When pronouncing “Yasuke” do you pronounce the “su” at all or is it technically silent?

8 comments

1. It’s called devoicing! Here’s a link to a great video going over the topic pretty thoroughly!

   https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=iYQM7BhJJns

2. [deleted]

3. The “su” won’t be silent, as the word has three mora ie “beats” to it, and all of them must be preserved in speech. The “u” vowel of that mora will devoice, becoming as quiet as the “s” sound before it and the “k” sound after it. In effect, the “s” sound will ever so lightly lengthen. This is a feature of the standard language, and some areas of the country may not devoice to the same extent. It is also not found in very formal speech.

4. My Japanese friend pronounces です as “des”, as does almost every other male Japanese; except when he is speaking to a policeman, when it becomes “de-su”.

   There are times when special politeness is appropriate.

5. Yasske

6. It’s more like the ‘U’ is silent

7. I knew a Yasuke and when I tried to pronounce it with the silent “U” and he corrected me and said to pronounce the “U”, so I dont know depends I guess

8. To an English ear, it will sound closer to “yas-kay” than “ya-su-ke”, but the u-sound is not silent, it’s just devoiced. This basically means that while you are still putting your mouth in the shape to make a “u” sound and are pushing air out, you aren’t vibrating your vocal chords while you do it.

   A common example of the same phenomenon is the word です (desu), which is almost always pronounced with a devoiced u-sound, so ends up sounding closer to “des”. It’s common for both う(u) sounds and い(i) sounds to be devoiced in Japanese when they are surrounded by unvoiced consonants (k, s, t, p, and h) because it makes the word easier to pronounce.