Questions tagged [phonetics]
音声学. The physical properties of the sounds of Japanese. Divided into articulatory phonetics (how the sounds are produced physically), auditory phonetics (the physical sounds we're able to hear physically), and acoustic phonetics (the measurement and analysis of the sound waves produced in human speech). Please put phonetic transcriptions in [square brackets].
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What do the shapes △ ◯ ╳ ◻ mean in Japanese? And are there variations in meaning, depending on whether or not the shape is filled?
I am interested in Japanese culture and the symbolism used in Japan, specifically I'd like to know what the △ triangle, ◯ circle, ╳ cross and ◻ square mean to a Japanese person.
How are those shapes ...
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Why the "H" is pronounced as "Sh" in some cases?
My first question is about the rules of pronunciation of the letter "H".
Some people pronounce the "H" as if it were "Sh". For example, "Shijutsu" instead of "Hijutsu", or "Shiyori" instead of "...
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Pronunciation of す in です and the end of ます verbs
I've always been curious about the pronunciation of the す in です and at the end of 〜ます verbs. Most commonly the "u" sound is inaudible, but sometimes by some people it's more pronounced, and some ...
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Except for pitch, what are the differences in pronunciation between Kansaiben and Tokyoben?
I have tried to ask people this type of question on many occasions and the answer is always the same, but people are notoriously bad at evaluating their own language, so I ask here:
Apart for pitch, ...
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Actual phonetic realization of "devoiced" vowels
Descriptions of Japanese phonology (such as Wikipedia's) usually describe high vowels between voiceless consonants (or word-finally) as "devoiced". For example, the pronunciation of ⟨圧⟩ 'pressure' and ...
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Do Japanese actually pronounce the "v" sound?
Do Japanese actually pronounce the "v" sound? They do have a kana character (ヴ) dedicated to transcribing foreign "v" sounds, but do they actually pronounce them like the English phoneme /v/ (using ...
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Why does the g tends to sound more like a m or n?
I have heard words such as shigoto, sugata, sugu (ni) and they end up sounding like shimoto, sunata, and sunu ni. Even in sentence such as Haru ga kimasu. I've heard sound like: Haru na kimasu.
So ...
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Is there a radiotelephony alphabet standard for kanji, similar to NATO phonetic alphabet ("alfa, bravo, charlie")?
NATO phonetic alphabet is used for precise dictation of English letters:
"A" is pronounced as "Alfa"
"B" as "Bravo"
"C" as "Charlie", etc.
There are similar alphabets for other languages.
There are ...
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"y"-sound insertion after intervocalic ん
The pronunciation of intervocalic ん is a topic by itself, with the surrounding vowels tending to become nasalized, and ん itself maybe being pronounced as a nasal vowel. But that's not what I'm asking ...
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Do loanwords have quasi-phonemic vowel reduction?
I've started to notice this, and I'm not sure whether my eyes are deceiving me or not, but it seems as if several, but not all loans have a high statistical probability of vowels being reduced/...
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How does ウァ differ from ワ and ヴァ?
I know Wine is written as ワイン. I've also seen Whiskey as ウィスキー. In both english words, the 'w' sound are relatively similar (although slightly different).
I'm assuming ウァ would be somewhat like ワ.
But ...
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How is リィ pronounced?
I'm confused about リィ. (That's big リ followed by little ィ.)
Although this combination isn't part of the official orthography (as far as I know), it seems to be fairly common. I asked a Japanese ...
user1478
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Why did Japanese evolve to have a ''she'' mora instead of a ''see'' mora in さしすせそ?
In the さしすせそ series, し is an exceptions to the pattern.
Is ''she'' easier to pronounce than ''see'' or why does Japanese have this feature?
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「はは」(母) and ハ行転呼
It occurred to me the other day that if ハ行転呼 had affected all applicable environments without exception, 母 /haha/ (or I guess properly it was /ɸaɸa/, right?)should have become /hawa/.
The Japanese ...
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Origin of the pronunciations of 観音 and 漢音
The Japanese name for the deity Guanyin, 観音, seems as far as I can tell to be almost universally pronounced かんのん Kannon, and not かんおん Kan’on.
The origin of the name, as Wikipedia correctly gives it, ...
