why do japanese pronounce okazu as bokazu? at least that is what it sounds like to me

5 comments

1. I hear okazu in all those examples. The Japanese o is very round and formed further into the mouth than a lot of western languages. You may be mistaking that difference for a b sound?

2. I definitely know you mean. I think it sounds that way because the speakers are almost saying oh “Backwards” to what you hear in English. Like when I say “oh” in english it sounds kind of like “o-uuu”, with my mouth closing. When I say words like “only” it sounds like “own-ly” (as in, to own something.) It’s like we never start saying the “oh” sound until our mouths are fully open.

   But in japanese, the o’s kind of sound like “wo” to me a lot of the time… almost like they are using the older “wo” pronunciation of を for both お and を. It’s like, they will start to say “o” before their mouths are open all the way. In a lot of books I’ve read that を is pronounced like お and that お is pronounced like “oh”… But it almost feels interchangeable to me. Like I hear people sound like they are saying “wo” all the time or when using the particle.

   To me, listening it sounds like the first one says “wo” and the other just say “o” like “oh”. If I try to hear bo or wo I do though on all of them. lol

   I’ve noticed a lot of difference in wanikani pronunciations on some words. As time goes on though, I distinguish that difference less and less… so when I hear a word spoken “both” ways it just registers the same to me.

3. I just heard “yanni” 🙂

   To me, the first one sounded like “bo” the first time, and others sounded normal. Second time around, the first sounded normal as well.

4. Sounds like “o” to me…

5. Because the American English sounds of most things have major mouth movements, and we ‘hear’ sounds that start from a closed mouth and do not do the overly wide mouth movements as starting with a consonant sound is the usual explanation. It’s an interesting thing that goes away as you get used to the second language, and learn expectations of what someone might say.

   Most speech, even in your native language, is reconstructed by the listeners, rather than received as spoken by the speaker.

   Examples abound, but if you chop up English into constituent sounds, most native speakers can only understand a few sounds per spoken sentences, and even those we construct according to expectation rather than what we hear. A separate but related issues is this” Words spoken in isolation never sound like words spoken in speech flow in any language, no matter how representational people think a language is.

   No one ever reconstructs (for instance) the word “Speech” into “Sbeech” even though that is what we actually say when we say the word “speech” in a sentence.