Japanese language Q&A

[Mirage_GSM]

A few people had questions about the Japanese language and pronunciation, so instead of misusing the fanfiction thread where the question came up, I thought I’d create a thread for it.
For starters I wrote a little bit about the different writing systems and linked to a pronunciation guide I wrote some time ago.
I’ll try to answer any questions that might come up to the best of my knowledge and link the new post in the OP – likewise if someone else volunteers an answer. I know we have a few natives lurking on the forum.
As for my qualifications, I am by no means fluent in the language, but I’ve been learning it for a few years now, and I’ve found it is enough to get by in Japan.

Table of Contents
The Writing System
Pronunciation
Pronunciation of the names in KS

[Mirage_GSM]

The Writing System
The Japanese language knows three different writing systems – four if you count the latin alphabet (romaji).
Kanji are a logographic script adopted from Chinese. Modern Japanese uses 2.136 different Kanji with anything from one to half a dozen different readings each. This is a topic for another day.
Besides the Kanji there are two different syllabaries: Hiragana and Katakana.
Both contain the same five vowels, 40 syllables and one consonant, but the symbols are different as are the situations in which they are used.

The vowels used in Hiragana are:
あ　い　う　え　お (a i u e o)

The other syllables are:
か　き　く　け　こ (ka, ki, ku, ke, ko)
さ　し　す　せ　そ (sa, shi, su, se, so)
た　ち　つ　て　と (ta, chi, tsu, te, to)
な　に　ぬ　ね　の (na, ni, nu, ne, no)
は　ひ　ふ　へ　ほ (ha, hi, hu, he, ho)
ま　み　む　め　も (ma, mi, mu, me, mo)
や　　　ゆ　　　よ (ya, yu, yo)
ら　り　る　れ　ろ (ra, ri, ru, re, ro)
わ　　　　　　　を (wa, wo)

The consonant is ん (n)

It is possible to modify these syllables by adding either ‘‘ or ° to them to make them either harder or softer. For example:
か (ka) -> が(ga)
さ (sa) -> ざ(za)
た (ta) -> だ(da)
は(ha) -> ば(ba)
は(ha) -> ぱ(pa)
This also works with all other syllables on their respective lines.

Finally it is possible to combine a syllable from the “I-column” with one from the “y-line” to create a compound. For example:
き(ki)+よ(ya)->きょ(kya)
し(shi)+ゆ(yu)->しゅ(shu)
ち(chi)+や(ya)->ちゃ(cha)
Theoretically there are 36 combinations (12 syllables ending in “i” * 3 syllables beginning with “y”), but most of them occur only very rarely in actual words.

The same modifications are possible with Katakana.

A smallっ(tsu) inserted in a word causes the following consonant to be doubled, For example:
さか (saka) - hill
さっか (sakka) - author

It is possible to write in Japanese using only Hiragana, but this is only done by small children and beginners.Usually the Japanese use Kanji for nouns and verb-stems, Hiragana for Japanese words that have no Kanji, grammatical particles, verb and adjective inflections and suffixes like –san or –chan and Katakana for foreign names and loan words from other languages.

[Mirage_GSM]

Pronounciation (vowels)

First of all, here's a link for a text-to-speech app that seems to produce pretty good results:
http://text-to-speech.imtranslator.net/
Thanks to SC for providing the link.

あ (a) is pronounced as in harm.
い (i) is pronounced as in hit.
う (u) is pronounced as in you.
え (e) is pronounced as in hell.
お (o) is pronounced as in hot.

On their own vowels are always short.
To get a long vowel you have to either double it as in しいな Shi-i-na (Misha's name) or you add an う as in むとう Mu-to-u. Rarely you can also add an お instead like in おおさか O-o-sa-ka.

Also, vowels are sometimes silent, for example です (de-su) is pronounced "des" (as in "destruction").

To be expanded...

