A quantitative estimate of the possibility of confusion of Japanese phonemes

The problem of quantitatively estimating the possibility of auditory confusion in Japanese phonemes is discussed. Using Mahalanobis´ distance, the range of fluctuation in a phoneme is derived by grouping monosyllables into phoneme units. In the case of the stop consonant, over 80 percent of our estimates proved to have good correspondence with the actual data, and it was made clear that the direction of confusion could be estimated.