This paper has examined the characteristic phonetic errors of spoken Japanese made by native American English speakers. From the auditory analysis of the interviews conducted three times during the course of a 10 month period, 5 distinct characteristics were observed. They are as follows: (1) prolongation of short vowels, (2) shortening of geminates, (3) diphthongization of two-vowel sequences, (4) influence of stress accent on Japanese pitch accent, and (5) difficulty in the realization of pitch accent.
