how for Japanese speakers — pronunciation and common errors

Pronunciation

The Japanese phoneme /h/ before /u/ is realized as the voiceless bilabial fricative /ɸ/. Consequently, 'how' /haʊ/ is often produced with excessive lip tension or as /haɯ/, reflecting the Japanese vowel /ɯ/ which lacks the rounded quality of the English /ʊ/ off-glide.

Grammar

In Japanese, the interrogative 'how' (どう dō) is often followed by a copula, leading learners to produce 'How is...?' when asking for a noun's name or definition. This results in the common transfer error 'How do you call this?' instead of the correct English structure 'What do you call this?'

Collocations

Japanese uses the phrase 'how to' (やり方 yarikata) as a noun-like compound, which leads to the error of using 'how to' as a standalone subject or object, such as 'I don't know the how to' instead of 'I don't know how to do it'.

Examples

• How do you open this window?
• The teacher explained how the solar system works using a small model and a flashlight.