I wonder if it’s just me who keeps making the same observation, but I keep noticing how differently men and women pronounce things when speaking Japanese. And I mean specific things, particularly the “ch” and “sh” sounds. I’d expect a male to say “konniCHiwa” with a strong “ch” and a female to say it more softly, almost like “ts” – “konnitsiwa”.
I asked some of my friends but they don’t seem to notice that
So, has anyone?
4 comments
I think you’re overthinking it a bit there. Though were I to hazard a guess, I’d say what you’re hearing there are allophones i.e. two different sounds that sound the same to speakers of a particular language (like how UK English speakers often can’t tell between a labiodental approximant and a uvular approximant, which tl;dr: are more noticeably different sounds, but both wind up becoming ‘r’)
Long story short, the ‘ch’ thing in English is, phonetically, like ‘tsh’ anyway. So ち has a sound similar to ‘tshi’. We just make that ‘chi’ for the convenience of Western European-language speakers who are used to that way of writing it.
TL;DR: don’t try to think of things in terms of English. Japanese is a different language, that means how certain sounds are viewed is also different, and some things will be lumped together that are separated in other languages. Think of ち as ち, not as ‘chi’.
That’s just people speaking normally and naturally according to their gender identification, and those sounds are the same sounds in Japanese, just spoken differently.
no i haven’t noticed this, specifically
women tend to speak in a higher voice and quieter, and men tend to slur their words more and talk louder, but that’s about it for 1000ft view things i’ve noticed that might be applicable here. maybe that accounts for some of the interpretation of the sounds, i.e. a closer-to-whisper ち vs a slurred and loud ち
I’ve never noticed, but I can imagine it being the case.
It’s common for men and women to pronounce things differently, at the group level, in any language.