Questions tagged [vowels]
母音. The Japanese language has five vowels: a i u e o.
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The Vowel Lengthening in 〜ます, 〜です
I notice over hundreds and hundreds of japanese's videos, anime and podcast that Japanese (mostly women but not only) tend in speech to length the vowel in the ending like 〜まーす, 〜でーす and so on.
I don'...
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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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When is ō romanised ou Vs oh?
Top of my head, I think of these 6 anime/manga:
ō's that are 'oh'
Tamaki Suoh (須王 環 Suō Tamaki) from OHSHC
Ōtsuki (大槻) from Kaiji - ok I can't find on the fandom page, but I swear the subs say ...
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Bobby Fischer & Haruhi Suzumiya - Do you have to say consecutive vowels together?
Eg 'Koizumi'...and generally koi, ai, mai, etc
Bobby Fischer, mentally ill world chess champion and creator of 9LX, calls Junichiro 'Koizumi' mentally ill. The pronunciation of the 'こい' part is split ...
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Are there different ways to pronounce お column (or related sounds) like こ, そ, の, etc?
I have noticed two different pronunciations for お column and related sounds (お, の, を）.
For the first one, お is pronounced like aw as in always, の is like no as in British pronunciation of not (nawt).
...
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What is the difference in sound between 'あん' and 'えん'?
かん vs けん, だん vs でん for example. Sometimes, they sound the same to my ears. How to differentiate them? Or are they pronounced the same?
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Are "au" & "ue" vowels?
I'm a new learner of a day & am confused by my Japanese learning app that puts au & ue together with a, i, u, e, o under a section called Japanese vowels. Other places say there is only 5 ...
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Japanese 'え' sound - [ɛ] or [e]?
OK, this has been driving me nuts. My friend and I have been learning Japanese off and on for many years, though neither of us are fluent. We got into an argument about the pronunciation of 'え'.
My ...
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Is there anything special about single vowel words?
I'm not sure if this is a useful question or not. But I was surprised to notice まさか (masaka) was using a single vowel (a) for the whole word. The surprise came from the connection to "bakana" (バカな) ...
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Why does the 'a' sound change to 'o' or 'o' change to 'a' with words that start with "w"? [duplicate]
Please consider the following:
Warrior is ウォリアー： this vowel sound "a" changes to ”オ"
Work is ワーク:this vowel sound "o" changes to "ア"
Chariot is チャリオット:this vowel sound "a" stays "ア"
Corridor is コリドー:...
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けいえい 【経営】pronunciation
My dictionary says that けいえい 【経営】 is pronounced in one syllable with one really long vowel. Is this how it really is pronounced? Is there a tone change or a brief pause between the kanji? Or do you ...
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Old Japanese vowels in kana
The modern Japanese vowels /e,o/ each represent two Old Japanese vowels, arbitrarily written e ë o ö in romaji. I assume that Japanese philologists don't all use romaji, so is there a convention for ...
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Unvoiced vowels in katakana: special case?
When foreign words or proper names are used in Japanese, some modifications are necessary, in particular a lot of vowels are introduced. E.g. 'plastic' (two syllables) becomes プラスチック (five). In this ...
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Does any Japanese dialect use the schwa?
Pronunciation of [ə] is notoriously difficult for Japanese speakers, and while trying to communicate its importance in languages such as English and French, I started to wonder: do any dialects of ...
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い Pronunciations
I've wondered this for a while now but never thought to ask it until now. With regards to the い sound in Japanese, I understand that it's pronounced like a sort of shorter version of the e sound in "...
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How do I write sounds that don't exist in Japanese?
Yesterday I was practising katakana by writing my classmates' names down, but some of the names were harder than I expected. I have a classmate named Väinö, but neither the ä or ö sounds exists in ...
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pronunciation, dialects/background: わたす、すた？
I was watching a few episodes of the anime for 魔法遣いに大切なこと and I couldn't help but notice that the main character, a girl from 岩手県 in this story, pronounced some words containing し as though they ...
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What is the pronunciation of ai?
Sorry for using romaji. I'm referring to the sounds made when a word contains a kana sequence like 「ない」 or 「たい」or 「さい」 「かい」
I've read that the two together sound like the word "pie" sounds in ...
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Pronouncing ない as ねい / ねえ (also ~oi to ~ei)
I noticed that in anime and other Japanese shows, people often pronounce 「ない」 as 「ねい」. For example, instead of saying 「使わない」, the person will say 「使わねい」, but the translation is the same.
I have many ...
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Correct pronunciation of "sukiyaki"?
I've heard it both as "soo-kee-ya-kee" and "skee-ya-kee". Which is correct?
Some more background:
A native speaker once told me that the correct pronunciation is "skee-ya-kee", and I subsequently ...
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Can the last い in かわいい be dropped?
In the Genki I textbook, it says that the i and the u vowels are sometimes dropped when placed between voiceless consonants or at the end of an utterance preceded by voiceless consonants.
The example ...
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Can you use the "Ha, Heh, Hee, Ho" method for learning Japanese vowels?
In Spanish, you can use the "Ha, Heh, Hee, Ho" method for learning Spanish vowels.
For example,
A in Spanish sounds like the 'a' in Ha!
E in Spanish sounds like the 'e' in Heh!
I in Spanish sounds ...
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ー vs small kana vs long kana for writing long vowels
I had thought that for writing long vowels in Japanese, that small kana was mostly used with hiragana and ー was mostly used with katakana.
I was actually thinking of asking whether there were ...
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Is it true that all Japanese words end in a vowel when transliterated to English?
First off I know zero Japanese, so sorry if this is a stupid question. I seem to remember hearing a while back that all Japanese words, when transliterated to the Latin alphabet, will end in a vowel. ...
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Does おお sound different from おう?
I know おう sounds like a long o, but does おお sound the same, or should it be pronounced differently?
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Open /o/ and closed /e/ - what are these allophones?
Some speakers, mainly middle-aged and older males, sometimes pronounce ねえ as [ne:], i.e. with a more closed variant of the usual /e/-sound, let's call it [ɛ]. There are also speakers for the same ...
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How 「えい」 should be pronounced in the words like 英語, 先生, etc?
P.S.: I heard that 「生」 (せい) in the word 先生 can be pronounced either as [sei] or as [see]. If it is so, is there any semantic difference between these variants?
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Does the ー represent a double vowel or a long vowel sound?
For words like パーティー (party), I know ー is doubling the ア and イ. But for a word like センセイ (and let's assume for the sake of argument that it is regularly spelled in katakana), would it be センセイ or センセー ?...
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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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things that look like long vowels but aren't
Are there words written with "ei" or "ou" that are pronounced with both vowels instead of as a long vowel? I think this is true in cases like 拾う and している, but are there cases of it happening where you'...
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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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What are the rules regarding "mute vowels" ("u" after "s" and "i" after "sh")?
When you first begin to learn Japanese you are taught that Japanese has no stress and each syllable should be pronounced equally.
You also learn that certain vowels are not pronounced, or only ...
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