Japanese Pronunciation #1

Pronunciation of Japanese Vowels

Now that we have the updated, revised, corrected, super-duper new chant sheets, perhaps folks would be interested in getting their pronunciation of Japanese sounds a little closer to “correct.” I’ll start with trying to explain the vowel sounds.

First: Why do we have trouble with Japanese vowels?

The Japanese sound system challenges English speakers because it’s simple.

If you ask most English speakers how many vowels there are in English, they will usually answer something like, “Five or six. A E I O U and sometimes Y.” But those, of course, are just the roman characters that we use to REPRESENT the vowels in writing.

How many actual vowel sounds there are in English depends on the dialect you’re looking at: West Coh-oost Canajun? Noo Yawk? Strine (Australian)? Etc. But whichever dialect of English you’re looking at, the vowel sounds will almost certainly number well over twenty. The machinations we go through to represent those vowel sounds with six measly characters cause our own young a certain amount of grief, and have foreign learners shaking their heads in dismay.

How many vowel sounds are there in Japanese? Well, putting regional differences and the complexities of phonological processes aside, we can say with confidence that there are five vowel sounds in Japanese.

FIVE VOWEL SOUNDS!

That’s right. Compare that to the 25 or more vowel sounds in most English dialects.

Because of its plethora of vowel sounds, English tends to be quite forgiving of weird pronunciation. Often people can substitute one vowel sound for another and they still have a good chance of being understood.

The same is not true of Japanese. Here’s an example of what can happen:

Kirei (beautiful, clean, pure)

Kirai (dislike, hate)

One little difference makes a big difference!

Ok, I could go on and on about the phonologies of English and Japanese, but I’d better get down to brass tacks. What ARE the five vowels of Japanese, and how are they represented in roman letters (romaji)?

THE VOWELS OF JAPANESE

A I U E O

You might like to start by listening to a song about them:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xST1wANc3qU

Click on the romaji to hear an audio file of the vowel. (I hope the links work!)

/A/ is more or less like the /a/ in “father” for Canadian speakers.

/I/ is like the vowel sound in “cheese.” NOT like the vowel sound in “hit.” So, for example, “Yushin” would rhyme with “you seen.” Have you seen Yushin?

/U/ is like the vowel sound in “soon.” Not exactly the same, but close enough.

/E/ causes a lot of trouble. It’s like the vowel sound in “bed.” This is true even when it comes at the end of a word! A place where I often hear it mispronounced is in the syllable /ke/ that shows up in our chants. Since this vowel sound doesn’t come at the end of words in English, we tend to turn it into the Canajun “eh,” eh? Try to isolate the /e/ of “bed” and say it by itself. You’ll be on your way to saying /ke/ the way it should be said.

/O/ Big trouble for Canadians. We tend to turn this into a diphthong, which is the fancy word for one vowel sound gliding into another. Just say, “No, I won’t go” and listen to your vowels. By the time you’ve finished saying “No” or “go” the vowel has actually become /u/, hasn’t it? This is especially pronounced in most Canajun English, eh?
The deal is, /o/ is not a diphthong in Japanese. It’s just /o/. Imagine you started to say “Oh” and suddenly had to stop before you got to the end of it. Just /o/, without gliding to the /u/ the way we Canajuns do.

You can listen to sound files of all the syllables at:
http://japanese.about.com/library/blhiraganaaudio.htm

WARNING: THE VOWELS ARE WHAT THEY ARE!

So, if you see a couple of vowels together, like “ee” or “oo,” the sound represented doesn’t change! “oo” is just /o/, but you say it a little longer. Same with “ee.” It’s the same sound as one /e/, but you say it a little longer.

If you see two different vowels together, such as “ai” or “ae” or “ei” or “ie,” each vowel of the pair is pronounced in the usual way, separately from the other. For example, “ai” is the sound /a/ followed by the sound /i/. “Ei” is an /e/ followed by an /i/.

This was an issue, now fixed by the new super-duper chant book, in the word “Rifui,” that appears in the Offering to the Hungry Ghosts. If it were written in hiragana, the Japanese syllabary, it wouldn’t have been an issue because it would obviously be three syllables: ri, fu, and i. But naturally this wasn’t obvious to English speakers who hadn’t learned about the sound system of Japanese. (Perhaps your computer will show you these three kana: りふい )

Here are some more songs about A I U E O:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=crsG1TRpXZk
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qUJTtnRpQzk

Happy chanting!