Paper short abstract:

This paper report an instance of the Japanese language textbook printed during the World War II. Some textbooks adopted English words to show Japanese words.This paper will examine how Japanese phonology demonstrated by Japanese American tutors is different from Japanese phonology by Japanese.

Paper long abstract:

This paper attempts to report a unique instance of the Japanese language textbook printed during the World War II mainly in the US. A number of the Japanese textbooks were printed during the period, and US and alliance military officers were said to acquire Japanese enough to interrogate Japanese POW (prisoners of War).

Whilst major Japanese textbooks were published based on some well-known Japanese textbooks such as Naganuma Japanese language textbooks, some textbook adopted English words to show Japanese words or expressions. For instance, daijobu was expressed as 'die job,' and so forth. This kind of textbook was especially designed to US military officers to attend at Japanese language school such as MIS (Military Intelligence Service) language school at University of Michigan.

This paper starts with the description of the Japanese language textbooks during the WWII and makes an assessment of the content. Based on this, I will conduct some linguistic analyses of English words in the Japanese language sentences. Emphasis will be put on the phonological analyses of the English words to examine to what extent the Japanese phonology in those days is different from the Japanese in 1940s. This paper will examine how Japanese phonology demonstrated by Japanese American tutors is different from Japanese phonology of Japanese.

What is more, analyses will be made to compare the phonological features of Japanese in Yokohama dialect published in 1853. Yokohama dialect is known as one of the textbooks on Japanese pidgin edited by Hoffmann Atkinson. Interestingly enough, the textbook was written in English. Therefore, this paper will make a comparative account of how the English phonology in Japanese sentences interacts between two materials.