Japanese lessons

The Japanese language has 5 vowels: /a/, /e/, /i/, /o/ and /u/. First of all, these signs are phonologic signs, which means that you should not pronounce them as you would naturally in English. Instead, they are international notations that are used to describe a sound. For example, /i/ should be pronounced like "eel" or "ego", and NOT like "aisle" or "ice". The good news is that this lesson will give you lots of English references so that way you can easily understand how you should pronounce the words along with an audio example.

The particularity of /u/

This phonologic sign indicates that the sound should be pronounced as in "root". But if you focus on the way you pronounce that word in English, you will notice that you completely round your lips. Japanese people never round their lips, but relax them instead.

Moreover, this sound is hardly heard when placed after voiceless consonants (k,t,p,s).

Finally, when the sound is placed at the end of a word, again it can barely be heard.

The semi-vowels /y/ and /w/ also exist in English. In Japanese, /y/ can be attached to /a/, /o/ and /u/ to create the syllables /ya/, /yo/ and /yu/. They are often used:

And those two semi-vowels ("Y" and "W") are sometimes combined with the following consonants: "K, P, H, G, R, B, N" to form other syllables.

As for /w/, it can only be seen in modern Japanese when coupled with /a/. WO only exists in one word, which is the particle WO を used to indicate the direct object (more explanation later). But the /w/ sound is never pronounced in that word, を is pronounced /o/ and not /wo/.

Compared to the English language, Japanese has a limited number of consonants. Most of them will be easy to pronounce because they are very similar to the English pronunciation, with a few exceptions.

Here are the Japanese consonants: k, g, t, d, p, b, m, n, j, h, f, s. Therefore, you will never see the letters c, v, l or q in Japanese. Besides that, the sound /v/ does not exist either, and when Japanese people have to pronounce this letter when reading a foreign word, they will naturally switch it with its Japanese counterpart, that is, /b/. (Video in Japanese would actually be pronounced "bideo").

Here are a few comments about consonants that might be problematic for an English speaker:

SHI: is pronounced as in "SHe"

CHI: is pronounced as in "CHeese"

GI: is pronounced as in "GIve"

JI: is pronounced as in "JEAns"

HI: is pronounced as in "HIt".

FU: the sound F in Japanese is not pronounced like in "fish", but rather like the H you can hear in "WHO", almost as if you were blowing a candle out.

R: this sound is quite different from English. It is actually closer to the English L.

N: you can pronounce this sound as you would in English, excepted when it is placed before p, b or m, where it would be pronounced like an M. For instance shinbun (newspaper) is pronounced shimbun, sanpo (a walk) is pronounced sampo.

HA/WA: most of the time は is pronounced "Ha" but there are some stuations where it is pronounced "WA", mainly when は is a grammatical particle in the sentence. We will look at that together later.

Vowel lengthening

Words transcribed from Hiragana

In Japanese, the length of a vowel can be doubled. To indicate that (this kind of vowel is called a 'tense vowel' in phonetics), Japanese speakers use the vowel U after /o/ and /u/. We get this pattern "O or U + U" = "tense vowel". This U is not pronounced like the /u/ we talked about, but simply indicates that the vowel just before should last twice as long as usual.

Toukyou (Tokyo, とうきょう,　東京) is pronounced Tookyoo. The first and the second /o/ are tense vowels. This is particularly important, otherwise your interlocutor might understand another word. It is the same as "bitch" and "beach" in English... In roomaji, this lengthening is also sometimes written Tôkyô, Tookyoo or even Tōkyō depending on books you are using.

To double the length of the vowels /a/ or /i/, you should not use U, but simply write the vowel a second time to get AA or II. For instance subarashii (wonderful, すばらしい), okaasan (mother, おかあさん).

Last particularity: in a few words, the tensed O is written OO and not OU. Example Oosaka (Osaka, おおさか, 大阪), tooi (loin, とおい). You should be aware of that. If you read the word in Hiragana, you can notice that the U う is not used, but O お is used instead. In fact, the O is repeated, and that is why you might think it is a tensed O.

Words transcribed from Katakana

When you write in Katakana, the lengthening of a vowel is written with a bar ー after the vowel. If you write in Roomaji, you should not use /U/ in this case, but instead write the vowel twice right next to each other. For instance, in Katakana, the words "biiru" (beer, ビール), "buutsu" (boots, ブーツ), and "paatii" (party, パーティー). However, when writing it in Hiragana, it would be "gyuunyuu" (milk, ぎゅうにゅう).

Note about the written form

As seen in the example Toukyou, some words can be written in different ways in roomaji. Those transcriptions are based on a system called Hepburn, which exists in many different forms. I chose to write Toukyou that way for several reasons:

• This system offers the possibility to differentiate the double vowels in "tooi" (とおい) from the tense vowel in "Toukyou" (とうきょう)
• This system offers the possibility to write Kana and Kanji on a computer simply by typing the letters as indicated by the word in roomaji.
• This system offers the possibility to know from the roomaji form whether a word is usually written in Katakana or in Hiragana.

The double consonant

Consonants can last twice as long! You only need to write them twice (kk, tt, ss, etc.). As for the pronunciation, you should pronounce the consonant as if you got stuck on it, then slide toward the next syllable of the word. For instance "gaKKou" (school). To double a consonant in Hiragana, you need to place a small TSU つ kana right after the consonant it modifies. The small TSU is actually represented as っ. This kana is not pronounced "tsu", it is only a graphical indication for you to know that you need to make the consonant last twice as long. The word "gakkou" is then written がっこう and not がつこう.

Syllable N

/N/ is a consonant and a syllable in Japanese, even though it is just a single letter. In English, it is impossible to have a syllable without a vowel, but in Japanese, it is possible. The syllabic structure of "konbanwa" (good evening) for example is KO-N-BA-N-WA and not KON-BAN-WA. If you listen to Japanese music, you might notice sometimes the singer pronounces the N in a word very clearly.