Lesson 1: Writing & Pronounciation in Japanese - Part 1

Alright, so the first thing I'll discuss is writing and pronounciation in Japanese. I know this is going to seem really counter-productive, as writing in Japanese can be extremely difficult, but I'll be using different forms of written Japanese throughout these lessons and while it's not necessary for you to be able to read them, it will make it much more helpful for you if you can recognize the different forms.

(Obvious Hint: It would be helpful for you to have Japanese text support on your computer. 8D)

Kay, so Japanese has three writing systems: two syllabaries called hiragana and katakana, and kanji (which is a whole lesson in itself and I won't be covering it right now!). While I said earlier that it won't be necessary for you be able to read all of these to learn stuff from my lessons (I'll romanize all the words and whatnot), it will help you to be familiar with them.

(For those of you who may not know, a syllabary and an alphabet are not the same thing. While an alphabet has characters that represent different sounds in a language, a syllabary has characters that represent specific syllables in a language. For the record, Japanese has no "alphabet.")


Hiragana is a syllabary consisting of 46 characters that work together represent all the sounds present in Japanese. They're pretty easy to identify cause they all look pretty flowy or curly, with lots of rounded edges. Here's a few examples:

わ　た　し　も　ほ　ふ　ま
(wa ta shi mo ho fu ma, no meaning, just random hiragana 8D)

Here's a picture of all the hiragana: http://www.auburn.wednet.edu/ahs/AUBURN/academics/DEPT/ForLang/Japanese/hiragana1.gif


Katakana... is a syllabary consisting of 46 characters that work together to represent all the sounds present in Japanese. 8D They're also pretty easy to identify, because they are stiff, sharp, and boxy-looking.

ワ　タ　シ　モ　ホ　フ　マ
(Same ones as above, only in katakana!)

And here's a picture of all the katakana: http://www.japanorama.com/images/katakana.gif


The difference between hiragana and katakana is katakana is used (mostly) for spelling out loan words, or words that are not native to the Japanese language. Hiragana is used to spell out native Japanese words, or for a variety of grammatical roles in sentences.
(Note: If you're wanting to learn a bit of Japanese to attempt to play some imported games from Japan, you'd do yourself a great service to learn katakana first! A huge amount of the menus, battle commands, names, etc in games are rendered in katakana.)



Now, pronounciation, if you were dying to know how to say these lovely characters. 8D
You'll notice from looking at those syllabaries (I hope you looked, anyway. ) that Japanese has a total of five vowels. English supposedly has a total of five vowels (with occasionally "y" playing the role of a vowel). There is a difference. In English, we actually have a total of some 13 different vowel sounds, and the "a" in "hat" is pronounced slightly different than the "a" in "apple" which is slightly different than the "a" in "feather" which is slightly different than the "a" in "coat."
In Japanese, each of the vowels are pronounced one way, and one way only. All the time. They are:

a = like the vowel sound in "hot"
i = like the first vowel in "evil," or about how you pronounce the letter "e"
u = the same vowel sound as a cow makes, "mooooo"
e = like the first vowel sound in "edible"
o = like "oh, shit"

All the consonants you see on the charts are more or less the same as English, with a few notes:

1. Japanese does NOT have any "l" or "v" sounds.
2. The Japanese "r" is not as hard or strong as the English "r," but is more of a mix between our "l" and "r" (which is why Japanese people often have a hard time distinguishing between our "l" and "r" sounds). Their "r" is made by flicking the tip of the tongue against the ridge on the top of your mouth.
3. The only "f" sound present in Japanese is the syllable "fu," as in Mount Fuji. However, like the "r," their "f" is not as strong as ours. To make the "fu" syllable, try imagining that you're blowing out candles and shape your lips in that "o" shape, then try to make an "f" sound without moving your lips. This breathy, airy "f" is their "f."
4. For one reason or another, you'll notice that the following syllables are not present in Japanese: "si," (like the Spanish word for "yes") "ti" (like "tea"), tu (or "two"), and "hu." They are instead rendered in roman characers as, respectively, "shi" (pronounced like "she," or the "shi" from "sushi"), "chi," "tsu" (the "tsu" from "tsunami"), and "fu" (which we just discussed). The only "w" sound in Japanese is "wa" - there is no "wi," "wu," "we," or "wo" sounds. There is also no "yi" or "ye."

Knowing this, you should now be able to properly pronounce "karaoke," which is not "carry-o-key," but "kah-rah-oh-kay" (カラオケ, often written in katakana, literally means "empty orchestra")





Right. There's a couple more things I want to talk about in relation to writing and pronouncing Japanese (double consonants and glides, as well as the modified hiragana and katakana), but I'll let you guys digest this much so far and see if there's any questions. Consider this "Writing & Pronouncing Japanese - Part 1."

I'll take questions from the class now.


