![]() Ā, ああ, アー like 'a' in "f ather" ī, いい, イー like 'ee' in "ch eese" ū, うう, ウー like 'oo' in "h oop" ē, えい, エー like the 'ea' in "y eah" ō, おう, オー like the 'a' in " all", when pronounced in a British accent The long vowels, marked with a macron (a horizontal line above the letter) in this phrasebook, are: ![]() The long vowels are generally the same sound as the short vowels, only held approximate 60% longer. Also, the kana "do" and "to" are sometimes pronounced with a weak "o". In particular, the common endings desu and masu end up sounding more like "dess" and "mass". Note that "u" is often weak at the end of syllables (meaning it is almost omitted). The sounds below are first given in romanized Japanese, then hiragana and finally katakana.Ī, あ, ア like 'u' in " us" i, い, イ like 'ee' in "f eet" u, う, ウ like 'u' in 'pl ume' e, え, エ like 'e' in "s et" o, お, オ like 'o' in "h ot", when pronounced in a British accent Japanese has only five basic vowels, but the distinction between short and long vowels is often important. When asking questions, you can raise the tone at the end, as in English. Trying to keep your intonation flat will make your attempts to speak Japanese more comprehensible to local listeners. Word stress is much more subtle and neglecting it at this point should not interfere with meaning. Although Japanese does have a form of stress and intonation, it is significantly flatter than English. Combinations like kya are treated like one syllable and are the only occurrence of sliding vowels, all other syllables are to be pronounced rather separately.Īlso avoid placing too much emphasis on particular words or syllables. Long vowels take the length of two syllables. ![]() All syllables are to be pronounced equal in length. The vowels are pronounced virtually identical to the "Italian way" and there are very few consonants that do not exist in English. Japanese is not a tonal language like Chinese or Thai, and is comparatively easy to pronounce. The language is strongly influenced by Chinese though the two are unrelated although the written form uses a combination of Katakana, Hiragana and Kanji characters which were all derived from Chinese characters. Japanese (日本語 nihongo) is spoken in Japan, and essentially nowhere else other than Palau, Guam, Northern Mariana Islands, Taiwan, South Korea and China, where some use it as a second language. Japanese writing on a temple lantern, Asakusa, Tokyo ![]()
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