The Japanese "Fu" Sound

This is not quite the same as the "foo" sound in English, which is produced by biting down on the lower lip with your upper front teeth. The Japanese do not do this.

The Japanese "fu" is almost like halfway between the English "foo" and "hoo". I advise students of Japanese to make the "fu" sound by rounding the lips slightly, and without any contact between the lips or the teeth try to make the English "foo" sound.

Many Japanese have trouble pronouncing "who". It almost sounds "foo". I was once asked by a Japanese person if the English word "hooker" (pronounced "fooker" by him) is so coined because a fooker is someone who fooks for money. True story.

Factors contributing to the unusual Japanese /fu/ sound;

1. The Japanese /u/ vowel is different from the English /u/ vowel in that there is little lip-rounding.
Wiki: Japanese Language, Sounds

Japanese vowels are "pure" sounds, similar to their Italian or Spanish counterparts. The only unusual vowel is the high back vowel /ɯ/, which is like /u/, but unrounded.

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2. The Japanese /u/ conditions the /f/ into a bilabial fricative.
Wiki: Japanese Phonology

The vowel /ɯ/ also affects consonants that it follows:

/h/ → bilabial fricative [ɸ]: /hɯta/ → [ɸɯ̥ta] futa ふた 'lid'

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Golgo13 said:

Many Japanese have trouble pronouncing "who". It almost sounds "foo". I was once asked by a Japanese person if the English word "hooker" (pronounced "fooker" by him) is so coined because a fooker is someone who fooks for money. True story.

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A good one, with good reason !
Here's a lame one I heard about overcompensating. One Asian guy wanted to park, but asked the officer while overcompensating for his language insecurity by saying, /kaen ai fa:ku hier ?/ with special emphasis on the /f/ sound. Amused the officer replied, "Sure, you can f*** any place you want." Of course the officer came back in half an hour to write a ticket.

Golgo_13 said:

Many Japanese have trouble pronouncing "who". It almost sounds "foo". I was once asked by a Japanese person if the English word "hooker" (pronounced "fooker" by him) is so coined because a fooker is someone who fooks for money. True story.

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I'm sorry to ask, but how well do you know the Japanese language, Golgo_13?

I ask because, it's possible to "use" the Japanese language to teach Japanese how to say "who" and other trouble words.

The problem is that in Japanese, you can make the "h sound" before every vowel EXCEPT u, in which case the h turns into that near-f you are so familiar with. H is pronounced in the back of the oral cavity, whereas near-f is pronounced in the front. If you can get them to say "hi" (I mean the Japanese ひ), and then only the "h", and then only "u", and then slowly get them to put it together (holding their lips apart by hand if necessary), you can eventually teach them to make the correct sound in English.

Sorry in advance if you already knew!

(Off topic) Two more toughies are "woman" and "year".

To be technical, (in Tokyo Standard Japanese, at least) the /h/ before /i/ isn't [h], it's [c] (the French "c" with squiggly line below, in case it doesn't display correctly -- IPA for voiceless palatal fricative). Before /a, u, o/ it's [h], but it changes before /u, i/, as we have seen above.

I might have such a struggle with pronouncing "F" when I was still learning English in Japan. Japanese often mix F sound and H sound. I DO still struggle with the pronunciations of "L" and "R". I bet those are the hardest for Japanese.

Somewhat similar story to the above, Japanese people often miss-pronounce "S" sound with "Sh" sound. I remember this Japanese instructor in a college saying city with "sh" sound. シティ is now a Japanese word (from city) as many of you already know.

Glenn said:

To be technical, (in Tokyo Standard Japanese, at least) the /h/ before /i/ isn't [h], it's [c] (the French "c" with squiggly line below, in case it doesn't display correctly -- IPA for voiceless palatal fricative).

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I looked this up at Wikipedia, but the audio file I found there confused me. It sounds like the voiceless palatal fricative is a "sh," which I don't think is right ... Any someone clarify?

It depends on which "sh" you're talking about.

The English "sh" is the voiceless postalveolar fricative [?] (looks like an integral sign, if that helps), and the Japanese "sh" is the voiceless alveolo-palatal fricative [?] (looks like a "c" with a loop on the end). The difference is that the English "sh" is the most forward in the mouth, the Japanese "sh" a little farther back, and the Japanese "h" (before /i/) is the farthest back. I think the "h" sound is the highest in pitch and sounds a bit more pinched than the other two.

I just looked at the Wikipedia page, and found something interesting that may help you.

Wikipedia said:

In some dialects of English, the sequence /hj/ is sometimes realized as the voiceless palatal fricative, via coalescence, a type of assimilation. For example, human (/?hjum?n/ might be realized as [?cum?n]).

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It's under the "English" part of the page. If you speak one of these dialects (I believe I do -- I'm from south Louisiana), then concentrate on the sound of the first consonant of "human" and where your tongue is. If you're not sure whether you pronounce it this way, listen carefully to hear if there is anything that might sound something like "sh" or the first sound of the Japanese word hitori. I assume you've heard Japanese spoken a fair amount, right?

I've not heard too many Japanese outside of anime and, more recently, dramas. But you're example regarding "human" was, I think, of much use to me. I'm going to have to pay attention to the ひ sounds now. Thanks much for your help.

J44xm said:

I've not heard too many Japanese outside of anime and, more recently, dramas. But you're example regarding "human" was, I think, of much use to me. I'm going to have to pay attention to the ひ sounds now. Thanks much for your help.

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Yes, it was helpful for me as well. I still have trouble holding my mouth open, but using the English tongue and lip position my "fu" is occasionally taken as "pu" -- so I'll be more conscious of listening for it after this.

Golgo is a native speaker, by the way, although he may have lost some grammar points, which I used to take exception with.