[EDIT] The second part of this lesson is here

Sorry for the mad delay, I've been busy. :/

@ lordsathien: It's extremely common! The copula verb "desu" in Japanese (meaning "is") is pronounced as "des" - the "u" is silent. Likewise, there's a version of all verbs in Japanese called the "masu"-form (because they end with "masu," hah!). In this case as well, instead of saying "masu," it's pronounced as just "mas." I was gonna get in to this a bit later but you beat me to it 8D Incidently, about 99% of the time, it's only "u" vowels that get silenced.

@ JEW: The "r" sound is frustrating to master, because to English-speaking ears, it sometimes sounds like they're saying "l" and sometimes it sounds like "r," and some people swear they even hear a "d" sound in there somewhere too. My best advice is to find a audio clip of a Japanese person pronouncing a "r"-something syllable, listen to it a lot, and then immitate it.

@ Laminated Sky: You can also say "eigo ga wakarimasu ka?" ("Do you understand English?").

Numbers are easy in Japanese but counting is a bitch. :/


I'll be posting my next lesson any minute. :3

Lesson 1: Writing & Pronounciation in Japanese - Part 2


Alright, a few more things I want to cover with writing and pronounciation.


Modified Characters

If any of you watch any anime or know any Japanese at all, there's a fair chance you recognize the word "baka" and know what it means ("idiot," if you didn't happen to know). "But wait," you say, "I didn't see any "ba bi bu be bo" hiragana! What gives?"

Hiragana (and katakana) can be "modified" to cover a wider range of sounds. This is done by adding the "tenten," or these two tiny dash marks, to the upper right-hand side of the hiragana. It looks like this:

は (ha) becomes ば (ba)!

Only certain hiragana can be 'modified' like this: the "k," "s," "t," and "h" lines. The resulting pronounciations are as followed:

k → g
s → z
t → d
h → b

So, with the tenten, "ka" (か) becomes "ga (が)" "te (て)" becomes "de (で)," etc.

Also, one more modification can be done; adding a small circle to the upper right-hand corner. This is ONLY done on the "h" line, and it produces the "p" sound.

は (ha) → ぱ (pa)

Japanese always has some pronounciation irregularities. With modified hiragana (and katakana), they are as follows:

1. There is no "zi" sound in Japanese; when shi (し) is modified, the resulting pronounciation is actually "ji (じ)."
2. There is also no "di" sound; when chi (ち) is modified, it also results with the pronounciation of "ji (ぢ)" - however, this modified hiragana is almost never used, except for specific, unique circumstances (example: the word for "blood" in Japanese is "chi," the word for nose is "hana" - the word for "nosebleed" is "hanaji," but the chi version of "ji" is used.)
3. The modified tsu (づ) is also almost never used, except occasionally in names. The pronounciation is close enough to "zu."
4. Unlike all the irregularities so far, "fu" does not become anything special when modified; "fu" with a tenten (ぶ) is "bu," and "fu" with the circle (ぷ) is "pu."



Glides

If you know anything about cities in Japan, I'm sure you've heard of Tokyo and Kyoto, right? That "kyo" syllable (yes, it's ONE syllable) is not created with any one hiragana, but a meshing of two different characters to create the sound. These are glides.

Glides are created with the "ya (や)," "yu (ゆ)," and "yo (よ)" characters. They can be meshed together with any character from the "i" line on the hiragana charts. Confused? By "i" line, I mean "ki," "shi," "chi," "ni," "hi," "mi," and "ri." The "ya," "yu," or "yo" character is written after the "i"-line character, but smaller.

Example of all this (cause I might not be explaning it well). Let's take that "kyo" syllable: "ki (き)" and "yo (よ)" are put together and become "kyo (きょ). See how the second character is smaller than the first? About half it's normal size.

How is this properly said? Try saying just "yo." Instead of making the "kyo" two syllables (as in "to-ki-yo," as Tokyo is often called), try adding just a "k" sound at the beginning of your "yo." There should be no "i" sound whatsoever, and it should still be just one syllable.

Of course, there's always pronounciation irregularities with just about anything in Japanese. "Shi" and "chi" are the two irregularities, as usual. When you create a glide with "shi," (let's say, "shi and "ya" for example), the result isn't "shya" or "sya" or anything; it's "sha (しゃ)." "Chi" and "ya" become "cha (ちゃ)." There should be no "y" sound in either of these; "sha" should sound like the beginning of "shot." The "cha" should sound similar to the beginning of "chocolate."


Double Consonants

Yes, Japanese has such a concept. Again, if you watch anime, you may have heard the line "chotto matte!" (means something like "hang on!" or "wait a second!") If you're smart, you'll guess you need a "cho (ちょ)" and a "to (と)" for the first word... but how to create that double consonant thing?

Japanese uses a tiny tsu (written about the same size as a "ya," "yu," or "yo" when they're used in glides) between the two characters to create the "double consonant" effect. It comes out as:

ちょっと (chotto)

Matte is まって ("ma" and "te" with a little "tsu" between them).

