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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 just hold the ei vowel for an extended period?
Edit: it’s 白檜辞書。It uses Siri’s voice to simulate pronunciations, which is why I have my doubts if it’s accurate here.
My dictionary says that けいえい 【経営】 is pronounced in one syllable with one really long vowel.
Having lived all of my life in Japan as a native speaker, I have never heard the word 「経営」 pronounced that way.
In most cases (like over 99% of the time), it is pronounced:
「けーえー」
in two elongated syllables.
Once in a while (the remaining less than 1 %) when a person needs/wants to emphatically pronounce it for some specific reason, that person might pronounce it:
「け・い・え・い」
in four exaggerated syllables.
Again, I do not even know how 「経営」 could possibly be pronounced in one syllable. In addition, even if such pronunciation were possible (like 「けーーー」?), almost no one would understand what word it would be if pronounced that way.
Having lived all of my life in Japan as a native speaker. I don't think you need to disclose that in every post.
– istrasci
Feb 10 '20 at 4:28
Basically, Japanese language syllables are attributed to each Kana characters, so, formalized pronunciation of 'けいえい' is, [Ke-I-E-I], which has four syllables. (Even 'ん' would form single syllable in this formalization.) But in practice, sequences of vowels like "e-i" comes compounded and would be pronounced in semi-single syllable so, in most cases, in casual dialogs, we pronounce it as [Kei-Ei] in two syllables, although usually we don't really aware about syllables.
