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Japanese Phonetics Episode 54—UPDATED! (Patreon)

Published:
2018-12-26 07:50:58
Imported:
2026-06
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Content

Note: At 0:45 in this lesson, I say 三 (さん) with the atamadaka pattern, as in SAn, but this should be 平板, as in saN, like the native recordings the follow.

Bibliography
Japanese Phonetics Index Page 

The fifty-forth episode of Japanese Phonetics is live and updated with high-quality native recordings! In this lesson we begin to look at 'ん', or what's known in Japanese as the hatsuon (撥音). Remember, always use the native recordings for your studies and any shadowing practice.

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 #54: Introduction to the 'hatsuon' (撥音)

The fifty-forth episode of Japanese Phonetics, my series dedicated to Japanese pitch-accent and pronunciation. In this lesson we look at 'ん', or what's known in Japanese as the 'hatsuon' (撥音). If you have any questions leave a comment below the video on Patreon, and thank you all for your continued support! Bibliography: https://www.patreon.com/posts/17345632

Comments

Matze.

I find it funny how you first think and learn that ん is just "n" in Japansese. You think it's the easiest sound until you find out that it's actually one of the most challenging ones.

Anton

Does the sound of ん still change even if you add a particle to the end of it. So if you say something like 日本で does the ん change to an n sound?

Renaud Bernier
>>129648041

I also want an answer to this. Not just with particles, but with any sound following ん. In ３歳, do I say the ん as in 三, or do I say it as in 観察?

Polarwaves

Hi dogen. Very helpful video, also very intimidating though hahah. Do you suggest I write all these rules down and try to just be aware of this when listening to speech? I feel like most of it I would pick up through exposure. Thanks

Dogen
>>149676961

Hi, Polarwaves! JP here, Dōgen's business partner. Some people find it helps to write down the rules that come up in the lessons and review their notes from time to time. If that fits your learning style, this could be the way to go. You probably don’t need to aim for complete memorization, though. Being aware of the rules can help you to develop your phonetic awareness as you are exposed to more and more Japanese, making you more aware of what you are hearing and why it is that way. Best of luck in your studies!

Trey Smith

I have rewrote this question about three times. Put simply I do not understand the voiced uvular nasal. I am checking with Youglish with many words, and here is what I am getting: for a word like 三 or 日本, the ん CAN be identical to the the standard Japanese n sound. However, there are moments where the ん is pronounced more at the back of the mouth like in "ink"; for the examples I have seen on Youglish, this tends to happen when people are speaking fast, and thus sometimes the ん becomes VERY weak or even silent, even dropped. The recordings sound like she is saying the n as the standard Japanese n, and making the sound uvular whatsoever, so I have trouble following the face cross-section graphic as it does not produce the sound she is making. Based on the description in my second paragraph, can I proceed with that understanding? It seems to apply with words like 新幹線, すみません, and others based on what I put in Youglish.

Dogen
>>159525646

Hi, Trey. JP here, Dōgen's business partner. I'm helping manage the messages here on Patreon. Thanks for sharing your question. Dōgen covered this quite in depth in the live stream he did today. It's pretty close to the start of the stream, so it's best to watch from the beginning. There is a correction in the Patreon post you should note as well. https://www.patreon.com/posts/118866177 Hope this helps!

Johnny

In a compound word like 白人男性, would the ん in 人 be pronounced as a voiced uvular nasal (as if it is two separate words) or a standard Japanese n?

Johnny
>>182943899

Similarly would conjugations and particles affect the type of n used as well?

