“beat.”
There are 101 basic one-haku or one-beat sounds called “moraic sounds,” which make up the Japanese language. The following table shows those moraic sounds with hiragana and katakana characters written underneath each of them.
Vowels
| a | Similar to the first phase of the diphthong i [ai] in “bite.” Do not use a [ah] in “Bart” or a [á] in “bat.” |
| i | Similar to but slightly shorter than ea [ii] in “beat.” Do not use i [í] in “bit.” |
| u | Similar to oo [uu] in “boot,” but the Japanese u is pronounced without rounding the lips. |
| e | Similar to e [é] in “bet.” |
| o | Similar to the first phase of the diphthong oa [ou] in “boat” in American English. Do not use oa [oo] in “board.” |
In 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 ā, ī, ū, ē and ō.
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. hontō 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, and l 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. ryokō 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 loanwords are conventionally written in katakana):
e.g.
forudā
(フォルダー)
folder
webusaito
(ウェブサイト)
website
shīdī
(シーディー)
CD
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, tōkyō (とうきょう) “Tokyo,” nihon (にほん) “Japan,” and kyōto (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)
