Talk:Japanese/Pronunciation/Archive 1

Okay, here's some content for a rough basic japanese sounds page. The order of the sections could probably be safely moved around a bit. I'd just like to introduce the "vowels" "consonants" and "mora" concepts before the sound chart.

Oh, and we should probably vote and decide on a SINGLE romanization style and use that in the rest of the book. We have to decide between the most accurate on the "kana" chart (Nihon-shiki) or the most accurate in pronunciation (Hepburn).

I cast my vote for the Hepburn romanization style, because the "kana" will be written next to the "romaji" in any case. Pronunciation is therefore the most important factor in our romaji.

Romaji will also only be used for the beginner lessons, after which it should be dropped. Some people have suggested JPLT 4 level as the cutoff point, but I'd vote for an even sooner cutoff point. The sooner Romaji is not used, the better for the student. GoodStuff 14:43, 25 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Why not use the International Phonetic Alphabet(IPA)?
I've been studying Chinese and I find that when the latin alphabet is used for pronunciation many students confuse it with English. Also English speakers often have different pronunciations that lead to further confusion.

Would it be possible to provide the IPA transliteration along with the romaji system? I think this would also help those who are reading this where English is their second language.

Captal N? Apostrophe?
what's this about capital N? the concept is introduced but not explained.


 * Actually, I would say it is explained (although I find the explanation quite confusing) but not introduced. I think when it says "capital N" it is talking about the single 'n' consonant/syllable instead of an n that is part of one of the following syllables: (na, ni, nu, ne, no, nya, nyu, nyo).
 * To pick one of the examples from the page: senen is broken up into the following syllables se-N-e-N, However, just looking at it, you might try to break it up like se-ne-N, which is incorrect. In order to distinguish between capital N (se-N-e-N) from a "regular" n, this textbook will use apostrophes ('). So, se-N-e-N would be written as sen'en.
 * Disclaimer: I'm not a Japanese speaker, so I could have misinterpreted the something. Perhaps someone could make the explanation more understandable? - Sik0fewl 21:47, 19 Apr 2005 (UTC)

According to examples, how about this interpretation: Anyway, this may be closely related to kanjis so I guess providing kanjis might be helpful. Say, Another example shown, Though I don't understand the role of a captal N well (equivallent to an apostrophe, or just representing /ん/, or neither of them)... - Marsian 20:15, 6 May 2005 (UTC)
 * An apostrophe is showing "where to divide a word."
 * kin'en (禁煙) = kin (禁) + en (煙)
 * kinen (記念) = ki (記) + nen (念)
 * hon'ya (本屋) = hon (本) + ya (屋)


 * Well, I'm not Japanese, nor am I a linguist, but here is my take on it :) A "capital N" is referring to ん. You're probably right that it is closely related to the kanji, but kanji doesn't even have to come into it. The problem comes when trying to represent kana as romaji.
 * For example:
 * きんえん = kinen
 * きねん = kinen
 * As you can see, without the apostrophe, this is quite ambiguous and we can't tell for sure how to pronounce it. The apostrophe in kin'en (きんえん) shows us that the n is not connected to the e (which would be ね). Now that it is split up, we can clearly see that the first n is a capital N (or ん). - Sik0fewl 20:37, 6 May 2005 (UTC)

Double vowels
The page states: "Japanese vowels are pure, so if two vowels are written next to each other, do not blend them together; pronounce them separately."

How about iie (いいえ) zuii (ずいい)? According the the above rule the double i should be read as "ee"-"ee". However I think I've heard the "i" in iie (from anime) as a long "ee" rather than "ee"-"ee".

Thanks Agro1986 7 July 2005 11:45 (UTC)


 * Yeah, the same thing seems to happen with ou, it seems to be spoken as an exended "oo" sound. eg, arigatou, doujou. Likewise for ai (eg, hai) making a long English "i" sound. I think what is happening is that they *are* pronouncing both vowels, but there is no pause in between the sounds so it seems like the blend together. That is, when you say iie, you kind of hold the [short English] "y"-sound you make after saying each i, which makes it blend together. However, in the case of iie, it probably *did* get totally blended together after centuries of spoken speech. I hope this made some sort of sense.. btw, I don't actually speak Japanese, so these are just thoughts :) - Sik0fewl 7 July 2005 14:39 (UTC)


 * Er... Sik0fewl is correct, I think. Well, in fact, there're two very similar words: "いいえ" and "いえ", both mean "No". What Agro1986 has heard might be the latter one, which is the shorter version of the former (the pronunciation of いえ is the same as "家", which means "house"). And this いえ might originally come from いいえ, and might have "get totally blended together after centuries of spoken speech", as Sik0fewl mentioned. In addition, both いいえ and いえ are felt rather formal, while "いや" is more casual (sometimes rude).
 * ずいい（随意） is not pronounced as "zui". Just separately as "zu-i-i". Hope this helps. - Marsian 9 July 2005 03:50 (UTC)

A couple questions
I've had an interest in all things asian for a while now, and when I saw this wikibooks module I thought it would be a nice idea to learn Japanese. Just want to say thanks for whoever has started and contributed to this book so far.

However, I'm having difficulty with a couple of things in this (Pronunciation) page.

1. What does it mean to "purse" one's lips? Does it mean that one should go through the motions of "rounding" one's lips, and then open one's jaw (more than one usually does when "rounding") to purse?

2. Why not include the Kana letters in the pronunciation table and make one table, at least for this introduction section? Or perhaps create a reference section to hold that table. I think it would be a bit easier to associate the letters and pronunciations together.

Thanks again. --Mijokijo 14:36, 5 August 2005 (UTC)

Sound files for pronunciation?
My thanks to all those who have prepared this course. I have a small suggestion: It would be a great help if someone could link all the sounds (and words) on this page to sound files! --Jon Olav Vik 14:58, 12 August 2005 (UTC)


 * Hmm... Are there any PD or near-PD sound files? If not, would you like to try my noise? (I know, they're far from good. I'm not a voice actor at all...) - Marsian / talk 16:31:58, 2005-08-27 (UTC)