Sam Goodridge

Wow, this is awesome! Thank you so much! I can't believe the amount of times I've gone 'Oooohhh, so THAT's why it sounds like that.' or 'It all makes sense now!' when watching your videos! :P 本当にありがとうございます

Maksymilian Strzelecki

Yay, you've mentioned words like 原因! The ん in it is really tricky to get right and I struggle to pronounce it properly.

vzwGrey

Huh, totally wasn't aware of the the nasalized vowels after ん, though I did always think those words sounded a bit weird. Well, I guess these videos are supposed to teach us after all, haha. Great video again, can't wait for the next video focusing more on this phenomenon!

greyface

I was also wondering about the pronunciation of the 撥音 when it comes at the end of a word but before a partical like 「を」or 「は」. Does it follow the same rules as the last variation you mentioned? Also. I seemed to notice that the last variation of [ĩ] recorded by a native (かんさつ) that was followed by an "s" sounded less "approximate" and closer to a hard "n" sound than the other examples which were followed by a full vowel or a "y". Is this accurate?

Alex B.

Haha yesss I've been waiting for this one! The 撥音 is probably my favourite part of Japanese, just for its complexity. I remember when I first started learning Japanese, none of my teachers explained the way ん sounds before other sounds (particularly before vowels), so imagine my confusion when getting feedback on my speaking tasks that went along the lines of "Don't connect ん to the vowel in 万円!!" as if I was supposed to just understand how to do that. Didn't get any kind of explanation until I studied abroad, where one of my teachers there explained it. Made so much sense once I knew! As always, wonderful video, and I'm looking forward to the next one!

Dogen
>>18341815

Haha that's what I strive for ^^ Very glad to be of service ^^ Good luck with your studies Sam!

Dogen
>>18342240

Indeed—again we'll be covering this particular sound in detail in the next lesson ^^ It's a tricky one for sure!

Dogen
>>18342432

Glad to hear that you're still picking up new things Grey ^^ Hope the next video will be just as informative!

Dogen
>>18352197

Hi Arthur—That is indeed correct, if you say 日本 in isolation the ん will be pronounced as a nasal, but if you say 日本を then the ん will be pronounced as a nasalized vowel. With regards to the N in かんさつ, it may be a little bit closer to a standard, 'hard' n, but it's certainly still not making contact, as this would turn the following 'S' into an affricate like sound. It may sound slightly 'harder' than the other sounds as it's not an approximate or vowel, but a fricative, which requires the tongue to get very close to the roof of the mouth. That said what you're hearing is still a variation of the nasalized vowel ^^ Hope this helps! :D

Dogen
>>18359345

Hi Alex, thanks for the comment. It's indeed a very interesting sound; I actually still struggle with it sometimes, particularly when it's pronounced as the nasalized vowel that we'll look at in detail in the next lesson :D Very glad to hear that you've made a lot of progress with this sound already! Thanks for the continued support ^^

Corey Baker

Hooray! Thanks for this one, been patiently looking forward to it.

Nathan Vegdahl

Oh. My. God. This is the most mind-blowing video for me so far. Every book and resource I've used up to this point has just said that ん is pronounced like an N in English. I feel so lied to. Now I have to relearn how to say 頑張る, and even re-learn how to intuit readings from hiragana. Thank you _so much_ for this, Dogen. Most of this video is actually pretty easy, but... no one told me before!

Dogen
>>18427455

Hi Nathan! Glad to hear that the video was so helpful for you! ^^ I had to relearn this sound as well, so I know where you're at! With a little bit of practice you'll have it down in no time :) Hope the next lesson is just as helpful!

Shpinxis

So for t and d do you have the tongue position of "n" for the hatsuon and then shift your tongue forward for the t or d sound right afterward (since they are further forward right?). For n you would just keep it in place and go into the n. Thanks Dogen.

Dogen
>>18563881

Hi Scott, you leave your tongue in the same position for t, d, and the standard n. The only difference between the two is that for the standard n the passage to the nasal cavity is open. So you don't need to shift the tongue if a t or d follows the n, as the tongue position is the same. You just need to close the passage to your nasal cavity, which should happen naturally. Hope this helps! ^^

