So, my aim is solely reading japanese, and I’m currently learning kanji via wanikani.
There is a trend that I get a lot of readings wrong solely because I confuse ji and chi. The reason I find it hard (I think) is that I can’t seem to pronounce them differently, so when reading them it ends up with the same sound in my brain.
I know that chi has is a ‘harder’ sound than ji, and I have samples where I can hear the difference in pronounciation, but that doesn’t seem to help much.
So I’m asking for advice on what to do.
Sometimes, I think to myself that I just shouldn’t bother and mark the reading as correct, since my goal is reading, and it would sound the same to me anyway. On the other hand, it probably makes it harder to look up stuff if I remember it the wrong way.
4 comments
If you’re a native English speaker, it’s approximately the same as the difference between ‘cheese’ and ‘jeez’, but I assume you’re not. German, maybe? While the sound isn’t exactly the same, I’m sure there are resources to help you distinguish English ‘ch’ and ‘j’ sounds, which should form a good starting point.
The big difference is that j is pronounced with vocal cord vibration and ch without, though I don’t know how practical that knowledge will really be. It’s similar to the difference between b and p, or g and k.
I would look up their respective ipa symbols and then learn there place of articulation from there and then practice
unlearning unnecessary and horrible habits is way harder than just focusing on getting it right and maintaining it
also i hope you’re following some kind of structured learning, like genki or tae kim, and not *just* rote learning a bunch of vocab-less kanji
Look up voiced vs unvoiced sounds and see if there are any resources that give examples in your native language – even in languages that don’t distinguish words with voicing you might have “rules” for where in a word a ch or j might appear.