Hello /r/LearnJapanese. Fellow studier here (American-English native). (Skip to “easy pronunciation” to avoid extra fluff, this got a little long :))
I’ve recently come up on about 1.5 years of studying 日本語 and decided to spend some time researching proper phonetic pronunciation and have been using the international phonetic alphabet (IPA) to make sense of the small nuances in pronunciation.
Now, most people here are probably familiar with the fact that of the 5 syllables/mora that begin with “h” (は、ひ、ふ、へ、ほ), ふ is unique in that it is phonetically pronounced “fu”^** instead of “hu.” However, there is actually another Mora from that list of 5 that doesn’t use a typical “h” pronunciation and that is the mora ひ.
According to the IPA, while は、へ、and ほ are pronounced phonetically as “ha”, “he”, and “ho”, ひ is actually listed as “Çi”, and uses a unique pronunciation for the consonant (is that the right term here?) portion of the mora.
###Complex Pronunciation
This part might be a little hard to understand since it will have some unfamiliar words, but I know this community doesn’t shy away from learning new words so 頑張ります to all who give it a read.
So, what is this Ç letter and how does it sound? Ç in the IPA is referred to as the voiceless palatal fricative. A “fricative” is a consonant sound that is made when air flow is constricted to a narrow passage. To make a little more sense of this, let’s quick go over the “h” sound. “h” happens to be another type of fricative, but in this case, it is referred to as a Voiceless glottal fricative. The “h” fricative is “glottal” referencing that it originates from the glottis – the tissue between the opening of the vocal cords and windpipe. If you pronounce English words that use this “h” (Hello, harmonica, etc.) you may feel a little tension or pressure in your throat at the glottis where the airway is narrow. And the H sound is made as the air passes through that narrow passage.
Ok, now that that is out of the way how can we compare this to Ç? Ç is the voiceless *palatal* fricative. Again, as a fricative the sound occurs when air flows through a narrow passage. But this time “palatal” refers to the fact that it originates at the palate, or the roof of the mouth. This means that Ç can be pronounced by pushing the tongue towards the roof of the mouth and pushing air through the opening. A picture of what your mouth looks like during this can be found [here](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/3/31/Voiceless_palatal_fricative_articulation.svg/440px-Voiceless_palatal_fricative_articulation.svg.png).
###Easy Pronunciation
Wikipedia says that the h in the English word “Hue” is pronounced similar to the “h” in the sound of ひ (written using Ç in IPA), especially for British and Australian speakers. (This is likely because, as you pronounce the h, your tongue will already be beginning to raise towards the roof of your mouth creating a slight narrowing of the airway near the palate as it prepares to pronounce the vowel sounds that follow.) However, a more efficient way of creating this sound is simply by using “Hyo” or ひょ. The mixture of the H and Y sound should make you pronounce the H in a similar if not identical fasion to Ç by pushing the origin of the sound closer to the roof of your mouth. Give it a try and compare with the pronunciation of 人 (ひと) [here](https://www.japandict.com/%E4%BA%BA?lang=eng#entry-1580640). Do you hear the small almost Sh/Ch sound that accompanies the h?
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Bonus resources:
**The “f” sound in ふ is actually pronounced slightly different than a standard English f sound (as noted in the table below under the IPA section of ふ with the symbol ɸ)
Hiragana|Romanji| IPA
:–|:–|:–
は | ha | /ha/|
ひ | hi | [Çi]|
ふ | fu | [ɸɯ]|
へ | he |/he/|
ほ | ho |/ho/|
ひゃ|hya|[Ça]
ひゅ|hyu|[Çɨ]
ひょ|hyo|[Ço]
Relevant Wikipedia articles:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_phonology
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Help:IPA/Japanese
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voiceless_glottal_fricative
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voiceless_palatal_fricative
11 comments
WHOA I’ll be sure to try this out when I’m speaking!