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Repeating the vowel sound of the mora that precedes gemination in songs
I noticed that in songs, the vowel sounds of the morae that come before geminations are sometimes repeated.
For example, the first lyric line of “マジカルちょーだいっ” is sung as しらんぷりをしたあって where the line is ...
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Confusion with pronunciation in some words: 'm' and 'n' sounds when there is 'g'
It has been bugging me for a while; I'm using memrise for learning and for example:
ちゅうごく China → I hear it pronounced chūmoku
かがく science → I hear it pronounced kanaku
Is this an error from memrise'...
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"Arigatō" and "gozaimasu" combined into a single word?
In Japan for three years, and I've noticed that the locals often sound like they're combining the two words "arigatō" and "gozaimasu" into a single word, "arigatōzaimasu".
Am I hearing things (...
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Utterance initial [ɾ]
According to The sounds of Japanese (Vance 2008):
When /ɾ/ is the first phoneme in an utterance, the tip of the tongue is already resting lightly on the alveolar ridge, and /ɾ/ is produced by rapidly ...
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What Japanese lullabys are available to provide early Japanese exposure to children?
I'd like to expose my young children to the sounds of Japanese at night as they go to sleep.
Specifically, I'd like to play Japanese lullabies or other soothing music with vocals. Where do I find such ...
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Can we predict if a kanji has a reading that ends in long う
Can we predict if a kanji has a reading that ends in long う? By "long う" I mean that the preceding mora also is in a u-row syllable such as ふう, くう, つう.
Consider these. I will list the kanji followed ...
Flaw♦
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What is the correct pitch accent for ううん?
For ううん to express negation, Weblio gives the pitch accent as 【2】, i.e.
ううん 【LHL】
However, (to me) this doesn't sound like how people actually pronounce the word. I've always thought that it ...
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Is there an equivalent of the Harvard sentences for Japanese?
The Harvard sentences (Wikipedia, full list of sentences) are a set of English sentences that:
Are phonetically balanced in the sense that the phonemes that are used in the sentences appear at the ...
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Teaching the difference between "see" and "she" in English
I've been teaching ESL for over 30 years, but for the last three I've had almost exclusively Japanese students (I teach mostly 1-on-1 classes over Skype, to students from High School to Business ...
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Native pronunciation of the character "し”
I have recently become aware of the difference between the English and Japanese "sh" sounds, which I understand are formalized as the palato-alveolar fricative [ʃ] and the voiceless alveolo-palatal ...
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Pronunciation of ん before a fricative
I've seen many questions asked about the ん sound, both on this site and others, but I'm still uncertain about how it should be produced before a fricative (e.g. さ, し, ひ, ふ). So I'm hoping someone can ...
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Rule on vowel devoicing? [duplicate]
Ok, so I mostly understand how vowel devoicing works in Japanese, but there's something that's making me a bit confused. On all the sources I've found, most say that vowel devoicing usually occurs in ...
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バカヤロウ to バゲロ [mature content]
Note: This question may contain wordings that may be considered rude to some, so proceed with open mind and caution.
One of the legacies of Japanese colonization in my country during WW2 is a rude ...
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Did labialized consonants remain in Ryūkyūan?
The labialized velar consonants are rare even in historical Japanese; besides (possibly) one verb (kweru), they (kwa-, gwa-, kwe-, gwe-) occur only in some Sino-Japanese morphemes. In Japanese, they ...
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How to pronounce 繁栄 han'ei?
How to pronounce 繁栄 han'ei? Is there a glottal stop between the two syllables? Is it //haɴʔeː//, //haɴeː//, //haŋʔeː// or //haŋeː//?
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Pronunciation question for consonants k/g and t/d
I was wondering if someone could help me clear up some confusion
Sometimes when I hear people speaking Japanese in videos, I hear them swap the k/g consonants, as well as the d/t consonants.. Like ...
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Is the japanese あ ever [ɐ] instead of [a]?
So, both those vowels are very similar, the only difference being that [a] is made when the mouth is fully open while [ɐ] is near-open.
Both those sounds exist in my language (Brazilian Portuguese), ...
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Do native speakers learn consonant and vowel length easily, or is it difficult?
Just want to ask if this is normal or I am just fighting the wrong way.
かっこいい say this word has the final 2 い which shall take 2 length of the i sound.
I am struggling to keep trying to speak with 2 ...
