Do you ever hear “va” instead of “wa” when someone says は?

11 comments

1. i do sometimes

2. Omg, thanks for posting. I wasn’t aware there were Genki lessons on YouTube, haha. Yeah, I notice it as well. I think it is just a symptom of the word proceeding it where it sounds more like a v.

3. Those both sound like “wa” to me. Maybe it’s just a video compression thing?

4. The Japanese /w/ sound isn’t exactly the same as the English w. In English, it’s a “Labiovelar Approximant” — it’s produced by fully rounding the lips, and rasing the back of your tongue towards your velum (the back part of your palette, where you pronounce k/g/ng) without fully touching it.

   By contrast, in Japanese it’s generally described as a “Compressed Bilabial Approximant” — it’s pronounced by bringing the lips close to each other without fully rounding them (like the Japanese f, but with the lips spread slightly further apart and voiced). Depending on the speaker, they may also have a velar component (again, where the tongue reaches towards the back of the palette).

5. No, I don’t hear a v sound. I’ve heard that it’s more likely to be a bilabial approximant without a velar component, though I suspect this is quite idiosyncratic. But that would make it sound more like a Spanish v/b sound to some people.

6. The guy speaking does sound like “ba” after the ん in 本.

   The girl in the video sounds like the usual “wa” to me.

7. Not really a Va, more like a very short Wa. In some languages wa has a sound close to V but it’s not V. I would say it is something between NHA or Nã and Wa. Don’t think that sound even exists in English.

8. As a beginner with Hiragana I’m confused as to why that isn’t “ha”.

9. Yes! I’ve been following TokiniAndy recently and noticed he sounds like he’s saying “va” for “は” sometimes too. I’ve never noticed Yuki saying it like that though.

10. Just throwing this out there… TokiniAndy makes great content, really informative and super helpful especially for navigating and retaining the material covered in Genki and Quartet but his Japanese pronunciation in general is … not great. I wouldn’t dwell too much on the pronunciation in his vids. Listen closely to native speakers, and if you want some in depth pronunciation advice intended for western learners check out Dogen’s videos.

11. Nope