[pisceanreve]

sorry, but that's not the best pronunciation guide...

a: as in blah (yeah I have great words)
i: as in she
u: as in moon
e: could be like hello, but usually pronounced like a cross between an ay sound and an eh sound
o: like moan

[muliebrity]

Agreed, the pronunciation guide wasn't great.

For those struggling with vowel sounds in Japanese, it would be wise to learn the Latin standards, which is what we always use when transliterating foreign languages. "i" makes an "ee" sound, "e" makes an "ay" sound, "a" makes an "ah" sound, "o" should be more rounded than it often is in English and "u" makes an "oo" sound. It's also important to know that these are vowels, not dipthongs (what we call "long vowel sounds", in reality slurred combinations of two vowels).

Further, on some specific consonants:

• Several onji starting with "h" sound somewhere between an "f" and an "h" in certain contexts, particularly "hu" which is often transliterated as "fu", though the actual sound is between those two.
• The "n" onji is very often extremely nasal and should often be pronounced more like a hum than the "n" sound we make in English.
• The "g" sound often becomes a nasal hum, as well, rather than a short plosive as it is with us (though it sounds that way in some contexts). Listen to a Japanese person say "arigatou" for an example of this.
• "r" isn't pronounced like "l", it's intermediate.
• Sometimes you can hear the "u" at the end of a word, sometimes you can't. Most of the time, you can't. It's usually a matter of inflection, like sarcasm or spite.

Also, small tsu is a bit more complicated. Sometimes it's like a glottal stop (look it up, we use it in American accents when we say words like "button"), sometimes it's an instruction to make the preceeding sound more brief and staccato. It's a bit like a double consonant in Italian if you know about that.

[mysterycycle]

Just wanted to pop in here with a comment/question.

From what I remember of my one semester of Japanese in community college, there's no real difference between the letters 'r' and 'l' in Japanese, and when pronounced, they sound like something in between, correct?

So Rin, who I most often hear pronounced as rhyming with 'bin', would actually be pronounced 'reen' or 'lean', wouldn't it?

[Carighan]

I had a semester of Voice Recognition in uni, where we went over a lot of the scientific details behind how various sounds are formed when we speak them, and the japanese 'r' was explained as something of a hybrid between 'r', 'l' and 'd'. But even that's not actually describing it well unless you're talking about tongue placement, vocal tract contractions and such. And that was for the German r, l and d.

Ideally just listed to someone making the sound. It makes a lot more sense after an example.

[muliebrity]

Just wanted to pop in here with a comment/question.

From what I remember of my one semester of Japanese in community college, there's no real difference between the letters 'r' and 'l' in Japanese, and when pronounced, they sound like something in between, correct?

So Rin, who I most often hear pronounced as rhyming with 'bin', would actually be pronounced 'reen' or 'lean', wouldn't it?

Yeah, like I mentioned in my reply, the sound is intermediate. It's similar to the tongue tap used in languages like Italian, Spanish and Russian (in Kansai-ben, it's identical), just a little softer. A tongue tap is performed like a trill, but only enough for one moment of contact between the tip of your tongue and your alveolar ridge. If you know how to trill your tongue (there's a myth that if you don't know how, you're physically unable to, this is only true for a small minority of people), do that, but much shorter. It basically consists of briefly touching the tip of your tongue to your alveolar ridge and expelling air to propel your tongue away from the alveolar ridge, making a sound. It has no relation to the rhotic "r" in English. My advice for someone learning to speak Japanese is to make the way you move your lips and tongue more subdued, more laconic.

Ideally just listed to someone making the sound. It makes a lot more sense after an example.

Best advice. Just don't fall into the trap of thinking that you get it after hearing it a few times, new sounds are hard to pick out without a lot of immersion, to say nothing of mimicking them.

