of 10 got significantly higher scores on distinguishing /l/ and /r/ sounds. Moreover, a correlation between musical experience and the abilities of speech perception was observed. It is suggested that listening to the sounds other than those of native language at an earlier age plays a key role in improving the speech perception ability in foreign languages.