Hello, sometimes I hear some Japanese words and I am very confused on the pronunciation. I cannot read Kanji, so I look at the Romanji.
I want to know why for some words, people pronounce the second vowel in a two vowel combo, but sometimes they do not. For example:
Tatoe is pronounced where both the “o” and “e” are heard very clearly. Arigatou is pronounced where the “o” is heard, but the “u” is very slight or not even there. In Kireigoto, the “e” is pronounced clearly and the “i” is pronounced lightly.
How do I know how strong to pronounce double, or even triple, vowels in words?
11 comments
You don’t pronounce the second syllable in ou/ei pairs. The U and I elongate the sound but don’t contribute their own pronunciation.
E = E. EI = EE. O = O. OU = OO.
ou = ō, it’s just a longer o.
same thing with ei. for example, “sensei” isn’t pronounced “sensay”, but rather like “sensee”.
I’m sure there’ll be someone who’ll be able to explain this better, since English isn’t my native language. Hope this helps anyway!
*romaji
That is because whether the vowel is long or short matters and the type of Romanization the OP cited misleads in this regard.
‘Thank you’ should be ‘arigatoo’ and is pronounced with a long ‘o’ at the end. Likewise ‘clean’ is ‘kiree’ with a long ‘e’.
‘Obasan’ means aunt and ‘obaasan’ means grandma or old lady. This is how the length of the vowel matters. There are plenty of words with long vowels and it is essential the spellings should note them.
romaji is a terrible basis for pronunciation, please move on to kana as soon as you reasonably can, romaji complicates and confuses things for a lot of learners. not that kana alone will explain everything about pronunciation, but it’s at least not filled with unclear/vague double vowels and unclear glottal-stop/gemination points and such.
*Romaji.
The U and I extend O and E. The U is usually silent, I is very faint.
There’s a lot to get into here. Let’s compare and contrast a couple key differences in English and Japanese phonology.
English is a **syllable-based** and **stress-based** language, whereas Japanese (at least, “mainstream” Tokyo dialect Japanese) is a **mora-based** and **pitch-based** language.
**English:**
* A **syllable** is a unit of sound in a language that starts sometimes with a consonant (or consonant cluster), has a vowel sound, and then optionally ends in a consonant (or consonant cluster). The word `consonant`, for instance, has three syllables: `con·so·nant`.
* A **stressed syllable** is a syllable where the speaker’s voice increases in volume. The word `consonant`, for instance, has primary stress on the first syllable (marked with an apostrophe just before): `’con·so·nant`.
Sometimes we distinguish pairs of words just based on stress. One example is the pair of words spelled “record”.
* `’re·cord`: the noun is stressed on the first syllable.
* `re·’cord`: the verb is stressed on the second syllable.
**Japanese:**
* A **mora** is a unit of sound in a language that lasts for one “beat” in that language. A mora can start with a consonant (or cluster), then has a vowel. Japanese at least doesn’t have any morae that include coda (closing) consonants. *(I’m not sure if there are any mora-based languages that include coda consonants?)*
An important point is that this concept of a mora as a timed unit of sound is separate from a syllable. There are four different realizations of what sounds a bit like English *cocoa*. These words all have two syllables, but they have different numbers of morae:
* ここ (`ko·ko`): two morae, meaning “here”
* 公庫 or こうこ (`ko·o·ko`): three morae, meaning “public finance corporation”
* 股肱 or ここう (`ko·ko·o`): three morae, meaning “right-hand man, trusted lieutenant”
* 高校 or こうこう (`ko·o·ko·o`): four morae, meaning “high school”
* A **pitch-based** language is somewhat similar to a tone-based language like Chinese, but not as far down that road. Words have specific pitch contours, where the speaker’s voice rises and falls in pitch—not volume. There are actually many different words pronounced like こうこう (`ko·o·ko·o`), and some of them are distinguished by different pitch patterns. Here, low pitch is marked with the ` or accent grave, and high pitch is marked with the ́ or accent acute:
* 高校 or こうこう (`kò·ó·kó·ó`, “high school”): the so-called 平板 (*heiban*) or “flat” pitch-accent pattern. The word starts with a low pitch, the then has a high pitch on the second mora, then stays high and slowly comes down.
* 斯う斯う or こうこう (`kóꜜ·ò·kò·ò` “like this and this”): the so-called 頭高 (*atama-daka*) or “head-high” pitch accent pattern. The word starts with a high pitch, followed by a down-step between the first and second mora, so the second and following morae are at a markedly lower pitch.
For beginners, most materials don’t even go into pitch accent, and folks can still (usually) tell what you’re saying from context even if you get the pitch wrong.
But **mora count is very important**. There are *tons* of words that can get very confusing if you pronounce them with too many morae or not enough morae. Pay attention to the rhythm of Japanese.
**Technical details:**
For those interested, some relevant Wikipedia articles:
* [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Syllable](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Syllable)
* [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stress_(linguistics)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stress_(linguistics))
* [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mora_(linguistics)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mora_(linguistics))
* [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/On_(Japanese_prosody)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/On_(Japanese_prosody))
* [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_pitch_accent](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_pitch_accent)
* [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Downstep](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Downstep)
Learn hiragana before you begin even thinking about anything else in japanese. It will help immensely with pronunciation
*jumanji
for “ei” and “ou”, the i and u are only there because that’s how it’s written in hiragana. the “i” in “ei” is not pronounced, it just indicates a long “e” sound, and the same goes for the “u” in “ou”. sometimes, you might hear a speaker actually pronounce both vowels, but only in a context where they’re repeating themselves and want to make sure the listener is hearing them correctly for example. “ei” and “ou” are the only two things that are written with separate vowels that just indicate a lengthened vowel- all other vowel pairs are pronounced separately, as in your “tatoe” example 🙂
ou=ō=/oo/
ei=ē=/ee/
Why? Ask whoever invented the language.