が pronunciation?

I heard it’s pronounced like “ŋa” not “ga” in my Anki examples. Is it some sort of accent? Should I try to say it like that?

4 comments
  1. don’t pronounce it with the nasal sound. it’s a specific accent that’s slowly going away and not considered standard. it does exist so you need to understand it, tho.

  2. You can find a good overview of Japanese /g/ [on the Wikipedia page for Japanese phonology](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_phonology#Weakening).

    Prescriptively, [ŋ] _is_ standard and taught by the NHK. Monolingual pronunciation dictionaries will indicate this with a handakuten — e.g., カ゚. However, since using [g] 100% of a time _is_ a valid pronunciation choice employed by some native speakers, it’s perfectly fine to use that strategy yourself. But yes, you do have to know that [ŋ] exists.

Leave a Reply
You May Also Like