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Japanese Phonetics Episode 39—LIVE! (Patreon)

Published:
2018-04-04 08:05:15
Imported:
2026-06
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Content

Bibliography
Japanese Phonetics Index Page

Note: This lesson originally contained a section on 'vocal placement', or Japanese voice and speaking style, but I've since removed this, and moved all of my thoughts on this topic to episode 5.1, which can be found here.

Good evening Patrons! The thirty-ninth episode of Japanese Phonetics is live! In this episode we wrap-up vowels, further exploring the combination えい.

As always, if you have any questions or concerns with regards to this lesson, please 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 #39: Vowel wrap-up (えい and vocal placement)

The thirty-ninth episode of Japanese Phonetics, my series dedicated to Japanese pitch-accent and pronunciation. In this lesson we wrap up vowels, further exploring えい and vocal placement. 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

Dogen
>>80030664

Hi, Andrew! JP here, Dōgen's business partner. I'm helping manage the messages here on Patreon. My apologies for not answering this earlier; I missed your question. I've always heard it as rearticulated in both cases, although it can be faint and in fast or unclear speech it can be hard to catch. If you listen to some native material you should be able to catch examples of this. Hope this helps!

Yang

Useful video! I was wondering how the -ei sound works in katakana words like プロテイン or エイト since I've never heard it pronounced as プロテーン or エート even in fast speech. Are these just exceptions like the few listed in the video?

Filip Kostka

Dogen, very interesting, thanks! I'd like to ask if know if there's some exercise for improving control and/or awareness of the placement of the sound? Also, can I independently choose the intensity of sound in each resonance chamber?

Toberu

Dang, we've come a long way from our first foray into vocal placement, haven't we? Thanks for all the detective work, and thank you to Kai and Joey indeed.

Dogen
>>11304776

Hi Filip. In addition to recording yourself, singing is certainly a very effective exercise. I'll ask your second question directly to Kai such that I don't end up giving uninformed advice haha.

sherrycous

Best ending ever. Anyway, your videos always very informative. It makes sense to me when you said controlling pitch is much easier using your mouth. I did notice people who are bilingual (Japanese-English or Chinese-English, their voices were noticeably different when they speak different languages.) If I flip everything you just said in this video, it almost the same thing that was taught by my English teacher. Every time I consider this, I am amazed by the effort you put into your Japanese.

Dogen
>>11356535

Hi Sherry. Glad to hear that you enjoyed the lesson (as well as the ending haha), Kai's help was particularly useful! Interesting to hear your perspective as well—much of what I know about Japanese was pointed out to be me other Japanese learners who come from different linguistic backgrounds. Thanks again for the kind words! ^^

HB

I just want to say that the “aiming the sound at the soft palate” advice was incredibly helpful. I have been trying to work on this based on prior videos by imagining that my chest was a rubber band and I was trying to stop the vibrations. It didn’t sound right when I listened to myself though, and I couldn’t figure out why or how. This just nailed it. Thank you Dogen, and thank you Kai.

Dogen
>>11370098

No worries HB! I actually found that this helped me a lot as well. Big thanks to Kai indeed! ^^ Keep up your studies, and let me know if anything comes up!

Hylin

Great!

Sashin Exists

I was wondering if there was any deep reason that the phonetics lessons were after the pitch accent lessons

Dogen
>>137846131

Hi, Sashin. JP here. I remember asking Dōgen about this quite a while back. As far as I can remember, I think it wasn't really planned as much as what made sense in the progression of the series—after tackling the basic concepts and many broad, foundational rules in the first part of the series, he moved on to this. Questions from patrons might have prompted these lessons, but I wasn't working with Dōgen at that time. So, no. No deep reason. I hope this answers your question! —JP

Christopher Meier

I have to say, this video was a game changer for me. I think generally when I speak English, I utilize the hell out of the lower resonance chamber. When actively focusing on projecting to my upper chambers though, it became much easier for me to make my pitch accent patterns more noticeable and personally I think it helped me sound a lot better. Thanks for the video! Your Japanese phonetics series has been incredibly helpful.

Dogen
>>14177264

Hey Christopher! Glad to hear that it was so helpful! Learning about vocal placement completely changed how I spoke Japanese as well. Not only did it change the quality of my voice, but like you mentioned, it helped me a lot with pitch-accent. Thank you for your support—let me know if you ever have any questions!

Justin Sun

This video really helped clarify proper Japanese vocal placement! It did leave me with a question, though. I've often heard that the key to speaking well in English, especially in public speaking, is to use your diaphragm to help project your voice from your chest. Since Japanese tends to use primarily the oral and nasal chambers when speaking, how do Japanese speakers project their voice?

