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Japanese Phonetics Episode 36—LIVE (Updated with native recordings!) (Patreon)

Published:
2018-02-17 10:59:15
Imported:
2026-06
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Content

Bibliography
Japanese Phonetics Index Page 

Good evening Patrons! The thirty-sixth episode of Japanese Phonetics, now with native recordings, is live!  In this episode, we explore long vowels, covering concepts such as resonance and rearticulation. If you've ever had trouble with words such as 場合 or 唯一 this one should help!

As always, if you have any questions or concerns with regards to this lesson,  don't hesitate to leave a comment below. Thank you very much for your continued support, and good luck with your Japanese studies!

Best from Beppu,

Dōgen

Files

Previews only

Japanese Phonetics #36: Long vowels

The thirty-sixth episode of Japanese Phonetics, my series dedicated to Japanese pitch-accent and pronunciation. In this episode, we explore long vowels, covering concepts such as resonance and rearticulation. If you have any questions leave a comment below, and thank you all for your continued support! Bibliography: https://www.patreon.com/posts/17345632

Comments

Randy Fiato

Great video. Question about vowel lengthening/re-articulation: If a particle begins with the same vowel that ends the word to which it's attached, is the vowel supposed to be re-articulated or simply lengthened? Concrete example: 日本語を話す. I've skimmed the Genki I CD for examples, and as far as I can tell (and I may very well be wrong), the を doesn't trigger a re-articulation from the previous word. However, if the word following を begins with お, they do consistently re-articulate the お. For example, in the case of, 単語を覚える, I do hear a re-articulation between を and 覚える (but not between 語 and を). So is a particle essentially treated as part of the previous morpheme for lengthening/rearticulation purposes?

Dogen
>>10221715

Hi Randy. Great question. This boils down to speed, much like 場合. In relatively fast conversation を is usually not rearticulated, while in slower to medium speed, it certainly is—as the pronunciation for を is distinctly different than that of the standard 'お'. Incidentally, I'll be covering を pronunciation more in an upcoming lesson. I agree with your analysis of words that follow を!

Toberu

I actually can't wait for the next lesson. I once had a debate with a couple people who are more advanced than me about how to pronounce えい and おう, so I'm curious to see where you/phonologists stand. About verbs: I can only think of one example where rearticulation (sometimes?) happens at the end: 言う. While it should normally be いう, it's often turned into ゆう in speech, and in those cases, you can definitely hear rearticulation occur between ゆ and う, though this might have to do with intonation/flow since it's still one kanji + a grammatical ending (unlike 場合's semantic cut). The way I see it, the use of ゆう with rearticulation mostly arises before a pause, when the speaker has to think about what will come next. By the way, I used to have a teacher who would pronounce 場合 the old-fashioned way, i.e. ばわい. Rearticulation makes even more sense once you're aware of this kind of phonetic shift.

Kyle

Hi Dogen, do you plan to later cover the unique pronunciation of the ん before い in words such as げんいん (原因) and きんいろ (金色)? That was a fun one to figure out by mimicking natives, but I think it should be covered better in Japanese classes.

Dogen
>>10234108

Hi Kyle! I do indeed. This will most likely come during the ん lesson, which I expect may actually end up being two episodes long. 雰囲気 is another fun one! haha

Dogen
>>10226703

Hi Bertrand. Haha I'm glad to hear that you're excited for the next lesson. Spoiler alert—a lot has to do with speed, but I'll be breaking things down with a lot of examples, so I think it'll still be quite interesting. ^^ You should hurry up and get your hands on a copy of the Sounds of Japanese! haha. That said I did end up doing a lot of cross-referencing in this lesson. The 新明解 accent dictionary actually had a lot of information on this topic (though I elected to leave some bits out for simplicity). Talk to you again soon!

Sascha Baer

Are there plans for a lesson on palatalization? And especially also the exact pronunciations of sibilants in Japanese - I find it very hard to get ɕ down properly. Also I’m curious to hear your take on the g~ŋ allophony.

Dogen
>>10559376

Hi Sascha. I do plan on covering palatalization, but it's a few lessons out. I don't have the book in front of me right now so I can't say for sure, but I believe Vance covers palatalization fairly extensively in The Sounds of Japanese. Will definitely be covering g~ŋ! Most likely before palatalization. Thanks for the questions and support!

Elise Springer

An oversimplified lesson II had to correct along the way was that an elongated お always ends up as おう. Off the cuff, it seems that most words with a true おお are “old Japanese” (通り, 狼) while many おう syllable combos like とう, ぼう, そう (except when they occur the end of verbs or as standalone little words like そう and どう) are parts of Chinese-origin kanji compounds. Is there anything to that impression? What else can you say to help us guess which way to spell a long お when looking up an unfamiliar word? (In a paper dictionary it would be easy to scan for either, but I’ve sometimes come up empty in electronic searches until I remember to try the alternative.) if you’ve covered this elsewhere, please accept my apologies!

Dogen
>>56208957

Hi Elise! I actually cover おう in detail in the next lesson (lesson 37), which will be updated later today with native recordings. I believe I covered the topic rather extensively, did you happen to see that lesson yet? If not perhaps wait until I update with native recordings, as it’s always better to listen with native recordings. Cheers!