[Mirage_GSM]

sorry, but that's not the best pronunciation guide...

a: as in blah (yeah I have great words)
i: as in she
u: as in moon
e: could be like hello, but usually pronounced like a cross between an ay sound and an eh sound
o: like moan

I never claimed my examples were "the best"...
With four of your five examples I don't see the difference between my examples and yours, except that the "i" in "she" is a bit longer than in "hit".
I disagree with "moan" as a good example for the Japanese "o"
And if anyone was pronouncing the Japanese "e" "like an ay sound" he was probably talking with an English accent.

So Rin, who I most often hear pronounced as rhyming with 'bin', would actually be pronounced 'reen' or 'lean', wouldn't it?

No. Rin is short and would rhyme with bin.
If it was a long "i" it would be written Riin.

As for how to pronounce the Japanese "r":
Try speaking a normal "li".
Now put your tongue a bit farther back at your palate and try to speak it again so your tongue is flicking forward as you speak. That should be a good approximation of the sound.
It's the same for "ra", "ru", "re" and "ro".
I don't know if that's the textbook explanation for producing the sound, but my Japanese teacher is telling me that the result I'm producing is correct...

[muliebrity]

I never claimed my examples were "the best"...
With four of your five examples I don't see the difference between my examples and yours, except that the "i" in "she" is a bit longer than in "hit".

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/c ... t_2005.png
The former is front/close, the latter is near-front/near-close, they are indeed different sounds. For instance, try saying すみません while using the "i" sound in the word "hit": wouldn't work.

[Mirage_GSM]

Well, either there is something wrong with my English pronounciation of either of those two words (which I doubt) or the difference is so small that you have to be a linguist to hear the difference...

[BlackWaltzTheThird]

If I may add my voice; from what I've been taught, Mirage's pronunciations are more or less correct. It's worth noting the the 'i' sound is longer than in the word, hit, but shorter than in the word, she. So, Rin does not exactly rhyme with bin, nor rhyme exactly with been.

Harm was probably not the best example for the 'a' sound, but if one ignores the hard 'r' sound common to most English speaking accents, it's fine. As an Australian, harm does in fact make the right sound.

In regards to the sumimasen example, refer to my earlier note about the 'i' sound. One must be careful not to stress any one syllable too much. Pronouncing it as 'soo-mee-mah-sen' using English sounds is as wrong as pronouncing it 'soo-mim-ah-sen' from an accuracy perspective.

And I must stress that 'moan' is definitely not a good example of how to describe a Japanese 'o' sound. For Americans this is different, but compare to the British/Australian pronunciation of any short 'o' sound; hot, cot, spot, etc. If this is hard to understand, try and picture the stereotypical English kid saying "you wot".

If required, I could put up a video on Youtube with a demonstration of all the character sounds.

[Xanatos]

So, Rin does not exactly rhyme with bin, nor rhyme exactly with been.

Note: "Bin" and "been" rhyme...If an 'ee' sound is your intent, 'bean' illustrates it better.

And a video would be helpful, yes.

[BlackWaltzTheThird]

So, Rin does not exactly rhyme with bin, nor rhyme exactly with been.

Note: "Bin" and "been" rhyme...If an 'ee' sound is your intent, 'bean' illustrates it better.

No they don't. Again, this is probably a victim of accents.

[Xanatos]

So, Rin does not exactly rhyme with bin, nor rhyme exactly with been.

Note: "Bin" and "been" rhyme...If an 'ee' sound is your intent, 'bean' illustrates it better.

No they don't. Again, this is probably a victim of accents.

Oh joy, a nitpicker. I'm sorry, I'll rephrase: "Bin" and "been" rhyme to a quite large portion of humans who use the words, but might not to some others depending on their accent.

Regardless of how you may pronounce it, a fair amount of people (everyone I've ever heard from all 'round the world and with various accents) pronounce these words as homophones. That being the case, the point still stands that there is a better way to illustrate the intended sound in order to avoid confusion and, for that matter, this entire exchange.

An auditory example could accomplish the same as well. It's also quite easier than video. I'd suggest using this.