Japanese for pronounce

[letslearn]

Hi Guys,
I was wondering what the japanese word for "pronouce" is?
Some words like e.g.ふな (ship/boat) I have heard "funa" or "Huna".
I would like to be able to ask a question like how is this word syllable pronounced?

これ言葉はどう＿＿＿＿しますか "hu"がfu"ですか

Thanks

 

[Toritoribe]

発音[はつおん] is the word you are looking for.

この言葉はどう発音しますか。"hu"ですか、それとも"fu"ですか。


The Japanese word for ship/boat is ふね, not ふな. ふな is an adjectival form of it, as in 舟歌[ふなうた], 船出[ふなで], 船着場[ふなつきば].

ふ is a voiceless bilabial fricative, similar to the consonant of "who" in English.

 

[letslearn]

Thanks Toritoribe.
So
これ言葉はどう発音しますか "hu"がfu"ですか

would be acceptable?

Sorry fune.

 

[Toritoribe]

No, I'm afraid not. Therefore I revised it.
I don't think that native Japanese speakers can distinguish "hu" and "fu" in the first place, though. (Thus, the latter question doesn't make much sense.)

 

[letslearn]

Thank you. It seems like it doesn't matter then. How ever I can still use the phrase この言葉はどう発音しますか。 For other tricky pronounciations.

 

[Toritoribe]

Are you talking about "pronounciation", not "reading"? Tricky pronounciations seem not so many to me (What I can think of now are ん and devoiced す).

 

[nahadef]

And は and へ as prepositions

I know there can be a little confusion about pronunciations, since Japan isn't 100% consistent with romaji. On the subway where I am, half the signs for a line read nanboku, and the other half namboku. I know the second is closer, but my parents weren't sure which was correct.

 

[Toritoribe]

I believe most natives don't even notice that ん has six phonetically different pronunciations.

N (kana) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 

[letslearn]

Yes. It may be my dictionary, but words like たいふう and ふね are written as taifuu and fune

 

[Toritoribe]

What you are talking about is "romaji description", not "pronunciation".
Whether ふう is written as "fuu", "fū", "f(u with circumflex)", "huu", "hū" or "h(u with circumflex)", the pronunciation is the same (approximately "who" in English, as I wrote).

Romanization of Japanese - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Hepburn romanization - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Nihon-shiki romanization - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Kunrei-shiki romanization - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

I strongly recommend not to use romaji, especially if you already learned kana. I don't think it's reasonable that Japanese people learn English without using alphabet (e.g. アイム スタディーイング イングリッシュ instead of "I'm studying English"). To learn Japanese language with romaji is similar to it. In the first place, I don't know how to represent an English consonant "th" in kana. It's completely different from さしすせそ, as same as らりるれろ are different from the pronunciation of "ra ri ru re ro" in the way native English speakers usually pronounce.