This is more noticable when older Japanese people speak, and has gotten softer with the modern usage. Sometimes older people pronounce the Ç so strongly it almost sounds like are saying し instead of ひ
> Now, most people here are probably familiar with the fact that of the 5 syllables/mora that begin with “h” (は、ひ、ふ、へ、ほ), ふ is unique in that it is phonetically pronounced “fu”** instead of “hu.” However, there is actually another Mora from that list of 5 that doesn’t use a typical “h” pronunciation and that is the mora ひ.
In practice /ho/ is also quite a bit different from /ha/ /he/ though this distinction isn’t really given in i.p.a. but /ho/ already approaches being a labialized velar fricative.
Personally though. I don’t agree with this way to teach allophones because he reason they exists lies elsewhere and that is that Japanese vowels are simply different from English vowels. The reason /hu/ is pronounced with a highly labialized glottal fricative in practice is because the Japanese /u/ has considerably more compressed lips than the English /u/, and so similar the Japanese /i/ is also pronounced with the lips covering the teeth.
Producing the vowels correctly is what almost automatically produces these sounds because the reason they are as they are is that the Japanese glottal fricative is largely placeless, and pronounced with the same position as the following vowel. One will notice that not pronouncing /hi/ properly if one pronounce the /i/ properly is actually what is difficult and takes effort rather than in reverse.
The teaching of trying to teach students to pronounce a bilabial fricative or labialized fricative to realize /u/, but overlooking the vowel, will simply produce an unnatural result where they will first compress their lips to cover their teeth to realize the /u/, and then open their lips again to pronounce the /u/ in what will sound as an unusual and accented way to Japanese people and the situation is no different with /hi/.
Or rather, the age hack to speaking Japanese that is surprisingly effective: cover one’s teeth with one’s lips while speaking. I find that realizing an English /hi/ but simply moving the lips down to cover the teeth at all times already produces quite a good starting point. Quite a similar thing is also the case for /ti/, /si/ and /tu/ which almost automatically become quite close to the Japanese realization when simply pronounced with the lips covering the teeth, and the corners of the lips stretched out.
For instance:
> **The “f” sound in ふ is actually pronounced slightly different than a standard English f sound (as noted in the table below under the IPA section of ふ with the symbol ɸ)
The idea that /hu/ is generally realized as a bilabial fricative is often repeated, but mostly considered outdated and modern phonology research does not support it. I favor the term “labialized glottal fricative” but in reality as I said, it’s simply a glottal fricative but with the lips in the same position as the Japanese /u/ which is covering the teeth and retracting the corners of the lips.
http://www.askalinguist.org/uploads/2/3/8/5/23859882/an_acoustic_study_of_the_japanese_voiceless_bilabial_fricative-1.pdf
For any dutchies: it sounds closer to gi said with a zachte g, maybe that helps you.
It sounds kind of similar to the ich sound in German, and they tend to use ヒ (ッヒ?) when writing German words containing the ich sound using katakana. Or I believe I’ve seen that anyway.
Someone from Australia who was studying German at the time, told me how she would practice the sound [ç] – take a cold shower and use that sound you make.
It is the same sound as in the Japanese ひ so the same trick might help you here as well.
For anybody who knows German: [ç] is the i**ch**-Laut.
>However, a more efficient way of creating this sound is simply by using “Hyo” or ひょ. The mixture of the H and Y sound should make you pronounce the H in a similar if not identical fasion to Ç by pushing the origin of the sound closer to the roof of your mouth.
Is that really more efficient? The spelling might not reflect it (as is common in English), but aren’t the two initial sounds in “hue” identical to the ones in “hyo”?
Anyone watching One Piece will have noticed how Hyogoro say 人 in 麦わらの人 by now. I think that’s the best example I can think of.
I first noticed this in Tales of Phantasia on the SFC. It was one of the only games on that hardware to use voice actors, and the very first thing when you turn on the game is a [quote](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IP1hpwQ7beE) from one of the characters read out loud. Because of the poor quality audio, it really made the fricative sound in the word “hito” glaringly obvious to me.
Thanks for writing this! Now I understand why certain words sound the way they do. Like I always thought anohito sounded like anoshito and it was confusing.