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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?
○ まる
OK; correct; yes; supported; available (like ✔; note that the check mark usually means "wrong" in Japanese examinations)
masked/censored character (like * in English used to mask ...
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Confusion with pronunciation in some words: 'm' and 'n' sounds when there is 'g'
Probably you were hearing "velar nasal g" [ŋ], which is an allophone of [g] mainly heard in eastern parts of Japan. In Japanese, [ŋ] and [g] in がぎぐげご are variants (allophones) of the same ...
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11
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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?
This comes down to the biomechanics of pronunciation. It's ...
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9
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Do native speakers learn consonant and vowel length easily, or is it difficult?
I assume that you are asking whether native speakers can detect, as a child, whether a vowel is long (マーナ) or short (マナ). The answer is yes, infants can detect it by age 9.5 months according to the ...
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Is there an equivalent of the Harvard sentences for Japanese?
Not an exact equilvalent but a similar dataset in Japanese is ATR 503 sentences. Instead of single phonemes, it is balanced for two-phoneme sequences and three-phoneme sequences. ATR stands for ...
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When spoken casually, how different do 「た」 and 「だ」 in 「頂きます」 sound to native speakers?
The people in the video are clearly saying いただきます, not いだだきます or いたたきます. Voiced and unvoiced consonants sound totally differently at least to the ears of native Japanese speakers, and I have never ...
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7
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Yet another seemingly unvoiced voiced sound?
I'm a native Japanese speaker, and it sounds like じ to me. It does sound slightly "weaker" or "less explosive" than the first じ (in 人生) if I listen to them carefully, but the ...
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Why is -ng transcribed as ング?
You're on the right track, but a little off.
When a language borrows a word from another language, it has two choices: drop the sounds that don't exist in their language, or add sounds to preserve ...
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Origin of the pronunciations of 観音 and 漢音
I can only answer part of your question: the shift from かんおん to かんのん in the reading of 観音 is listed by several sources as due to 連声. (Shogakukan's 国語大辞典, and 大辞林 and 大辞泉)
The Japanese Wikipedia ...
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Desu pronounced dess: what about other words?
This is not a direct answer to your question but let me explain about difference between voicing/devoicing vowels and prolonging vowels.
There are several ways to pronounce です or the likes.
des (1 ...
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Desu pronounced dess: what about other words?
In Japanese phonotactics, high vowels (for Japanese, these are i and u) have a certain property: they become unvoiced when surrounded by unvoiced sounds. Since the "u" in desu is surrounded on the ...
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Yet another seemingly unvoiced voiced sound?
Your ears are picking up on a difference, but strictly speaking it is less about the degree of voicing and more about the degree of sibilance.
I found another sample of a more run-of-the-mill ふみにじった ...
4
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Is there a radiotelephony alphabet standard for kanji, similar to NATO phonetic alphabet ("alfa, bravo, charlie")?
I doubt there is an official method or list of words used to explain kanji.
If there were an official method that were a lot more efficient, then regular people would probably be using it and nobody ...
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4
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When spoken casually, how different do 「た」 and 「だ」 in 「頂きます」 sound to native speakers?
As a native speaker of English, I'd like to chime in and state that I too hear a clear distinction between the voiced and unvoiced consonants in the advertisement (and in spoken Japanese in general).
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4
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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?
Would just like to add that ◯ can also be used as a placeholder. For example there's a TV show called 人志松本の◯◯な話. The equivalent in English would be "Matsumoto Hitoshi's _____ story".
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When is お pronounced「ä」instead of「ō」？
ä with double dots isn't defined in the english language. What sound do you mean?
お is defined as having one pronunciation, like "Oh" in english. Any variant is regional, or related to accent.
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Rule on vowel devoicing?
The phonological rules of vowel devoicing in Japanese are as follows: high vowels (that is, in the case of Japanese, i and u), become unvoiced when surrounded by other unvoiced sounds. This is how it ...
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What is the correct romaji/kanji for a phrase that sounds like “fui cabaru”
With minimal research, it seems like it's [振り]{fu・ri}[かぶる]{ka・bu・ru}.
かぶる could also be written as 被る, but in this compound, I'm seeing it mostly in hiragana.
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Pronunciation question for consonants k/g and t/d
If your native language is English, you may find that although the contrast between the pairs /t d/, /p b/, and /k g/ is nominally one of voicing, in practice it is frequently one of aspiration. The ...
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Correct pronunciation of voiceless bilabial fricative [ɸ]
It turns out that OP's question is that Japanese ふ sometimes sounds as if Vietnamese ph //f// and other times kh //x//.
That observation is true. The status of [[ɸ]] sound in Japanese is somewhat ...
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How can I find the pitch-accent pattern for 頭高型?
頭高型 is a technical term which is also a compound noun. Ordinary native Japanese speakers usually have no idea about what 頭高型 means, so it's not surprising to me if it is not listed in an accent ...
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イ音便 Outside of the て and た Forms
This presentation, which is based on a book titled 日本語構造伝達文法・発展Ａ, touches upon why 音便 doesn’t happen in the たい-form (e.g. 書きたい).
If my interpretation is correct, the reason the /t/ sound doesn't ...
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Pitch accent differences between Praat and OJAD
It looks as though the highest part (between ち and ゆ) got slided down in the chart for some reason. The long vertical line after ゆ indicates that.
EDIT: Per @morhetb's comment below, it looks like the ...
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3
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Why is the English word "studio" transcribed as スタジオ?
The combination tu in some words is rendered as タ. As far as I can remember now, ト is not used.
bathtub バスタブ
study スタディー
tuck タック
tumbler タンブラー
In addition, etymology of studio is the same as that ...
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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?
◯ (まる) symbolizes “O.K., Right," Perfect," while X（ばつ）symbolizes "No," "Incorrect," and "Wrong."
The test method that requires the testees to answers in Yes (○) / No (X) format in school examinations ...
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Did labialized consonants remain in Ryūkyūan?
After poking around a bit in the Shuri-Naha Dialect Dictionary that covers the Okinawan branch of Ryūkyūan, it appears that here, at least, labiovelars did persist. A sampling of entries that show ...
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ト and ツ in English loanwords
I think you are right. This should be simply because Japanese had no sound that was similar enough to "tu" and "du". As you know, phonetically speaking, the タ-line is highly ...
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3
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Is there an equivalent of the Harvard sentences for Japanese?
Looks like there is no set of standard sentences that is exactly like Harvard Sentences, but:
If you are looking for phrases for testing radio connection, that would be 本日は晴天なり. This is an "...
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3
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How to convert Japanese Kana to IPA phonetics?
The IPA notation for each hiragana is listed on Wikipedia.
However, the table only shows how the character is typically pronounced in isolation. As pointed out in the comments section, please be aware ...
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