Veronica Mars loves Vanilla Ice Cream

AXN Japan (Sky Perfect Channel 725) recently had a commercial advertising the Veronica Mars DVD.  The commercial pokes fun at the difficulty Japanese have saying words that begin with “V.”  Why do Japanese have trouble saying words like “Veronica” or “Vanilla”?  Veronica Mars, in case you don’t know, is the main character in a detective show.  Let’s take her lead and solve this mystery.

The first problem with foreign words that begin with “v” is obvious.  They begin with “V.” “V” happens to be one of those consonants not found in Japanese.  Most of the time, a “b” is simply substituted for the “v.”  Let’s take a little quiz.  Say or write the following words in katakana:
Van –
Violin –
Very –
Vodka –
Vulgar –
You probably came up with these answers (バアン，ビイオリン、ベアリ、ヲオカ、ウオガ).  This creates another mystery since “v” does not always go to “b.”  Why is that?

The second mystery is related to the vowels.  The vowel following the “v” determines which sound is used to replace the “v.”  In other words, our mystery has two suspects!  Some English vowels are categorized as “rounded.”  This means the lips need to make a circle, like the top of an ice cream cone.  “V” words that have a rounded vowel are going to start with ウ+ vowel; “V” words without a rounded vowel will start with バ、ベ、ビ.

Sometimes a culprit purposely does something to put us on the wrong track.  So let’s run another little test to dig deeper.  For this test, let’s consider the word “Vanilla.”  At first glance this looks easy enough.  The “va” is going to become “バ.”  The second syllable doesn’t really present any problems either; a Japanese speaker is going to use a well established set of rules to transpose the English vowel to a Japanese vowel.  And therein lies the source of another problem.  English has approximately 15 vowels.  Japanese has five base vowels.  It’s easy to see where the vowel combinations turn Veronica (ウェロニカ) into a tongue twister, however Vanilla “バニラ” doesn’t really look all that problematic.

Theories are nice, but let’s put this mystery into a real world scenario.  You are on vacation in Hawaii, or a honeymoon on Guam.  Suddenly you are struck by an overwhelming urge for vanilla ice cream.  You hop in your rental car, drive to the closest ice cream shop, walk in and say, “バニラ.”   Unfortunately, the teenager behind the counter, who is failing English and math, listens to music too loudly on his iPod, and would rather be home playing a game on his X-Box, does not know the reverse set of rules that would allow him to go from the five Japanese vowels to his fifteen English vowels (trust me, he doesn’t even know English has fifteen vowels!).  His vast cognitive powers process three things:  You said three syllables; the first syllable was “BA;” and, the  last syllable was “AH.”  He promptly picks up a cone and gives you a big scoop of BA-nan-A ice cream.

Now we have come to the real issue.  When learning or attempting to use a foreign language, there will almost always be sounds in that new language which are not in our first language.  If it is a seldom used sound, we can probably substitute another sound we perceive to be close in nature.  Here though we need to remember that while it may appear close in nature to us based on our native language,  it may not appear close in nature to the native language listener.  So what do we do in the scenario above?  First, you could learn to make the “v” sound which isn’t that difficult.  Take your upper teeth and rest them lightly on your lower lip. Force a stream of air through the slight space between the teeth and lips and follow that with an “ah.”  Or, since you are on vacation, order chocolate!  It tastes way better than vanilla!