A word in my native language I find difficult to pronounce.

To be honest, I can really bring anything to mind at this time in the morning. However, the topic of pronunciation is actually quite interesting. If we look at junior high school textbooks there is an interesting difference between those for the G1 and G2. As far as G1 is concerned, the new words to be learn, which appear on one side of a given page, are marked with an accent so we know which part of the word is strong and which is weak. This is extremely important and is one of the big differences between Japanese and English. I would go as far as to say it is also one of the main stumbling blocks for Japanese students. They have have no idea this problem exists and how it really does affect intonation, often in highly systematic ways, that is, governed by rules that need to be learnt. It comes as bit of a shock to many students when they suddenly start having tests at senior high school and beyond where they have to identify the strong and weak syllables of words. At this stage it is a little late!

When we get into G2 the words have the IPA (International Phonetic Alphabet) printed next to each word. I do not think this is much help to the average student. They already have enough problems trying to get the hang of the alphabet so one more reading/writing system feels like a bit much. Having said that, I think it is vital for Native Speakers to check out these sounds because it is what the Ss are supposed to be learning. In my experience, I’m sorry to say a lot of foreign teachers are very casual about pronunciation and often make stupid mistakes, especially with the Schwar. I am not talking about varieties of accent which are both inevitable and useful in the classroom, but actual sloppy speaking which is just a bad habit. The amazing thing is the recordings provided by the Ministry of Education contain a huge number of similar mistakes and need to be redone so they correlate with the pronunciation in the textbook. It’s really quite shocking! In the meantime, native speakers should learn how to pronounce ‘’enjoy and ’excuse me’ for the benefit of their students and Japanese colleagues alike. I