Page 29 - Basic Japanese

Japanese, on the other hand, speak in a METRONOMIC

fashion—as if there were a musician’s metronome evenly
beating out each syllable. Instead of putting a heavy stress
on some syllables and various weaker stresses on the

others, the Japanese gives each syllable a moderate and
even stress. And instead of rushing syllables in between the

heavy-stressed ones, speeding up the weaker syllables,
slowing down for the stronger ones, the Japanese speaker

allows about the same amount of time for each of his
syllables, regardless of the apparent prominence of the

syllable. To the ears of an American, accustomed to hearing
distinctive stresses, not all Japanese syllables are heard
evenly strong. This is because not all Japanese syllables are

equally PROMINENT. The prominence of a syllable is
conditioned by a variety of factors, such as stress, vowel

color, pitch, voicing, etc. Of these factors, stress is the most
important in English, but the least important in Japanese. Of

course, those syllables that have voiceless or dropped
vowels in Japanese will sound weakly stressed to an

untrained American ear. So the first English habit to
overcome in speaking Japanese is syncopation. Try to time
your Japanese syllables evenly, giving them an equal stress.

1.3. Syllables

Now, what is a Japanese syllable? An English syllable, as

noted above, is a sound or group of sounds accompanied by
one of four stresses. A Japanese syllable isn’t that sort of

thing at all. It’s a sound or group of sounds that take up a
certain relative space of time. In other words, one of those
metronome beats. A Japanese syllable may consist of a

SHORT VOWEL (e ‘picture,’ o ‘tail’), or A CONSONANT + A