〇発表 要旨〇藤本 雄馬（D2）

The Intelligibility of English with a Japanese Accent:

Defining a continuum based on phonetic features

What does the English pronounced by Japanese people sound like? Many researchers have written about the characteristic features of Japanese people’s English pronunciation. Some say that there are many “mistakes” in it so it is not intelligible (e.g., Kamiyama, 2008). Others say that it is just different from other varieties and it is a legitimate variety of English; in other words, Japanese people’s so-called katakana English pronunciation is intelligible (e.g., Suenobu, 2010). These ideas are often thought to be polar opposite. However, it would seem that there is a “continuum” among these different ideas about Japanese people’s English pronunciation, though it is possible to group different ideas together at various points along the continuum.

This presentation aims to define this continuum which will be used as a basis to explore the intelligibility of Japanese people’s English pronunciation in my ongoing research.