standard Japanese, the i and the u are silent or, more technically, voiceless in some words. So, for example, desu (です), which is equivalent to “to be,” may sound like dess and its past tense deshita (でした) like deshta. However, it is not that the Japanese leave out these vowels; in fact they can still hear the difference between such pairs as aki (あき) “fall/autumn” and aku (あく) “evil.” Therefore, it is best that you always pronounce the i and the u clearly until you are certain when they become voiceless.
Long vowels
In Japanese, short vowels (e.g. i) and long vowels (e.g. ii) are used contrastively to differentiate the meaning of words. For example, ojisan (おじさん) means “uncle” while ojiisan (お じいさん) means “grandfather.” Long vowels are more or less twice as long as short vowels, and it is important to learn to pronounce vowels with the right length.
A long vowel may be indicated in Romanized Japanese by a line above the letter. In Survival Japanese, however, a phonetic second letter is added after the vowel as a pronunciation aid, as aa, ii, uu, ee and oo.
Moraic nasal
‘n’ is a moraic nasal, which requires the same length of time as all the other moraic sounds. How it is pronounced depends on what sound follows it. It is pronounced as:
n when followed by t, d, z, r or n (e.g. hontoo ほんとう); m when followed by p, b or m (e.g. tenpura てんぷら). (In English the prefix in is replaced with im before these consonants but in Japanese n is still used to represent m.);
ng as in “singer” when followed by k or g (e.g. tenki てんき);
a nasalized sound of the preceding vowel when followed by s, h, y, w or a vowel (e.g. kinshi きんし, ren ’ ai れんあ い). (In American English, vowels are normally nasalized when followed by a nasal sound, as in “can” and “internet.” In Japanese a nasal is vocalized instead.) For example, konbanwa (こんばんは), a five-beat (ko.n.ba.n.wa) three-syllable (kon.ban.wa) word meaning “good evening,” is pronounced as [ kombaãwa ] ([ã] nasalized [a]).
Consonants
The following moraic sounds and consonants require special attention:
tsu The only English word containing this sequence of sounds is “tsunami,” which is a loanword from Japanese. Try pronouncing tsu by isolating ts from “cats” and adding u to it.
hi The “h” of hi is much closer to the German “ch” in “ich” than the English “h” in “he.” It has more friction of air than its English counterpart.
fu “f” is conventionally used to represent this consonant sound, but actually it is not “f ” at all. Imagine you are blowing a candle very gently. That is exactly how this sound is produced.
r It has two sounds depending on where it is used. Between vowels (e.g. tera てら) it is a flap, which can be heard in such words as “rider,” “water,” and “bottom” in American English, but at the beginning of a word (e.g. roku ろく) most Japanese people use l instead of a flap, andl is exclusively used after a moraic nasal n (e.g. tenran てんらん). When it is followed by y, a flap is used at the beginning of a word (e.g. ryokoo りょこう) but l remains the same after a moraic nasal (e.g. enryo えんりょ).
g It is always pronounced hard, even before the i and the e. In standard Japanese, it is often nasalized between vowels (e.g. kaigi かいぎ) as ng in “singer.”
Double consonants
Some words have a double consonant, pp, tt (or tch before i and tts before u), kk, or ss (or ssh). The first half of the double consonant, which is transcribed with っ, belongs to the preceding syllable and the second half forms a syllable with the vowel. The first half is a kind of preparation time for the second half and it requires one beat, just like all the other moraic sounds. No sound is audible while the first half is pronounced, except in the case of ss where a hissing sound can be heard.
e.g. ki·p·pu (きっぷ) ticket
1 2 3
ki·t·te (きって) stamp
1 2 3
za·s·shi (ざっし) magazine
1 2 3
There are pairs of words and phrases, one with a single consonant and the other with a double consonant, such as kite kudasai (きてください) “please come” and kitte kudasai (きってください) “please cut.” It is absolutely necessary to “hit” a double consonant clearly to be understood.
Other moraic sounds
The following table shows the rest of the moraic sounds, which are exclusively used to transcribe loanwords (note that loan-words are conventionally written in katakana):
Accent
Japanese is a pitch accent language, as opposed to English being a stress accent language. This means that accentuation is made with the pitch of the voice and that to this end either a high or low pitch is assigned to each haku or beat of a word. For example, tookyoo (とうきょう) “Tokyo,” nihon (にほん) “Japan,” and kyooto (きょうと) “Kyoto” are pronounced as follows (H: high pitch, L: low pitch):
| to o kyo o | ni ho n | kyo o to |
| L H H H | L H L | H L L |
The pitch is often used to differentiate the meaning of homo-phones, such as hashi (はし :HL) “chopsticks” and hashi (はし :LH) “bridge.” Therefore, if you are really serious about mastering the language, it is highly recommended that you purchase a dictionary that shows the accent of each word and remember it together with the word.
However, even if you pronounce words with the incorrect accent, the Japanese should be able to understand you when you use them in the correct context. For this reason, and in order to reduce the burden of your learning, no accent mark is added to words in this book.
Dealing With Grammar
Word order
The grammatical order of Japanese is subject-object-verb, instead of the subject-verb-object form of English. Having said that, I suggest that you ignore it for the time being (although this is probably the reason why the subject is often left out in Japanese conversation when the meaning is clear without it, and why the verb is often used by itself, playing the role of all the parts of speech).
The verb “to be”
The all important “I am; he/she is; we/you/they are” are all expressed in Japanese by desu (です). The past tense of desu (です), expressing “I/he/she was; we/you/they were,” is deshita (でした).
“There is/are”