Enrico Paolini

Hi Dogen! I have an unrelated question, I hope you don't mind me asking under this post, but I don't think you've covered this specifically at any point in the series (I have a horrible memory, so I might be mistaken), so I wasn't really sure where to put this. I've been studying Japanese pitch accent for more than a year now, so I believe I've reached a decent level of proficiency; one thing that still trips me up to no end, though, are some adverbs and constructions in general that use ～も・～でも・～か and similar. The reason I'm struggling so much with them is mainly because they either aren't found in dictionaries, or they are but different dictionaries provides different instructions. So, if you happen to know of any resource (books, academic articles, anything, even in Japanese) that gives any sort of in-depth explanation for these, please let me know! The clearest examples I can think of are どちらか、いくら（で）も and なんらか. どちらか, usually followed by というと, is the one that's making me go nuts lately. According to every logic and rule I know, どちら is 頭高, so adding か shouldn't be changing anything. And yet, when I hear Japanese people pronounce どちらかというと, I invariably hear them either pronounce the whole expression as if it were 平板, or I hear them putting a downstep after the か (so, basically, treating どちらか as if it were 平板 and then putting the downstep because of the quotation marker と). I don't think I've ever heard anyone pronounce it as 頭高, which is what every reason and instinct tells me should be its proper pronunciation. Unfortunately, this expression can't be found on any dictionary that I know of (at least, not those which provide pronunciations in any way), so I have no way of checking what the 'official word' on it is, or whether I'm just going mad and always hear it as 平板 when it's actually not (I don't have a great ear [or great hearing, actually], so I trip up every now and again, but I've heard this too many times for it to be a coincidence). いくらでも is a less severe example, as again everything I know tells me it should be 頭高, but I've often heard it as 平板, and I can't figure out why. Fortunately, this is listed in the NHK Pronunciation Dictionary, so at least I can confirm that it's preferably 平板, even though the 頭高 pronunciation is acceptable. なんらか is again similar but even more baffling, as again I thought it would be 頭高, which is an acceptable pronunciation according to the various dictionaries, but the preferred one is actually 尾高, which doesn't make any sense to me. Any advice on this? Did you ever come across this issue? If you did, how'd you get around it? And, most importantly, how am I supposed to pronounce どちらか without going mad? (I tend to take things a tad too seriously) Sorry for the long post, and keep up the good work! =)

Dogen
>>18718182

Hi Enrico. It looks like どちら is giving you the most trouble, so I'll answer that for now. Indeed, the correct pronunciation for the word in isolation is 頭高. That said, it certainly does sometimes change to 平板 in everyday speech, and I think there are two possible reasons for this: 1. 何方かと言えば・何方かというと is often treated as a single combination. For example, in the スーパー大辞林 dictionary, 何方かと言えば has it's own single listing, separate from どちら. Unfortunately the pitch accent isn't listed, but again I assume that because the words are together in a sort of compound that the pitch accent is different from that of the standard どちらか 2. The pitch accent changing could be an example of sentence level pitch-accent/intention affecting the pitch. You may recall that in the lesson I sentence level pitch-accent I said something to the effect of 'speak relatively flat except for the word you're trying to emphasize, as accenting every word back to back can come across as unnatural'. This could be an example of that—speakers might want to leave the initial どちらか more or less flat in the term 何方かというと if the meaning of いうと is more important for what they're trying to get across. Over time, this could have shaped the pitch-accent of the phrase to be 平板. Just speculation, but one possibility! Hope that this helps, and thank you for your continued support! ^^

Gaijin Gains

I finally understand Niho(n/m)bashi

Dogen
>>18841101

Yep, it's actually an 'm' in this case as the following sound is a 'b'!

Stephen Tigner

Thank you so much for that explanation. That totally explains the inconsistent romanizations of words like 先輩. (Either senpai or sempai.)

Tim McCarthy

Hi Dogen, I'm having trouble pronouncing the ん in さん, the voiced uvular nasal. Do you have any tips or resources that could help me practice it? Thanks!

Dogen
>>30245810

Hi Tim! It's worth noting that when making this sound some speakers don't completely close off the passage in their mouth, which can lead to a bit of variety in how this sound is made. Vance (The Sounds of Japanese (2008)) also has a particularly good section on this particular sound. Hope that this helps! Cheers!

