What’s the difference?

3 comments

1. Yeah it’s subtle but there is a difference in pronunciation. The にょis straight up a “nyo” sound whereas with んよ they’re more separated. If you were to split the word in English syllables, it would be “po – nyo” vs “pon – yo.”

2. Japanese mora are a bit different than syllables in that every individual sound gets an equal space.

   So ぽにょ is “po-nyo” as [にょ] makes up one mora, so the word is two moral long together.

   But ぽんよ is 3 mora long, so it would be “po-n-yo” because all of the big characters get equal pronunciation time.

   Anytime a little character attaches to hiragana/katakana, it stays one mora long, and they’re pronounced together as one sound. てぃ makes “tea”, しゅ makes “shu”, ヴィ makes “vi” and so on.

   The only exception is small つ, when this comes after a character, it is a silent mora, like a rest note in music.
   ちょ[っ]と “chyo-〇-tto”
   まって “ma-〇-tte”
   すっごい “su-〇-ggo-i”.

   This is not to be confused with big つ which is pronounced as normal, “tsu”.
   まつ “ma-tsu”
   つよい “tsu-yo-i”
   きつね “ki-tsu-ne”.

3. Technically, each large kana (katakana or hiragana) symbol is its own syllable (or “mora” if you’re pedantic, but I don’t feel like liking that up 🙂). Small ones don’t create a new syllable/mora. So the difference is:

   Po Nyo

   Po N Yo

   When speaking quickly, they might sound pretty much the same, though.