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When spoken casually, how different do 「た」 and 「だ」 in 「頂きます」 sound to native speakers?
For example, it's very difficult for my ears, which have been accustomed to Mandarin that does not differentiate voiced sounds and unaspirated voiceless sounds, to tell the difference between 「た」 and 「...
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Desu pronounced dess: what about other words? [duplicate]
On a CD that came with my text book I hear that desu is pronounced dess. Are there many other words in Japanese, where done of the sound from the kana spelling actually falls off, like in this example,...
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イ音便 Outside of the て and た Forms
I understand that a lot of the time the consonants in き, ぎ, し and り were dropped, making 書きて into 書いて, 焼き刃 into やいば, 良し into 良い, etc.
When it comes to verbs, it affected their て form as well as た/たら/...
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ト and ツ in English loanwords
When it comes to gairaigo, every time there's a consonant cluster or a final one you generally add a -u to it. Glass=gurasu, plan=puran, story=sutoorii, wrestling=resuringu.
As far as I can tell, this ...
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How can I find the pitch-accent pattern for 頭高型?
I don't mean the meaning of 頭高型, but the pitch-accent pattern of the actual word 「頭高型」. I've found several pitch-accent dictionaries including the two OJAD sites (here and here), but the first site ...
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Siri's pronunciation of ふ
Recently, I've been using Siri in Japanese to set cooking timers. I've noticed she pronounced the「フ」in「十五分」clearly as /hu/, not /fu/.
From Wikipedia:
Old Japanese does not have /h/, but rather /ɸ/ ...
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Why does 本仕込 contain rendaku but 本絞り does not?
Both words 本仕込 (ほんじこみ）and 本絞り（ほんしぼり contain the prefix ほん - the root words are しこみ and しぼり. They are morphologically similar nouns, so I am wondering whether this specific instance of rendaku is ...
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連濁 in proper nouns
There was already this answer regarding the basic rules of rendaku. However, it seems that these rules do not apply at all to proper nouns, especially toponyms. Examples include 秋葉原｛あきはばら｝ (no rendaku)...
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Why does 背く sound like そむふ in this sentence?
The clip and subtitles:
http://clyp.it/fmzowhxt
組織の命令に背くという事は どういう事か お前は わかってない！
So why is 背く being pronounced like that? I don't hear a く at all and hear a ふ instead.
Also, maybe the following is ...
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pronunciation of 拗音
I have difficulty to pronounce (あ段, お段) 拗音, e.g., きゃ, きょ, ひゃ, ひょ correctly.
My Japanese language teacher is a native Japanese. What she taught me is the same that I can find on the Internet. For ...
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Yet another seemingly unvoiced voiced sound?
In a recent Japanese movie, the leading actor is acting as Uncle Vanya on a stage, saying 「おまえはぼくの人生を踏みにじった」, in which the 「じ」sounds to me very similar to 「し」.
I wonder how this sounds to a native ...
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Pronunciation of words with ん followed by sokuon
How do you pronounce words like 「ごめんってば」 or 「日本人っぽい」?
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Correct pronunciation of voiceless bilabial fricative [ɸ]
I found that there are two different pronunciations for the [ɸ] phone. For example, in Japanese compare those two pronunciations for same word 冬 (for which I believe will has [ɸɯjɯ] as phonetic ...
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Why isn't the word for triangle トラヤングル?
What's the phonetic difference between toraianguru (トライアングル, the correct word in Japanese) and torayanguru (トラヤングル)? Do they both sound the same and it's purely a matter of orthography, or is there ...
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Why is the English word "studio" transcribed as スタジオ?
So I'm aware that transcription into Japanese is not always clear-cut, and there are plenty of exceptions. It sort of makes sense that "Australia" is オーストラリア not *オーストレリア and "stadium" is スタジアム not *...
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Accent pattern of ています
According to the rules of accent, a "flat" verb (平板式) keeps flat in its て-form, and a non-"flat" (起伏式) verb is accented in the antepenultimate position in the て-form:
ア↑ビル（浴びる）→ ア↑...
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Is there any phonetic rule behind readings 馬場{ばば} and 馬場{ばんば}?
I understand that place names often undergo changes separate from regular language, but I always wondered if there was any phonetic rule behind reading for the word 馬場. Meaning "horse riding grounds" ...
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