Confusion of Japanese /n/ and /r/ by Learners Whose Mother Tongue Is Malaysian Cantonese
MASUKO Yukie

　Some previous studies have reported on problems particular to Cantonese native speakers who have difficulties in learning phonemic opposition /n/ and /r/ in Japanese. Studies such as Ohkubo (2010) observed the existence of three ways of confusion based on syllable structures in Japanese. That is, recognizing both /n/ and /r/ as the same /n/, recognizing /n/ and /r/ as the same /r/, and mixing up /n/ and /r/. The reasons for such confusion, however, have not been seriously investigated so far.
　Concerning the phonemic condition, Lye Lihyang (2014, graduation thesis submitted to Tokyo University of Foreign Studies) found out that disyllabic words in Cantonese rarely have a short vowel in the second open syllable (CV): only 170 words out of more than ten thousand in a dictionary, which means that an open syllable with a short vowel occurs only in non-final position in a word, such as word-initial or word-medial position.
　The observations above suggest that /n/ and /r/ can be phonemically conditioned allophones in Cantonese, which may be the clue to specify reasons for /n/ and /r/ confusions in Japanese.
　The present paper re-examines the data given in Lye Lihyang (2014) in terms of phonemic conditions to specify possible reasons causing confusion, and then gives the results of my preliminary experiment on perception of Japanese meaningful words by Cantonese speakers.
　Close re-examination on phonetic and/or phonemic condition in Japanese shows that what is relevant to the mixing up of /n/ and /r/ is the syllable structure of both the first and the second syllable, that is, a long syllable with CVV or CVN, or a short syllable with CV occurs as either the first or the second syllable.
　The results of my experiment do not give clear evidence as to whether phonetic features of free or conditioned allophones of Japanese consonants are relevant to confusions, whose possibility is, however, not completely deniable.