JAPANESE adults may never be able to discriminate between certain English 鈥渓鈥� and 鈥渞鈥� sounds, no matter how hard they try, according to Naoyuki Takagi at Tokyo University of Mercantile Marine.
Takagi tried to train 15 Japanese adults who didn鈥檛 speak English to identify 鈥渓鈥� and 鈥渞鈥� sounds in hundreds of different English words. While they did improve over the 15-day training period, there were some words, like 鈥渇ry鈥� and 鈥渇ly鈥�, that all the subjects consistently got wrong, performing even worse than chance (Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, vol 111, p 2887). The volunteers weren鈥檛 simply guessing but were actually hearing the wrong sounds, says Takagi, suggesting that they may never be able to distinguish the sounds as well as a native speaker.