The Japanese seem to have an inborn disadvantage phonetically when they speak English, as they do not have an “r” sound in their language; instead, all the words with an “r” sound are replaced with “l”, unless someone has a good phonetic training. For example, when they say the name, “Larry,” they say “Lally”; the word, “glorious”, “glolious;” the word, “great”, “gleat,” etc.
Back to my graduate school year, I used to have a Japanese classmate, a gentle and extremely polite guy, it’s like any move he makes would follow an acknowledgement of “Please excuse me.” --- I would assume that’s a carry-over thing from the Japanese culture where it seems you just can not stress enough when it comes to courtesy.
But the problem was his pronunciation. When he said it, he had a hard time with the word “excuse” to sound out the “u”, and rather, reverberated an “i” sound. To make it worse he dropped the “ex” sound in front of the word when he added “please” -- only to make the phonetic task more challenging for him. So, when he executed his courtesy ritual, it all sounded like, “Please kiss me,” instead of “Please excuse me.” One time, after a class discussion where he made a short speech dotted with the expression of “please kiss me”, a student named Jane, a cheerful and open-minded American girl, walked up to him and said kindheartedly,
“Hi, J. Can you say ‘please excuse me’ for me, and very slowly?”
Aware of Jane’s intention to help, he did it slowly, syllable by syllable, and made it close to be right with a great deal of effort.
“All right! You’ve got it. Yeah, it’s ‘please excuse [iks’kju:z] me,’ not ‘please kiss [kis] me.’” The girl was delighted that she could have helped.
“Soll(rr)y. Soll(rr)y for my pl(r)onunx(c)iation. Please kiss me.” There came his rushed response with an excitement.
Disclaimer: The content in this post is ONLY based upon individual experience, no intent or attempt, whatsoever, to be implied to any group and/or people as a whole.
