Auditory Images of Japanese /p/ by Koreans

일본어 /p/의 청각인상 연구

The objectives of this study are to analyze Korean speakers' pronunciations of various Japanese /p/ patterns and to provide desirable pronunciation models. This is a part of an ongoing research that aims to propose a useful method of teaching Japanese pronunciation of /p/ to Koreans. The experimental data consist of /p/ phonemes in word initial, word medial, and 'yoon' positions. Yoon must be written in small size after a letter and it only makes a syllable with the preceding letter in Japanese. There were 22 different phoneme positions. They were pronounced by 48 Japanese majoring students (24 females and 24 males), who were in their twenties and were raised in Daejeon and vicinity. The individual pronunciations were collected and digitized into 528 files. The results show that Koreans pronounced the Japanese phoneme /p/ in a variety of ways, according to the auditory environments in which the phoneme was tested: as [ph] in word initial, [pp] or [ph] in word medial, and [ph] in 'yoon', unlike native speakers who pronounced Japanese /p/ as [ph] in word initial, [pp] in word medial and, and [pp] or [ph] in 'yoon'.