Pronunciation question

Hello,

I have been learning Japanese, I currently know about as much hiragana and katakana as I could learn from the Internet (or mostly so).

As I understand, each kana character has a pronunciation associated with it, and I've also learned the yooon (for example きゅ for "kyu") and some of the unorthodox usage of katakana (for example イェ for "ye").

I'm learning grammar from a nice website (seems I can't post URL yet). The website explains that there two pronunciations that are different from what I would expect.

desu (です) -- Pronounced "dess"
verb ending -masu (-ます) -- Pronounced "moss"

Neither of these is the pronunciation I would expect. I learned from and practiced my kana in several sites and none of them mentioned special pronunciation rules like these.

My question is, how often do these unexpected pronunciations occur in the language? Are there any examples? I'm memorizing vocabulary according to the pronunciation rules I've learned, and I rather learn it correctly right away.

Thanks in advance!

Hello, Kurious!

Welcome to the Forum!

This question has been asked before--it's something that many people wonder, I guess--so here is a thread:

Question on "desu" ending

Thanks for the link, it is useful. For some reason I assumed that every kana would always sound the same. It's good that I asked, otherwise I would have learned much incorrect pronunciation...

You wouldn't have been pronouncing things incorrectly. In fact, thinking that this devoicing is a rule and not a habit is going to cause you to pronounce things incorrectly.

Everything they say in that thread is true, but you really are turning it into too much of a rule.

Devoicing the 'u' sound in certain cases happens a lot, but for the most part, Japanese don't know they're doing it, and a few of my friends insist they don't do it at all. They even 'prove' they don't do it by speaking more slowly, and the 'u' sound magically appears when they say "o-ne-ga-i-shi-ma-SU" for an example.

Devoicing the 'u' comes with speedier pronunciation and fluency, much the same as "don't know" frequently becomes "dunno" and "want to" becomes "wanna".

They're not rules, they're habits, and not even everyone has them. Many speak all of their 'u' sounds, regardless of their position in relation to other sounds. Many people also tend to devoice or squash the 'i' sound in similar situations.

You'll find quirks like this all over the place, and you're really going to over-complicate things if you try to learn it as a rule. You'll start asking yourself on every word, "So do I say this 'u' or not...?"

Say it for now. Much later, when your speaking improves, you will pick up more natural flow and habits from other speakers, like learning a new accent.

yes, don't worry too much about the complexities of Japanese phonology, just work on understanding the language for now. You'll have plenty of time to work on your accent after you've become comfortable using the language. Like I said in the other thread, if you try to consciously apply these rules, you will only be handicapping yourself.