I recently boasted to a native speaker that I can pronounce Japanese with a high degree of precision, while he has trouble with pronouncing the "L" sound in English. Later in the discussion he stopped me and insisted that I was mistaking a Japanese pronunciation. He said:
'黒海{こっかい}’ is pronounced differently than '国会{こっかい}’
(1) I don't believe him. Is there really more than one way to pronounce "こっかい”, or any other word? Every word can be written in kana, and kana pronunciation is not ambiguous?
(2) Is it even possible for Japanese to have the concept of a heteronyms? A heteronym must be written the same way and pronounced differently. But, almost every Japanese word can be written two different ways: kana and kanji. Without a unique way to write a word, heteronyms don't make sense?
Is this a valid assertion: "The Japanese language does not support the concept of 'heteronyms'."?
maybe this page needs to be updated and improved? http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Category:Japanese_heteronyms
thank you.