origin, or in recent times foreign words. They are rare in native Japanese words. It would seem likely that these sounds represent an elision (contracting or combining) over time of two separate sounds ki (or other sounds ending in -i) and a (or o or u), using a "glide sound" equivalent to y. Sometimes, as for example ja or sho or chu, a y is not written in modern Romanization as it is already considered to be inherent in the sound combination. (It was written in earlier systems, as in sya for sha.)
3.2 Pronunciation
As mentioned before, pronunciation is very difficult to show in a written text, especially given the wide variation in pronunciation of English words that we might use as examples. However, we will try to give some hopefully universally understood indication of how Japanese is pronounced.
3.2.1 Vowels
There are five basic vowels in modern Japanese, corresponding (in Romanized letters) to the five English vowels "a, e, i, o, u," but in a different order. Their pronunciation is less variable than their English equivalents.
| a | Similar to the first part of the vowel sound in "bite." |
| i | Similar to a shorter version of the vowel sound in "beat." |
| u | Similar to the vowel sound in "boot" but without rounding the lips. |
| e | Similar to the vowel sound in "bed." |
| o | Similar to the first part of the vowel sound in "boat" in American English. |
3.2.2 Consonants and consonant + vowel combinations
These are generally similar to the English versions (both American and British) with the following exceptions.
| tsu | This combination is rare in English, but is found in tsunami, one of the Japanese words now incorporated into English. The ts in this sound is similar to the ts of "cats." |
| hi | The h in this case is closer to a German ch, as in ich, than it is to an h as in "heat." That is, it is given more air friction. |
| fu | This is somewhere between an h and an f in English, rather like the gentle blowing out of a candle. |
| r | This is a flap, made by flicking the tongue against the ridge behind the upper teeth (a similar position to the English d or I).It has been likened to the r in the British English "very," and the t in the American English "water." It is not rolled. Some Japanese will pronounce the r more like an I when it starts a word (or after a nasal -n). |
| g | This is always hard, as in "get," and never soft as in "gene." Between vowels it will often become nasalized, similar to ng in "singer." |
| -n | This is a mora in its own right and is given equal length to the other moras. It varies somewhat depending on what sound follows it, the main point to note being that before p, b, or m it comes closer to an m sound. In fact, some Romanization systems actually write an m in such cases, as e.g. shimbun for shinbun (newspaper), though this practice is now considered a little old-fashioned and we do not follow it here. |
3.3 The long and the short of it: vowel length
All the vowels can be doubled, but it is particularly common with o and u. Also, a long o sound can be produced not just by doubling the o but also by adding u to o—in fact, this is more common than a straightforward doubling.
There are a number of possible conventions for expressing a long vowel in Romanization. Some systems simply write the vowel twice, as uu, and in the case of long o, write either write oo or ou as the case may be. Other systems write oo even when it is technically ou according to the kana script, for consistency of pronunciation. Another system indicates long vowels (including o+u) by means of a circumflex accent (e.g. ô). However, the most widely used nowadays is probably the macron, a hyphen-like mark written over the letter, e.g. ō (though a long i is still usually written double rather than with a macron, for visual clarity). Unfortunately macrons are not always readily available in word-processing applications, and you may need a special font or overstrike function. Thus you may find the circumflex the more convenient.
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