I was watching Komi can’t communicate, and the 仁人 (hitohito) was kind of confusing me.
It sounds like its pronounced, hitoshito? Is this just a special case? I don’t know how to provide an audio clip, but its on netflix if people want to see
Before i and y h has what’s called an ‘allophone’ in the form of what linguists call a voiceless palatal fricative (h, for reference, is a voiceless glottal fricative). It is not the same as either the English or Japanese ‘sh’, even if it sounds similar.
Sounds that make meaningful distinctions within a language are called ‘phonemes’, and often the exact realization of a phoneme can vary depending on environment. For example English ‘p’ is aspirated in pin but not in spin; say pin and spin with your hand in front of your mouth. Pin should have a burst of air that spin doesn’t. In some languages this burst of air is meaningful, but generally if two phones are allophones of one phoneme in your native language, you may have a hard time telling them apart.
This is also why fu is part of the ha row. It’s yet another allophone, the voiceless bilabial fricative.
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Before i and y h has what’s called an ‘allophone’ in the form of what linguists call a voiceless palatal fricative (h, for reference, is a voiceless glottal fricative). It is not the same as either the English or Japanese ‘sh’, even if it sounds similar.
Sounds that make meaningful distinctions within a language are called ‘phonemes’, and often the exact realization of a phoneme can vary depending on environment. For example English ‘p’ is aspirated in pin but not in spin; say pin and spin with your hand in front of your mouth. Pin should have a burst of air that spin doesn’t. In some languages this burst of air is meaningful, but generally if two phones are allophones of one phoneme in your native language, you may have a hard time telling them apart.
This is also why fu is part of the ha row. It’s yet another allophone, the voiceless bilabial fricative.
I heard it as Hitohito