AlexandreC Wrote:Simple. English has 2 sounds within a space where Japanese has only one.

Languages use all the space available in the mouth in an attempt to make vowels as distinct and far apart as possible. The entire space is made up not of points where vowels are pronounced, but of non-overlapping areas within which each vowel remains that same vowel. These areas are not the same from language to language, or even from dialect to dialect.

English has more than double the amount of vowels Japanese has. Inevitably, Japanese vowels cover larger areas, and each vowel can undergo variations which in English would mark separate vowels.

In short, the one Japanese vowel sounds like 2 English vowels to your English speaker's ears.

That's really interesting. I've heard that Thai has way more vowels than English, and that we can't really even hear their subtle differences.

I'm not sure that it's true, but it's an interesting idea that maybe え is sometimes pronounced inconsistantly, and that they might not notice the difference. If that's what you're saying.

foodcubes Wrote:That's really interesting. I've heard that Thai has way more vowels than English, and that we can't really even hear their subtle differences.

I'm not sure that it's true, but it's an interesting idea that maybe え is sometimes pronounced inconsistantly, and that they might not notice the difference. If that's what you're saying.

It's not so much that the pronunciation is inconsistent -- because there is always a certain amount of variation allowed within a language for each sound -- but the variations allowed for え cover several English sounds. Alternatively, many Japanese struggle to distinguish English vowels which, to their ears, all fall within variations of the same vowels.

This applies to many other aspects of Japanese vs. English phonology. For instance, ん can be n, m or ng to English ears while it's only one sound in Japanese. Some Japanese will say "I'm dumb" instead of "I'm done" and it sounds the same to them.

Phonetically, we can demonstrate that two sounds are different, but whether they are considered one or many sounds will depend on the language.