What's new

Devoiced sounds

Karan

先輩
21 Feb 2005
21
0
11
Is there a general rule for when certain syllabels get devoiced... or is it just scattered throughout the language?
 
You mean silent things... like the b in dumb (no, I'm not being fetisious). Besides the は = wa & を = o there are very few. Pronunciation-wise, Japanese is a very straight-forward language. I do recall one... can't remember what it is right now... but I think I saw it on a sushi shop. My wife explained it to me, at which point I discarded it. :)
 
No I mean like... on occasion I've come across the addition of Ku to the end of shi... on some word, for some reason... but it's pronounced "shku" rather than "shiku"
 
As far as I can tell that's personal preference or just speed of speech.

like in suki.. you'll have people speaking fast saying (what we might hear as) ski.
then the next time you hear it it fantastamazingly turns into the pure neatly spelled out suki.

oh yeah, GP, I've been wondering lately. Is Gaijin Punch anything like the Gaijin Smash that the now so popular editorial black english teacher in Japan person talks about in his editorials?
 
This got me first when I started learning too. Anytime there is an i or u between one of the following: h, t, s, k, or p; it is devoiced. Sometimes at the end of the sentence too, but it depends on the situation.
 
Stutz said:
This got me first when I started learning too. Anytime there is an i or u between one of the following: h, t, s, k, or p; it is devoiced. Sometimes at the end of the sentence too, but it depends on the situation.
Usually this happens with 'i' when it occurs in syllables like shi, chi, hi, ki, pi that precede certain consonants such as ch, f, h, p, s, shi, t or ts. In the way that Karen mentioned, foreigners hear 'hto' (hito) or 'shkata' (shikata) whereas native speakers will pick it up as whispered rather than entirely silent

Of course 'u' is also often dropped before consonants and at the ends of words.
 
Boy was I out in left field? Yeah,that stuff takes a bit of getting used to... probably not such a problem in year 2.
 
The vowels /i/ and /u/ get devoiced between two voiceless consonnants (k, s, sh, t, ts, h, f) or after a voiceless consonnants and at the end of the word, and when their syllable is not accented (=when there is not sudden pitch fall after the syllable)
I note accent by ⌉
ex:
汽車 kisha⌉
鹿 shika⌉
串 kusi⌉
靴 kutsu⌉
一口 hito⌉kuchi
です desu
 
Back
Top Bottom