Dogen
>>15312145

Hi Justin! Thanks for the comment and question. I'm not 100% qualified to answer this question, but my guess is that Japanese speakers would produce a larger sound in their larynx by expelling more air through their vocal chords, which would then travel to and reverberate in the usual oral and nasal chambers. Again I'm not sure if this is completely accurate or not, but I haven't observed Japanese speakers' voices becoming deeper the louder they speak, so it's likely that there is still little to no sound in the chest chamber even at high volumes. Hope this helps!

Yang
>>105755241

I'm not too sure how Patreon notifications work but I'd still be happy to get some answers on this two years later!

Andre

Concerning the vocal placement: - When the mora is high, I should focus my attention to make the sound resonate in my mouth and nose ? - When the mora is low, the sound should resonate in my chest ?

Dogen
>>19010229

Hi Andre! I suggest always trying to target the soft palette area, as mentioned in the video, and to try and switch between high and low mora while doing this. Japanese has little to no chest resonance, so it will sound a bit strange if you constantly switch back and forth—try to keep everything in the oral and nasal chambers! ^^

Natasha Mitchell

This was very interesting as I think I have been automatically doing this in my practise without realising it. To me it sounds very artificial (whiny and high pitched whereas my natural voice is lower) but my 先生 notices more pitch problems when I'm not doing it as much. KemushiChan has a valuable point when she says you should be shadowing someone you want to sound like rather than an anime character or something. Do you the reason the Japanese don't use their chest is because they are trying to be quietly spoken and therefore more respectful and this has made it's way into every day speech? I was watching a Kitano Takeshi film yesterday, it seemed like they were using their chest plenty when yelling.

Dogen
>>27021155

Hi Natasha! I can't say for sure what the reason is—it's most likely simply the way that the language evolved over time. And yes that's certainly true—when yelling even Japanese speakers use their chests, especially if the person speaking is trying to come across as extra intimidating. Cheers!

Julian Bentham

I love how your face lit up when you picked up your daughter ^_^

Enrico Paolini

Hi Dogen! I wanted to provide some feedback on the えい question, and ask whether you found out anything new about it and/or changed your opinion in any way since you published this video. I was extremely surprised when you mentioned that words like 稼いで and 招いて should be pronounced with a distinct えい rather than a long えー, and even more surprised when you said you couldn't recall hearing the verbs pronounced that way, and that it feels unnatural for you to say them like that. I've always had the exact opposite experience: I've always pronounced both of them with a long えー, I've always heard everyone pronounce them that way, and whenever I try to say them with a distinct えい it feels very forced and unnatural to me. So imagine my surprise when you mentioned that one of the two sources you referred to didn't even contemplate that possibility! Now, since first hearing this lesson I've done a bit of looking around and active listening (it's been a few months, I'm typing all this so late because I'm lazy), and sure enough I must definitely agree with you that several people do pronounce those words with a distinct えい, so I believe the reason why I hadn't heard that before was because of some kind of selective confirmation bias (or sheer coincidence, I guess, but that would be a bit too much). However, even after starting to actively listen for this, I can say I've heard just as many people pronounce it the way I do, with a long えー. I initially thought this might be related to the speaker's level of education, or how formal the context was, or something like that, but I've heard both pronunciations in practically every context, I've heard very informal gaming YouTubers saying えい and professional voice actors reading out formal literary classics saying えー, just as much as the other way around (if anything, I've noticed a very slight preference for えー, but it's not any more than a 60/40 ratio, and it's probably easily attributable to chance or, again, personal bias on my end that makes me notice it more). I've tried looking around for more information on this issue, but I can't say I've had much luck. The most I've found is the Wikipedia article on '長音' mentioning 'there are people who pronunce 稼いで as カセイデ and people who pronounce it as カセーデ', without any further information; and an NHK document with opinions from various experts, one of whom mentions rather offhandedly that '招いて is pronounced マネーテ', apparently considering it the only possible pronunciation, but unfortunately without offering further context or information (the document can be easily found online, and is titled '外来語の発音とカタカナ表記 〜 [ エイ・ケイ・セイ ] などを中心に〜', if you should be interested in giving it a look yourself). Apart from these titbits, I haven't been able to found a more thorough breakdown of the phenomenon, which is a shame because I'd be really interested to know whether it's just free variation, whether there's some kind of prestige or stigma attached to either form, or whether it might be a regional issue even, or different preferences among younger and older people. I'd appreciate any insight you might have on the topic! Sorry for the long post, and keep up the good work! =)

Dogen
>>43826139

Hi Enrico, unfortunately I haven't come across any new literature on this topic, so the only additional piece of information I can really give is that perhaps in rapid speech えい gets slurred into a long えー for certain speakers, making this perhaps another acceptable pronunciation, though again, this doesn't seem to be the norm, or 'correct' pronunciation from my personal experience. Thinking about the phenomenon again several months after creating this lesson I still agree with what I said here, and recommend that learners go with えい in verbs, rather than えー, though again some speakers may use えー, and both the Human Academy and the paper you mention seem to indicate that both are acceptable. In circumstances like these I try to think about the situation objectively, and provide advice that seems to best align with my own experiences, thus えい. That said, えー in these situations certainly isn't 'a mistake', so it's probably OK either way (though again I go with えい)! Cheers!

