JJapanese

Are there situations in which an “e” sound and “i” sound are placed together yet are pronounced separately?

While going through some vocabulary I found the word めい for “niece” and in half the pronunciations I’ve heard of this word they pronounce the “i” at the end and some just use an extended “e”.

Which is correct and are there cases where they would be pronounced separately?

1 comment

  1. Most of the time, “ei” is pronounced as just “ee”. It’d be pronounced separately in cases where they form different morphemes (食べている) or in loanwords/foreign terms (ベイブレード).

    English has a similar thing; “SH” usually makes a specific sound, but the letters are pronounced separately in, say, “mishap” because the word is composed by “mis-” (a prefix, just like in misunderstand or misspelling) then “hap” (old-fashioned word for luck/chance/fortune). They’re different morphemes, so they’re pronounced separately.

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