Something new speakers of
both Japanese and English need to always keep in mind is the syllabic structures
of both languages. This is something guaranteed to cause mispronunciations
and misunderstandings even when all else is understood. English is
(for the most part) a "concent centric" language, with the concinents the
most important factor in pronunciation. Pronunciation proceeding
from concient cluster to concenent cluster, and vowel sound varying,
depending on the surrounding concenents. Japanese, on the other hand,
is more "vowel centric", each syllable almost always ending in a
vowel. (At this time I'm only aware of 5 exceptions to this rule.)
To illustrate this, let me parse the english word "McDonalds", an english
word in common usage in both English and Japanese, yet one not easily recognized
when spoken from Japanese to English, or back. To a native English
speaker, McDonalds is a 3 syllable word "Mc" + " Don" + "alds", pronounced
"Mic" + "Don" + "alds". In Japan though, the Japanese pronounce
McDonalds using the direct Romanization (also known as Romanji).
The direct rominzation of McDonalds is "Makudonarudosu" which sounds like
"Mah" + "coo" + "don" + "ah" + "ru" + "dose" or "Mahcoodonahrudose",
a doubling of the number of syllables to six!
If this is unclear, look at the following chart to see how the word
is transformed:
|
English
|
M
|
c
|
Do
|
na
|
l
|
do
|
s
|
|
Japanese
|
Mi
|
ku
|
Do
|
na
|
ru
|
do
|
su
|
(The ending "u" is silent, otherwise it would have 7 syllables.)
Why you
should learn written Japanese as quickly as possible
In Japanese, as I have said,
the syllables are pronounced in vowel groups, with each concinent and vowel
spoken. But first, let us explore the proper pronunciation of the
bulk of Japanese. First, I recommend that all English speaking students
of Japanese divorce themselves from the Roman (English) alphabet as quickly
as possible, for two very good and practical reasons. First, the
incorrect implications of the pronunciation (and meanings) of Japanese,
combined with your familiarity the English system. Secondly, being
able to read Japanese is superior to not being able to. As I was
struggling to pronounce my first romanicized Japanese words (Romanji"),
I had to deal with the fact that corresponding letters do not necessarily
have corresponding sound. First, Japanese vowels are pronounced one
way, and one way only. Yet the sound of english vowels are affect
by the surrounding lexiconal topography (the surrounding letters).
I.E. "hat" vs. "hate". Japanese has no equivalent "a" sound
as in "hat", and a native speaker of it would naturally pronounce this
as "haw" + "toe". This is reflected in it's romanization "hato".
Similarly, the "a" sound in "hate" also does not sound like the "a" sound
in Japanese, and would be naturally pronounced "haw" + "teh", but still
be romanicized as "hate". So you have a lifetime of english
reading and pronunciation fighting with only a few hours of training the
pronunciation of romanicized Japanese. Also, as I grasped my first
few words, I realized that as I had the sound, and the meaning, I was only
one step away from actually reading Japanese. Knowing the graphical
representation of the sound. Don't get me wrong, Romanji is an invaluable
tool in the learning process for a native English speaker, but it is also
a crutch and stop-gap measure that does not allow for the proper conveyance
of Japanese. Just as training wheels are used and discarded by a
child learning to ride a bike, romanization gives the user a false sense
of the language and facilitates mistakes that written Japanese would preclude,
or make more difficult. Also, would you, after a year of study, rather
be able to read at least some of the street signs, books, magazines, etc.
or not? Besides, what would you think of a foreigner that, though
educated and reasonably fluent in spoken English, couldn't read a lick?
Do you want to be thought of as too lazy, incompetent and/or arrogant
to even try to grasp the written language?
Pronouncing
the vowels
So, I've told you that Japanese vowels written in Romanji don't necessarily
correspond to their English equivalent, so what do they sound like?
Well, there are "a", "i", "u", "e", and "o". Pronounced "ah", "EE",
"oo", "eh", and "oh".
"a" as in "saw"
"i" as in "see"
"u" as in "sue"
"e" as in "bet"
"o" as in "oh" or "toe"
The basic concinents series are k~, s~, t~, n~, h~, m~, y~, r~, w~, and
n. The "n" is a unique case, and is the only cincent that can immediately
proceed another concinent. The "y" series has three incarnations,
"ya" ("yah"), "yu" ("you"), and "yo" ("yo"). The "w~" has one and
a half incarnations, "wa" and "wo"/"o". Think of the "wo" as having
a lazy (faint) "w" sound, if you can't half pronounce it, drop the "w".
(Not to worry though, "wo" is only used as a particle.) All of the
underlined concinets have 5 iterations, one with each vowel, and are found
only proceeding on of those five and never next to any other concinent.
For instance, the "k~" series is "ka" ("kaw"), "ki" ("key"), "ku" ("koo"),
"ke" ("kay"), and "ko" ("co"). All the rest of the concinent series
are either modifications to the concinents I've mentioned, or combinations
of the "y~" series and the rest of the alphabet. The only exceptions
to the pronunciation of the combinations are "si" (as still written in
some older romanizations) currently romanicized as "shi" (pronounced "she")
and "tu" (also as still written in some older romanizations) currently
romanicized as "tsu" (pronounced as "tSue", as in "it's Sue", but drop
the "i", the space and one "s". Sort of slur it together.)
Earlier I mentioned 5 exceptions that I
am aware of to the syllabic pronunciation of Japanese, these are-
"N", the 3 lazy vowels, and "little tsu"
The only exceptions I am
aware of at this time are [] -> "n", [] -> "su" normally pronounced "sue"
but pronounced "s", [] -> "shi" normally pronounced "she" but pronounced
"sh". "N" can be found proceeding a concinent anywhere, except at
the beginning of a word, while I have, to the best of my recollection,
only encountered the "s" and "sh" sounds at the ends of words or wordlets.
Examples of would be []="is" -> r"desu" -> p"dess" and []="is it?"
-> r"desuka" -> p"dehska". An example of [] "n" would be []="book"
-> r"hon" -> p"hone". An example of [] "shi" would be []="hello"
(phone use only) r"mushi mushi", p"moosh moosh".
"little tsu"
The most sweeping exception
to the vowel centric rule is the little tsu [] and []. These
have the effect of doubling the following concinent, and bringing into
play a more english method of pronunciation. I struggled with this
aspect for some time, until I realized that the pronunciation method altered
for this. So in a word like [] -> nekko ("tree stump") I was trying
to pronounce "ne kko", and was understandably stumped… er.. confused.
(grin) A more correct pronunciation of this would be "nek ko".
