Conceptual Framework
Speech is so familiar feature of daily life that we rarely pause to define it. It seems as natural to man as walking, and only less so than breathing. Yet it needs but a moment’s reflection to convince us that this naturalness of speech is but an illusory feeling. The process of acquiring speech is in sober fact, an utterly different sort of thing from the process of learning to walk. In the case of the latter function, culture, in other words, the traditional body of social usage, is not seriously brought into play. The child is individually equipped by the complex set of factors that we term biological heredity, to make all the needed muscular and nervous adjustments that results in walking.
Speech is so familiar feature of daily life that we rarely pause to define it. It seems as natural to man as walking, and only less so than breathing. Yet it needs but a moment’s reflection to convince us that this naturalness of speech is but an illusory feeling. The process of acquiring speech is in sober fact, an utterly different sort of thing from the process of learning to walk. In the case of the latter function, culture, in other words, the traditional body of social usage, is not seriously brought into play. The child is individually equipped by the complex set of factors that we term biological heredity, to make all the needed muscular and nervous adjustments that results in walking.
Generally English speech sounds are divided into two main groups, namely vowels and consonants. This classification in according to how the exhaled breath is shaped interfered with by the speech organs at different places along the vocal tract. Both consonants and vowels refer to two classes of speech sounds, their difference is one of the manner in which the out going air stream is interfered with or modified. However, English has also other kind of speech sound which derived from vowels ; diphthongs. Speech sounds formed by human vocal apparatus travel trough the air as sound waves, which are essentially small air pressure fluctuations.
The Japanese Language is made up by the syllables that are based on only key sounds – five vowel sounds, a (ah), I (ee), u ( uu ), e ( eh ), o (oh ) and n pronounced like in the word “bond”. Prior to 1860’s Japanese only written only in the very complicated Chinese ideographs called Kanji and two simplified script form like Hiragana ( he- rah- ga- nah ) and Katakana (ka- tah- kah- nah) . The system of Japanese words in Roman called Romaji (roe- mah jee ), which mean Roman letters made it possible to study and learn the language without having to master the complicated Chinese ideographs the Japanese have used to write their language for over 1000 years.
Japanese has a fairly large number of words with double consonants, which require stressing or holding for the meaning to be clear. For example Kekko (wonderful) is pronounced keck- koem with both of the adjoining ks clearly enunciated. Sekken (soap ) is sake – kane. The five vowels in Japanese ( a, i, u ,e, o) may be pronounced long or short, depending on the word. A long word may be represented ( in printing ) by a line over the letter (ộ) or by doubling the vowel as in ii or oo.
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