おっな VS おんな

Sorry if I used the wrong tag as this is my first post. May I know if there are any differences in the way these 2 words are pronounced ?

6 comments
  1. The small っ does technically repeat letters so it looks similar to んな, but it’s more of a breathy pause than just straight up repeating the consonant letter. For example when you read がっこう it’s almost like there’s a silent pause between “ga” and “kou”, which is why it’s closer to “gah-kou” and not “gak-kou”. Same for おんな – it’s not “o-nna” but “on-na”

  2. Where did you pull おっな from? This doesn’t really work in Japanese phonotactics.

    You don’t really see the geminate consonant behind nasals (m and n) or the flap (r).

  3. The rule is that to double a nasal consonant (n or m) you don’t use a sokuon っbefore the syllable and instead write the nasal consonant ん

    学校 – がっこう – gakkou (school)

    女 – おんな – onna (woman)

    冠 – かんむり – kammuri* (crown)

    (*note that even though the sequence is pronounced as an extended /m/, it is generally transliterated as ‘nm’, so ‘kanmuri’ js generally what you would see written)

Leave a Reply
You May Also Like