Jared Boudreau

So these vocal placement videos and other vowel related videos have been big help for me lately, but I have one question. I've looked online in english and japanese but haven't found any good answers on the question, but wanted to know if you might know something. While "perfect" pronunciation gets most people really close to a native level accent there still seems to be a distinct difference in their timbre (I think is the right word) and the average Japanese's person's timbre. The difference for me is most noticeable when comparing MattvsJapan's and Joey's japanese and english voices. Of course Joey has a higher base pitch in english that may help, but ultimately growing up with a Japanese mother helped develop his japanese voice into something that seems fully native to me vs Matt's timbre feels foreign even though his pronunciation is nearly flawless (at least to my hears). Part of this can be biased as due to matt's lower voice, his lower timbre sinks through more, but I think there is more going on. Because, if he was born in Japanese I am sure his timbre would be quite different. From my research on it, while there is a genetic part of shaping our voices, our voices are ultimately shaped mostly by our environment. So I am wondering if you have any insight or resources on how Japanese people exactly use their vocal chords to produce a timbre that sounds Japanese. I have heard a few english speakers who mimic the timbre really well and while it seems to be something that can be developed by ear with enough time and hard work. I feel like with the right resources to frame it correctly it could make it a lot easier. I don't know if there is much research on the subject or if I am just looking in the wrong spots, but your insight is appreciated. Thanks so much. Keep up the amazing content.

Dogen
>>57725433

Hi Jared. This is is something that I've thought about before, but haven't read a lot about, so please keep in mind that this is all my 2 cents. I do think that very generally speaking, the 'typical' Japanese voice has an overall different quality to it than the 'typical' non-Japanese voice, but I disagree with the notion that our voices are shaped mostly by our environments. Perhaps how we use our voices, but I doubt that the development of our physical speech organs is primarily influenced by our environments, though I may be wrong about this. With regards to Matt's voice, his voice (or timbre) has never really struck me as very low or off, but I'll try to comment on what I think you're saying. The quality of Matt's voice may be slightly different than that of the 'typical' native Japanese speaker, but there are certainly some native Japanese speakers with relatively low voices / timbre, so I personally don't believe that the quality of Matt's voice makes his Japanese sound any less natural—maybe just slightly less typical. That is to say, one can have a unique voice and still sound 100% native / natural, provided they aren't artificially lowering their voice or speaking from their chest (which does sound a bit off to me). I'd like to also add that vocal placement is an extremely complicated subject, which is why I made the follow up video with Yoichi-san, which can be found below. If you haven't already seen it, please do check it out! https://www.patreon.com/posts/discussing-with-42387293 I hope that this helps; sorry for not being able to give any additional information here, and good luck with your future studies!

Jared Boudreau

Thanks so much for the reply. Ya, I think I phrased it incorrectly. Our speech organs are definitely genetic, but of course how we use them is shaped by our language and environment. Maybe I am biased from seeing how other bilingual speakers speak Japanese, but something to me stand out's in matt's voice. It is probably due to his tone that makes it easier to point to the similarities that is shared with his english voice that I am just misidentifying. I now some natives have said he doesn't sound Japanese, but I am not sure if that is a bias too or if there is some clear distinct difference for them because even in his vrchat videos people were commenting that he sounded Japanese. I feel like I believe that there is a subtle difference, but then that would get back into the quality of voice. This certainly is a very complicated subject with unfortunately not enough resources on. I am going to watch the video you linked for more information. Thanks so much again for answering.

Dogen
>>57866300

No worries. If there are any regular issues with Matt's Japanese I certainly don't know what they are, other than I believe I've heard him say あえ as あい once or twice, which is a problem I also suffer from. This is a very minor issue in the grand scheme of things, however. Hope you enjoy the video!

Andrew

Hey, Dogen. Love the series so much. My question is: when you have two different words, one ending in o and the next word is the particle wo like in 勉強をした　運動した I studied and I exercised. Would you say, in your experience, that the -o sound is rearticulated when pronouncing the particle. Also would you say that the -o sound is rearticulated in back to back -o sounds like とても面白い the -o sound is pronounced twice clearly and separately, once for the mo in totemo and once for the o in omoshiroi. I hope I asked my question in a not confusing way haha