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Reading it kana by kana I cannot pronounce this correctly.
Is there a Japanese pronunciation rule that affects this pronunciation? The S sound from つ sounds like it is dropped. But I keep hearing the “shhh” sound at the beginning.It might just be my poor listening skills, but it sounds like “shhh” in the beginning and ends up sounding like “shh-tori”. “He to tsu ri” is the way I am seeing this pronounced but I hear it as “shh-tori”.
Thanks.
It’s pronounced as it’s written: “hi-to-tsu”. If you’ve heard it pronounced differently in the audio from this site, then the audio is wrong.
Japanese is incredibly consistent in pronunciation matching spelling. A few minor curves exist here ant there, but not in this case. 一つ = ひとつ = hitotsu.
So when you yourself say it, there is no Shhh sound? Do you hear the Shhh in the audio? I just want to make sure that my ear is not deceiving me because in the audio I hear a slight “Shh” sound and I couldn’t pinpoint where it was coming from. http://www.textfugu.com/season-2/past-tense-nouns/practice/
Thanks. :)
In general, I’m having trouble getting an ear for the speed at which things are said. I’m not sure if I hear things incorrectly because something is spoken too fast for me to pick up particular kana or if there are only a few instances in Japanese where words are pronounced differently from the way they are spelled.
From what you told me, you said Japanese will generally be be pronounced the way it is spelled…so can I assume I need to train my ear to listen to the kana faster because it seems they speak very fast? Or should I just memorize the way things are pronounced by listening to it first without looking at the kana?
Wait a minute. I may have misread your question. You asking about 一人, not 一つ.
一つ = ひとつ
一人 = ひとりThere is no ひとつり.
When I listen to the audio, I suppose I can kind of, sort of hear shi-to-ri. But I think this is just due to the audio hiss from the recording, not from the speakers pronunciation. I imagine if the recording had a little lead time on it so your brain could filter out the hiss, you would hear the correct pronunciation: hi-to-ri.
Oh sorry! I wrote the hiragana wrong for 一人 because I thought I was hearing the “S” sound so I wrote it as ひとつ. That makes all the sense in the world now that it’s hi-to-ri since you helped me see I wrote the hirigana wrong.
Will update the thread for 一人 = ひとり. I’m solid now… happy to know there won’t be too many curve balls in pronunciation since Japanese is pronounced the way it’s spelled.
Thanks again! :)
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