time for Japanese speakers — pronunciation and common errors

Pronunciation

Japanese does not have the /aɪ/ diphthong followed by a nasal, and often adds an epenthetic vowel to final consonants; this causes /taɪm/ to be realized as /taimɯ/.

Grammar

Japanese does not distinguish between countable and uncountable nouns via articles. Learners often add an indefinite article to the uncountable sense of time (e.g., 'a time passes') due to this lack of L1 morphosyntactic marking for mass nouns.

Collocations

The Japanese verb 'to have' is used for both availability and ownership (時間がある jikan ga aru). This results in the use of 'I have no time' even in contexts where 'I don't have time' or 'There is no time' is more idiomatic.

Examples

• What time does the meeting start tomorrow?
• She spent a lot of time preparing for the exam because the material was quite difficult.