Can native Japanese speakers pick up a distinctive accent in people whose first language contains contour tones?


First of all, I am an American, and my native language is American English. My
home language or first language, on the other hand, is a contour tonal
language, with multiple tones, probably 4 or 5, with a logographic writing
system. When I listen to the Japanese audio, I instantly pick up on the sing-
songy intonation of speech and pronounce as close as possible.

From what I read on Wikipedia, native Vietnamese speakers, when pronouncing
English, will really emphasize on the intonation, as if they were Vietnamese
tones. I personally feel the same way. I hear tones... or at least regard the
intonation of speech as having tones.

I know that Japanese is a language with a pitch-accent. But I am wondering if
native Japanese speakers can pick up a distinctive accent among people whose
first language contains contour tones, as opposed to people whose first
language is non-tonal?




The simple answer is yes.

As an American myself, when I lived in Japan, it got to the point that I could
distinguish where a person was originally from based on the way they spoke.
This was particularly true of the Chinese, Philippinos, Brazilians, Americans,
Australians and Koreans.

I didn't encounter many other nationalities in my stay there, but you can tell
when talking with someone whose mother tongue was tonal. It was all in how
they accented their words and pronounced them. That being said, I wouldn't
know how to pinpoint what specifically was different, let alone be able to
describe the difference.

The thing is, the better they were at Japanese, the better they got at masking
their accents. So, the distinguishing really works best with people who are
new to the language.

