Milli mála - 01.01.2010, Blaðsíða 309
4. Summary and Conclusions
For all eight types of sounds chosen for this experiment, certain
tendencies could be observed, some clear and others less striking.
In most cases, Icelandic and Japanese subjects showed similar ten-
dencies. Case 1), geminate /Q/ insertion, and case 3), nasal re -
lease [tn] ([dn]), were the only ones for which Japanese and Ice -
land ic subjects showed distinctly different preferences. The reason
why only two out of eight types of sound yielded different results
for Japanese and Icelandic subjects is unclear. Further analysis
based on a larger amount of data for each type of sound is needed.
In the case of geminate insertion, it has been shown that Japanese
commonly adds a geminate to a consonant preceded by a short
vowel in the process of transliteration. Thus, when words with a
weak and closed syllable, i.e. /-CVC#/, are transliterated into
Japanese, the common tendency is for a vowel to be inserted at the
syllable final, and the final consonant to become a geminate, i.e. /-
CVQCV/. Therefore, with the Icelandic name such as Diðrik it is
predictable that Japanese speakers will choose to transliterate the
final syllable /-rik/ into /-riQku/. However, for Icelandic speakers,
the moraic geminate /Q/ is a difficult sound to acquire, and indeed,
first-year students did not seem to differentiate between pairs such
as [di zu ri ku] and [di zu ri k ku]. Second-year students seemed to
understand the difference, but considered the version without gem-
inate to be closer to their native pronunciation. Their choice would
then be explained by the fundamental difference in the syllable
quantity of the two languages. In Ice landic, all syllables are heavy,
unless unaccented and reduced to a weak syllable. Possible sylla-
bles in Icelandic are /V:/, /V:C/, /VC:/ (i.e. when the final conso-
nant is a geminate) or /VCC/ (i.e. a consonant cluster). For exam-
ple, in names such as Didrik or Fridrik, there are three possible
ways to pronounce the syllable of the ‘-rik’ type:
[ri(:)k] -k ‘rik’ with one final consonant
[rihk] -hk ‘rikk’ with a double consonant, (preaspiration is so
strong that it is worth one consonant, hence,
/h/ and /k/ make a double consonant.)
[rik:] -k: ‘rigg’ with a geminate at the end
KaOru uMEZaWa
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