PaintedVibes

Hey Dogen, just a quick question. I'm having trouble hearing the ん sounds. I've watched your videos about the different ん sounds and how they become nazalised at the end of a word (ぜんぜん) but some words I cannot hear this. Such as 決断, and lots of words with へ before the ん (答弁). Are these ん sounds nazalised? Thank you.

Dogen
>>64927607

(Just to remind everyone—JP, Dōgen's business partner, and Kimi, a native speaker trained in phonetics, are helping Dōgen handle messages and comments here on Patreon, and their comments will be signed accordingly.) Hi PaintedVibes! Yes, the ん of 答弁 is nasal. (^^) And you mean you can’t be sure if the sound of ん is nasalized or not especially when the words end へん, correct? If that’s the case, there is a reason I can think of. Let’s think about the word 本(HOn) which has the same “voiced uvular nasal sound” ん. To pronounce ほ, you drop your jaw a bit, lower the tongue and make a space in your mouth. Then you say ん putting your jaw back, raising your tongue a bit as if your tongue pushes up the air in your mouth through the nasal cavity. That’s how you pronounce 本. But when you say へ of へん, your tongue position is higher than its position of ほ, so the movement of your tongue low-to-high when shifting to ん is relatively small. Maybe that’s why you can’t hear the air pushed up through the nasal cavity when へん is pronounced. And when it comes to 答弁, there’s another thing. 答弁 is 頭高(TOoben), the last 3 moras are pronounced in low pitch. Besides the ”べん” is pronounced as if it’s 1 mora, so the last sound ん gets easily trailed off, and that might be a reason it’s hard to hear the ん clearly and correctly. But then, you said you have no problem hearing the word 全然, so it may vary depending on the word. Also 決断 may have the similar issue to へん, but I can’t really pinpoint the problem with just this word. I’m sorry. I hope this answer helps at least a little! -Kimi

Airo

Thank you for the explanation! i have just a question, I looked the IPA for the last 3 words where you explain the nazalized vocal, but in 観察 [kã̠ɰ̃sa̠t͡sɨᵝ] there is no ĩ instead i noticed what the three words have in common is ɰ̃ so i wondered couldn't be that ĩ is just the い that becomes nazalized when preceded or followed by ɰ̃?

Dogen
>>65542114

(A quick reminder that Kimi and JP are helping Dōgen respond to comments.) Hi Airo! Thank you for the comment!! Have you already checked lesson 55 (https://www.patreon.com/posts/japanese-episode-23886606)? Dogen explained the nasalized vowel ん in detail. If you haven’t, please check it first. As Dogen explained in this lesson 54, ん is pronounced as the nasalized vowel when ん comes before a sound that doesn’t completely block the outgoing air, such as げん[い]ん, かん[さ]つ, でん[わ], etc. And depending on the preceded or following vowel, ん can be pronounced with the similar sound to regular vowels. For example, げんいん could be pronounced “kind of” like げいいん or げえいん, かんさつ kind of like かあさつ or かうさつ, でんわ kind of like でえわ or でうわ. So in that sense, just like you point that out, ɰ̃ or ɯ̃ whose sound is closer to う might be more accurate to describe the sound of ん in 観察. But basically phonetic symbols can vary depending on what you reference. So in my opinion, you don’t have to worry about it so much. The important thing here is the tongue. As long as you pronounce the nasalized vowel ん without letting your tongue touch any part of your mouth, it would sound natural no matter what vowel is substituted for ん. I hope this helps! (^^) -Kimi

Airo

I got it! Thank you for replying me!

Björn Franzén

Finally! I've been confused about the ん in words like 原因 for quite some time now, I even considered sending a question asking about it. But instead I decided to wait and see if it was explained somewhere later in the course, and I'm so glad to have finally reached an episode explaining this concept :D

P Dix

こういうの勉強し始めた頃に観てたら今さら苦労してないだろwまあ、ありがとう道元さん。正解な発音を身につけようっと