What's that sound?

Today was interesting from a language perspective.  We are still working on teaching my junior high first graders (seventh graders) how to write all the letters of the alphabet and doing a bit of phonics with them.  It’s tough because, even though the kids have had English class in elementary school, we’re not supposed to touch on reading or writing until junior high.  So it’s a bit of a jump from what they are used to.  They have a chapter on the alphabet in the 6^th grade, but it’s pretty brief and tends to get rushed through a bit.

In class my teacher was working with the kids on how to write Japanese words in roman letters.  Most of the Japanese syllables translate fairly easily into roman letters.  But there are a few tricky exceptions.  Today we were discussing the letter ん, which usually sounds like the letter n.  When I was studying Japanese we learned it as n and were warned that it could also sound like m or ng, but it was mostly a side note for when we encountered those words later.  I remember learning words that had those other pronunciations, but I don’t think I ever learned enough of them to see a pattern in when these other sounds were used.

But today I learned more on this topic.  My teacher and the student’s book explained that when んcomes before b, p, or m it is represented by the roman letter m.  So the word とんぼ, which means dragonfly, is best represented in roman letters as tombo.  On the other hand, the word りんご, which means apple, is best written as ringo.  But the teacher did more than just explain the rule; he helped the kids, and me, to understand why.

It was really interesting to watch him explain this to the students because they honestly had no clue they were already making two different sounds for ん.  As far as their ears have been trained to hear it, it’s the same sound.  So helping them understand that in English we hear them as different sounds, and thus represent them with different letters, was tricky.  He wrote とんぼ and とんが on the board.  He had the kids say them back and forth.  I could hear the difference in their んs, but when he asked the students if they heard the difference none of them did.  So then he told them to say the words again but to stop just as they were about to say the last syllable. 

I have to pause here for a moment or else my story will make no sense to anyone who is unfamiliar with Japanese.  Make the sounds for the letters m and n back and forth.  You should notice a clear difference in the shape of your mouth, especially as you finish the sound.  This is what my kids were noticing for the first time.  When they went to say tombo their mouths were closed, in preparation for the b sound.  And when they said tonga their mouths were open, ready to slid into the g sound. 

To further clarify the point he had the kids watch his mouth as he said the words, still stopping before that last syllable.  The kids could tell which word he was saying even without the last syllable based on what his mouth looked like at the end.  He even mouthed it with no sound and the kids could tell just on sight. 

It’s going to take some time for the kids to really be able to hear the difference in the sounds, but it was a great demonstration of a pretty complicated linguistic feature.  I know from experience that learning another language can teach you things about your fist language that you never realized before, but it was interesting seeing English as that second language informing back on my student’s first language.