Picking up pieces of Japanese here and there, very much still a novice. Wondering if there is a rule for the pronunciation of Japanese sounds romanized as U. For example, words like *kudasai* and *sumimasen* have that romanized U pronounced. But you don’t pronounce the romanized U in *Asakusa* or *itadakimasu*.
I suspect this is similar to the pronunciation discrepancies with English words like *cough*, *rough*, and *dough*—there simply is no rhyme or reason to it. But I also think there might be something I’m missing by not knowing kanji and kana. Is this one of those things you just gotta learn, like the gender of French words?
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I’m sure there will be some more expert opinions, but I think the issue is that romaji is merely a written interpretation of the sound/hiragana characters. So it’s a mistake to think that when you see it written in romaji, you pronounce it so.
In some words there is more elision than others, but when you hear Japanese spoken normal speed, I would say u is usually pretty short. I find it very hard to distinguish what vowel I hear.
From this youtube video [yt video](https://youtu.be/mdUbWxZrVLw), looks like u is not pronounced if it is preceded by a ‘voiceless’ consonant.
Who told you there are rules in Japanese?
what you’re hearing is [vowel devoicing](https://japanese.stackexchange.com/questions/1095/what-are-the-rules-regarding-mute-vowels-u-after-s-and-i-after-sh), which is a prominent feature in japanese.
I think this would make more sense if you learn Japanese as Japanese children do, starting with the あいうえお. The smallest building block or “unit” is already す (“su”)–it is not broken further down into “s” and “u” as in English. The “u” is built in to the shape your mouth makes when pronouncing these words. As a native speaker, I AM saying the “u” in Asakusa or itadakimasu (saying Asakusa is different from saying Asaksa); I think it’s just happening too fast in conversation for you to hear it every time.
With 頂きます (itadakimasu) as an example, it’s just easier to drop the “u” sound when saying “masu”. Saying the “u” is still correct, but it’s more of a textbook version of the word, rather than the natural pronunciation. Just pronounce it in the way that feels natural.