Is it fu or hu? In the h column?

9 comments

1. HU is Nihon-shiki, so as the Japanese learn it.

   FU is the Hepburn system, which is learned more widely abroad because it approximates what non-Japanese hear. The fricative sounds close to an F, instead of an H/WH sound.

2. It’s “supposed” to be hu (in the sense that it’s in the h column and the u row), but the actual consonant isn’t the same as the /h/ in the rest of the h column. It sounds pretty similar to the /f/ sound we have in English, so the Hepburn romanization system (by far the most common system used to romanize Japanese in the West) uses the letter f to represent it, in order to more closely approximate the sound.

   It’s actually not quite the same as an English f though: instead of being formed with the top teeth and bottom lip, it’s formed with both lips and no teeth. Think of it like you’re gently blowing out air. In this sense, it’s also similar to an /h/ sound, just with rounded lips, so you can kind of see how ふ ended up shifting toward this consonant.

3. People have already given you answers of a sort, so let me give you an answer from another perspective.

   On a deeper level, the answer to “which is it” is: it’s neither. Both “fu” and “hu” are two different systems of *romanization.* Both are a sort of shorthand designed to represent the sounds of Japanese as best as possible using the Roman alphabet used in English and other Western languages.

   Neither “fu” nor “hu” *precisely* represent the sound as it exists in Japanese. As u/AlexE9918 and u/pixelboy1459 both explained well, it’s sort of a hybrid between the two (just like the Japanese ら column does not perfectly correspond to an “l” or “r” sound), so in terms of practicing listening/pronunciation, you’ll want to listen to actual native speakers rather than trying to extrapolate the Japanese sound from the romanization.

   **TL;DR: In terms of understanding romanized Japanese when you see it, you’ll want to remember that ふ can be written as “hu” or “fu”, but they both represent the same sound. In terms of remembering the actual sound, you’ll want to listen to examples of native speakers, because neither “hu” or “fu” (as an English speaker would pronounce them) correspond perfectly to the Japanese sound.**

4. it’s neither, it’s ふ

   that’s not being sarcastic, the problem is that romanizations are approximations, they don’t fully represent the native content

   this is also why romaji is detrimental to learning, imho, and it’s best to move on to kana and not bother with it for too long. it doesn’t matter if it’s FU or HU (which are just different romaji styles), it’s in the same line as はひふへほ. the pronunciation happens to be closer to FU in english; just like ち is closer to CHI than TI in english, as is つ closer to TSU than TU, but they’re still part of the たちつてと line in the gojuuon that is approximated in (some) romaji as “t”

5. If you know the IPA chart the way フ is written is [ɸɯ̟ᵝ]. As you can see by the theta symbol the sound is more of an english TH than the english F or H. Hope this helps

6. It is pronounced /ɸɯ/

   Here is the consonant sound: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voiceless_bilabial_fricative

   And here is the vowel sound: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Close_back_unrounded_vowel

7. On another note, do you see how he writes kana? Maybe not so much a source of 100% fact.

8. My first Japanese teacher described it as trying to blow out birthday candles on a cake.

9. So what’s really gonna cook your noodle is: it’s not a question of how you say the F or H, it’s how you say the U.

   The Japanese U is not like the English one, and if you’re new to Japanese, it might take some time to hear it properly. But once you get the U sound right, you’ll get ふ right easily. Unfortunately, you can’t really *read* how something sounds, you’re going to have to listen to a lot of native Japanese and practice.