ABSTRACT

The lilt of the Japanese dialect is very much like that of the Chinese. Japanese is spoken in a high falsetto voice, the keynote starting almost an octave above the keynote of American speech. For a lighter dialect, the aspirate treatment may be lessened but it should not be dropped completely, especially at the end of a word that is followed by another word beginning with a consonant. The shape of the mouth and the position of the jaws and lips are very important in the reproduction of the Japanese dialect. There is practically no tonal emphasis in the Japanese dialect. Syllabic emphasis usually follows the American and it relies strictly on a modified stress emphasis. In the Japanese language, verbs have neither person nor number. It is for this reason that Japanese confuse the plural with the singular in American nouns and verbs, as in.