What sound does the letter J make?

This Lesson Brought to U by the Letter J

After over a dozen years of formal “foreign language” instruction, I should be able to communicate in a language besides English with ease. But I can’t.

Sure, I have managed enough language to have ridiculous conversations like trying to explain, in Russian, why some Americans drink green beer on St. Patrick’s Day. And I’ve been able to ask, in Japanese, where to find baking soda in a grocery store. Unfortunately, those may be my greatest language accomplishments.

More typically, my cultural encounters with language seem to involve a lot of very puzzled looks.

The Sound of the Letter J

Fortunately, I do feel pretty comfortable with English. In fact I felt comfortable enough with it that I took a job teaching English in Japan. In my school, I was the only native English speaker. The other teachers had grown up speaking primarily Japanese, but they were quite fluent in English (thank goodness—they could answer all the questions I had about living in Japan).

So I felt confident when one of the other teachers asked me a phonics question: What sound does the letter j make?

I knew that there wasn’t an exact transferrable sound in the Japanese language so I could understand why there was a question about it. But, then again, this was someone teaching English, so why was she asking me this?

She explained that the school supervisor had told the teachers that the letter j makes the sound “joo” (rhymes with shoe), and they should not be teaching that the letter j makes the sound “juh.”

No, I explained, j says “juh.”

By this time, a group of teachers had formed around me. One cocked her head as if to challenge me, “Are you sure?”

In this cultural encounter, my confidence flickered. But, no, I knew the letter j was pronounced “juh.”

The Sound of Respect and Honor

The teacher circle scattered, but the whispers remained like ghosts. For several days, one or another teacher would graciously ask me again about the letter j and how to pronounce it. If the truth is questioned long enough, you begin to doubt it. Was I wrong?

Then, as if by magic, the questions suddenly disappeared. The letter j magically and confidently had the sound “juh.”

I’ll never know exactly what happened to make this change. I assume it was the work of the teachers. And, looking back, now I see that it wasn’t phonics or language that was the issue.

The unspoken issue in this situation was the Japanese value of respect and honor.

Questioning the supervisor’s knowledge might make him lose face, which may be one of the worst infractions in the Japanese culture. The situation needed to be handled tactfully so that the teachers could teach the correct lesson and the supervisor would not be embarrassed. The teachers knew this and must have handled it accordingly.

They also, wisely, did not take the headstrong American girl (me) directly to the supervisor to explain what sound the letter made. Instead, they continued to gently question me until the truth became clear—even though I felt like their motive was to change my mind about it!

At the Heart of Communication

I learned that a critical part of communicating in any language is learning what’s behind the words—the culture, the ideas, the traditions. Memorizing the sounds the letters make and how to form verb tenses is the easiest part of communication.

Although the j linguistic cultural encounter happened in another country in another language, this “Oh, I see” moment often helps me in my daily attempts to communicate. It’s important to consider not only what is being said, but what isn’t being said.

And, by the way, finding baking soda in a Japanese grocery store is a piece of cake.

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Image of the letter J courtesy of Thinkstock