The pronounciation is something that becomes a bit of a problem. Japanese is a very rhythmic language; each syllable should be the same length. What a double consonant does is add an extra syllable between the first and second hiragana... an extra syllable of silence.

For example, "kite" (きて command form of "come" aka "come here!") is two syllables, but "kitte" (きって command for of "cut") should be three, with the second beat being silence.

Americans are known to have a large problem with this; we tend to hurry through the words; pausing for a beat between syllables in a word seems strange and unnatural. However, not pausing for that beat in Japanese seems really strange and foreign to Japanese ears.


Long Vowels

The last bit on writing and pronounciation! If a double consonant is an extra beat of silence, than a long vowel is an extra beat of sound.

Let's consider two words. "Shujin" (hiragana: しゅじん kanji: 主人) literally means "master," but has come to mean "husband" (or "head of the household)). "Shuujin," however (hiragana: しゅうじん kanji: 囚人) means "prisoner." Big difference. Another? "Shoujo" (hiragana: しょうじょ kanji: 少女) means "(young) girl," however, "shojo" (hiragana: しょじょ kanji: 処女) means a (female) virgin.

The difference between these two sets of words is one extra syllable... of sound! In the case of "shujin" and "shuujin," the "u" sound is held for an extra beat. As with the double consonants, "shoujo" should be three syllables, while "shojo" is only two.

You may be surprised to know that many words you know in Japanese actually have long vowels, and are not romanized properly. Tokyo, for example, is actually "toukyou," and "Kyoto" is actually "kyouto." Judo is "juudou" ... but those all look weird cause we're used to "our" spellings.

Speaking of spellings, there's a few irregularities.

You'll notice that I used a "u" after the "o"-vowels to represent the long vowel. When writing long vowels, here's the general rule:

A long "a" is written as "ああ" (ex okaasan おかあさん "mother")
Long i is いい (ex oniisan おにいさん "(older) brother")
Long u is うう (as you saw before with "shuujin")
Long e is えい (as in sensei せんせい "teacher")
Long o is おう (as with shoujo, like you saw earlier)

Even though "sensei" and "shoujo" are written with a "ei" and "ou," it's technically incorrect to change the sound. Instead of pronouncing the "i," you instead just lengthen the "e" sound. The "u" in "shoujo" isn't a "u," but rather the "o" sound is lengthened.


I know all this crap is rather dry but! Now we're ready to get in to the fun stuff, like grammar and vocab! 8D

Richo Rosai wrote:

It's not "technically incorrect" to pronounce ei as the two syllables that comprise it. Both ways are okay and common, depending on the person and the word. BUT! Many words, in fact, REQUIRE that you pronounce it as eh and ee (try saying "reigi" as "reegi" with no hint of the "i", for example), so until you get a feel for it I'd say it's safer to err on the side of doing so. This also eliminates the need to memorize one more exception to a rule. Also--and this is just my observation, not a position on what I think should be taught to beginners--it always seemed to me that "ou" sounding like "oo" was just a matter of them being almost indistinguishable. Try following "o" with "u" at a natural speed and I think you almost have to exaggerate the "u" to make it sound any different than "oo". I've confirmed with one naitve speaker that in his mind he is fact saying "o" and "u", but I'll have to remember to ask a few more people about this to see if they agree.

Teaching pronunciation over the internet is a bitch, and I knew this from the beginning. :/ I just wanted to get this stuff out of the way so I could get to grammar and vocabulary.

Pronunciation is crazy in Japanese, and it sees changes between dialects and the individual speaker. I've asked countless Japanese people to confirm or deny if お and を are the same in pronunciation or if they're different; I've had a complete 50/50 split from them on that, despite that they use both pronunciations in their everyday lives; they just don't realize or recognize it.

These are just the general rules that I was taught from my Japanese professor during the first semester that provided a basis for later learning... these are all just generalities. And with all generalities there are people who want to argue and clarify

JEW wrote:

aika wrote: @ JEW: The "r" sound is frustrating to master, because to English-speaking ears, it sometimes sounds like they're saying "l" and sometimes it sounds like "r," and some people swear they even hear a "d" sound in there somewhere too. My best advice is to find a audio clip of a Japanese person pronouncing a "r"-something syllable, listen to it a lot, and then immitate it. you should just save me the effort and record yourself making that sound.

I could record myself making a lot of sounds for you guys. I'm not so sure how productive it would be on either end, though.

Seriously though, I always thought it was best to learn pronunciation from a native speaker, and I still do. I could show you how I make the sound, but then you'd be imitating off a non-native speaker making the sound and that will always dillute the quality, so to speak... like making a copy of a copy of a CD. :/ Seriously, you'll only be doing yourself a favor if you just find a clip of a native speaker making the sound.