Queries on pronunciation of /g/k/, /d/t/

auyukhungalan · 1 Sep 2012

Very often,

when people are saying words like ，ありがとう、いたしまして、きました、 I think they are saying "arigadou", "idashimashide", "kimashida". That is I can't clearly distinguish "t" and "d". Most often, /t/ in my ear turns into /d/. But /d/never becomes/t/. It's just like the English word "speak", is the /p/ inside more like /p/ or /b/?

If it's not my listening problem, it might be my understanding of the sounds of /d/ and /t/ is on a wrong basis. So how to pronounce them correctly?

/g/and /k/is also of that problem.

I think many people are having this problem, of course besides Japanese. Could someone help me?

nice gaijin · 1 Sep 2012

Pretty sure it's an honest [t], although it may not be aspirated in normal speech which could be leading to you mishearing it, but it's definitely unvoiced.

fortunately, there aren't any phonemic pairs with the words you used as examples (changing the d to a t doesn't make it a different word), so even with this impediment you should be able to get used to the difference without worrying about misunderstanding people or being misunderstood.

auyukhungalan · 1 Sep 2012

Yeah, I agree. But I am in a very early beginning of learning japanese. I hope all basic concepts of pronunciation can be clarified. Is the english /t/ aspirated? And what do you mean by unvoiced /t/? Is /d/ aspirated and voiced?

FinancialWar · 1 Sep 2012

G is pronounced G only at the inception of a sentence, when in the middle or end it is NG

nice gaijin · 3 Sep 2012

FinancialWar said:
G is pronounced G only at the inception of a sentence, when in the middle or end it is NG

Can you clarify what you mean by this?

FinancialWar · 3 Sep 2012

nice gaijin said:
Can you clarify what you mean by this?

鼻濁音の発音の指導方法

nice gaijin · 3 Sep 2012

I'm aware of the nasalized /g/; your statement is confusing. What do you mean "G is pronounced G"?

also, what do you mean by "when in the middle or end it is NG "?

FinancialWar · 3 Sep 2012

nice gaijin said:
I'm aware of the nasalized /g/; your statement is confusing. What do you mean "G is pronounced G"?

also, what do you mean by "when in the middle or end it is NG "?

If you read what I linked, then it shouldn't be confusing. NG=nasalized G.

Toritoribe · 3 Sep 2012

FinancialWar said:
If you read what I linked, then it shouldn't be confusing. NG=nasalized G.

Then, your statement "when in the middle or end it is NG" is obviously wrong. There are strict rules when 鼻濁音 is used and is not used even in the middle of a word, as your linked page explained. 高等学校 is a good example.

nice gaijin · 3 Sep 2012

FinancialWar said:
If you read what I linked, then it shouldn't be confusing. NG=nasalized G.

I did read the article you linked. I actually misread your first post as a list of conditions for when "G is pronounced G" because you incorrectly used a comma instead of a period or semi-colon to indicate you were starting a new declarative statement.

word-initial instances of /g/ are expressed as the plosive [g], and word-medial instances are usually expressed as [ŋ], the nasalized g. There are no words in Japanese that end with /g/.

Glenn · 4 Sep 2012

auyukhungalan said:
Yeah, I agree. But I am in a very early beginning of learning japanese. I hope all basic concepts of pronunciation can be clarified. Is the english /t/ aspirated? And what do you mean by unvoiced /t/? Is /d/ aspirated and voiced?

/t/ is aspirated in English as an initial, so only when it starts a word. It's unvoiced in all of its manifestations except [ɾ], which is what it becomes in medial position (like in "butter" or "sitting"). "Unvoiced" means that it's produced (pronounced) without voice, meaning the vocal flaps don't vibrate. /d/ in English (as far as I'm aware) is unaspirated and voiced in all its manifestations. "Aspirated" means that when you pronounce it you create a puff of air, and you can feel this if you place your hand in front of your mouth when you pronounce it.

As far as ありがとう, いたしまして, and きました are concerned, they should all be [t] (i.e., the unaspirated unvoiced alveolar stop). That is the same sound as the "t" in English "stop", "stand", "still", or pinyin "d" if you're familiar with Mandarin pronunciation. I will add, though, that Wikipedia says, "Voiceless stops /p, t, k/ are slightly aspirated: less aspirated than English stops, but more so than Spanish." I assume they mean English initial stops and that there isn't much variation in aspiration in Japanese, but I'm not sure about that. All I can remember is learning that Japanese /p, t, k/ are unaspirated.

Glenn · 4 Sep 2012

I feel like I should make something clear after thinking about this:

"" indicates a letter and nothing more (as we know that in English letters aren't tied to one sound, or even two in some cases)
// indicates a phoneme -- this is pretty much the idea of a sound as it exists in a language
[] indicates a phone -- the actual sound that is produced

To use the example from above to help illustrate this, the phoneme /t/ in English is represented by the letter "t", and can be realized as the phones [tʰ] ("top", "till"), [t] ("stop", "still"), [t(unreleased)] ("rat", "mutt"), and [ɾ] ("butter", "sitting"). The last one may not happen in some dialects of English, though, and can instead be [ʔ] (voiceless glottal stop).

I just want to make sure the terms are clearly defined to reduce confusion.

Queries on pronunciation of /g/k/, /d/t/

auyukhungalan

後輩

nice gaijin

Resident Realist

auyukhungalan

後輩

FinancialWar

Sempai

nice gaijin

Resident Realist

FinancialWar

Sempai

nice gaijin

Resident Realist

FinancialWar

Sempai

Toritoribe

松葉解禁

nice gaijin

Resident Realist

Glenn

一切皆苦

Glenn

一切皆苦

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