| Popis: |
In Japan, English words and their pronunciations are graphically represented by the signs of three scripts: (1) the standard Roman alphabet of written British and American English, (2) a modified Roman alphabet based on an early version of the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA), utilized by the British phonetician, Daniel Jones, in his (1917) English Pronouncing Dictionary, and (3) a Japanese syllabary originally based on abbreviated forms of Chinese characters, known as Katakana. The general ineffectiveness of the Jones system and the Katakana script in representing the pronunciation of English words, within a Japanese English-language teaching context, is demonstrated and alternative transcription systems are presented. The ineffectiveness of the Jones system centers on its lack of signs to represent tense and lax vowels, and its misrepresentation of vowel length. The ineffectiveness of the Katakana script involves the same two weakness as the Jones system, in addition to the lack of signs to represent certain English consonants which do not exist in Japanese, and the syllabic nature of its signs, necessitating the intrusion of Japanese vowels into Katakana transcriptions which do not exist in the original English words. Lastly, the study calls for a total reassessment of the utility of the system(s) of transcriptions found in Japanese-made dictionaries, textbooks, and informal handbooks and used by Japanese teachers and students of English, scholars, and tourists. |
