For listening practice I am just randomly watching some short clips in Japanese. And I noticed that sometimes an “h” sound, especially ひ sound to me like more of a breathy “sh” sound.
For example here around the 30 seconds mark: https://youtu.be/YpGQ54jrmZg?si=vSqlU9YCsx1xipTL&t=30
The woman says 「・・・メイクのコツだったりとか美容の秘訣だったりとか・・・」
And when she says 秘訣（ひけつ）I can’t help but to hear like an “sh” sound. It’s not like a full blown し but more like a breathy “sh” sound like something in between an “h” and an “sh” sound. (A little bit like the german “ch” as in Bach, Yacht, etc.. but more soft) I’m probably not making sense. Am I going crazy? Am I hearing things that are not there?
7 comments
[deleted]
No you are not wrong, a possible pronunciation of the word you proposed is [çi̥ke̞t͡sɨᵝ] in IPA while english h is usually pronounced as IPA [h].
I’d suggest to take a look at this resource on phoneme pronunciation https://www.ipachart.com/
you’re absolutely not going crazy.
it’s basically palatalization into a palatal fricative.
[https://www.fnn.jp/articles/-/170094](https://www.fnn.jp/articles/-/170094)
[https://japanese.stackexchange.com/questions/1437/why-the-h-is-pronounced-as-sh-in-some-cases](https://japanese.stackexchange.com/questions/1437/why-the-h-is-pronounced-as-sh-in-some-cases)
Afaik _all_ moras ending in い are pronounced with an at least slightly different consonant from the rest of the same column (行), which is the same as in that column’s 拗音 moras, i.e. what’s written as the i-kana + small ゃ/ょ/ゅ (like きゃ, しゅ, or りょ)
The most obvious ones are of course し, じ/ぢ, and ち, but as you noticed ひ also has a totally different consonant from はへほ (ふ is different still, but that’s due to a separate phenomenon)
In [IPA](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Phonetic_Alphabet) it looks something like this, contrasting ア段 with イ段:
– [ka]↔[kʲi], [ga]↔[gʲi], [na]↔[nʲi], [ba]↔[bʲi], [pa]↔[pʲi], [ɾa]↔[ɾʲi]; the superscript j means palatalization of the preceding consonant, which is really hard to pick up on with the following vowel being [i] (at least for me), but is the same thing as in きゃ and other 拗音 moras
– [sa]↔[ɕi], [za]↔[(d)ʑi]; not the same as English sh and zh (e.g. in lei**s**ure), that would be [ʃi] and [ʒi]
– [ta]↔[tɕi], [da]↔[(d)ʑi]; same as above, but with affricates instead of plain fricatives
– [ha]↔[çi]; [same sound](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voiceless_palatal_fricative) as in Standard German _i**ch**_ or _Schwä**ch**e_, also the first consonant of words like _hue_ and _human_ in some English accents
And of course this means that ひゃ-ひゅ-ひょ aren’t [hʲa]-[hʲu]-[hʲo], but [ça]-[çu]-[ço]
This specific phenomenon used to destroy me, you’re right it’s a much more airy h for lack of a better term but you do get used to it as you listen more
Some dialects pronounce ひ more similarly to し.
In fact, even the traditional [Tokyo “Shitamachi”](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yamanote_and_Shitamachi) dialect does:
> The lack of distinction between the two phonemes **hi** and **shi** (so that hitotsu (“one)” is pronounced shitotsu) is typical of the Shitamachi kotoba.[2]
Shitamachi is the “lower” half of Tokyo, meaning the low-lying areas of the city that used to house the merchants, artisans, and working class, as opposed to the Yamanote half that housed the samurai and nobility (and is now associated with white-collar workers).
I’ve observed this a lot before つ specifically. [必要](https://www.immersionkit.com/dictionary?keyword=%E5%BF%85%E8%A6%81&sort=shortness) is an example that instantly comes to mind for often sounding like しつよう to me, against my better knowledge (and even on occasions where I don’t mishear it, the ひ still sounds markedly “sharp”).
I actually experience the inverse too: [失礼](https://www.immersionkit.com/dictionary?keyword=%E3%81%88%E3%81%88%E3%80%80%E3%81%88%E3%81%88%E3%80%80%E5%88%86%E3%81%8B%E3%82%8A%E3%81%BE%E3%81%99+%E3%81%AF%E3%81%84%E3%80%80%E3%81%99%E3%81%BF%E3%81%BE%E3%81%9B%E3%82%93%E3%80%80%E5%A4%B1%E7%A4%BC%E3%81%97%E3%81%BE%E3%81%99%E3%80%82&sort=shortness)、[しつこい](https://www.immersionkit.com/dictionary?keyword=%E3%81%82%E3%82%93%E3%81%9F%E3%82%89%E3%82%82%E3%80%80%E3%81%97%E3%81%A4%E3%81%93%E3%81%84%E3%81%AA%E3%81%81&sort=shortness%29%E3%80%81%5B%E8%B3%AA%E5%95%8F%5D%28https%3A%2F%2Fwww.immersionkit.com%2Fdictionary%3Fkeyword%3D%E8%B3%AA%E5%95%8F%2Cshortness) ([ex. 2](https://www.immersionkit.com/dictionary?keyword=%E6%84%8F%E5%A4%96%E3%81%A8%E3%81%97%E3%81%A4%E3%81%93%E3%81%84&sort=shortness), [ex. 3](https://www.immersionkit.com/dictionary?keyword=%E3%81%8A%E5%89%8D%E3%81%8C%E3%81%97%E3%81%A4%E3%81%A3%E3%81%93%E3%81%8F&sort=shortness%29%E3%80%81%5B%E8%B3%AA%E5%95%8F%5D%28https%3A%2F%2Fwww.immersionkit.com%2Fdictionary%3Fkeyword%3D%E8%B3%AA%E5%95%8F%2Cshortness))、[質問](https://www.immersionkit.com/dictionary?keyword=%E8%B3%AA%E5%95%8F&sort=shortness) sounding like they start with ひつ.
Sometimes if I go back and do a retake I can hear the consonant either way (it’s pronounced in such a way that it can trigger both my ひ and し sensors, depending on what I’m trying to hear, which goes to show there’s overlap in the ranges of articulation here); other times yet, I can’t help but clearly hear one when I know it should be the other.