Home Forums The Japanese Language 円 and を pronounciation questions

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    Note that these are two separate questions down below -

    Do you pronounce を when the subject before it ends in with an o sound?

    1000円 を かします.
    I will lend 1000yen.
    While practicing this sentence I had trouble understanding the pronunciation of the voiceover for 1000円. Is the pronunciation sen(1000)en(yen)?

    #49487

    Joel
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    を is always pronounced “o” when it’s functioning as a particle, and it always functions as a particle in modern Japanese. Made for some fun times in dictation tests at uni when we’d have to distinguish between “benkyo-o o suru” and “benkyo-o suru” by ear, and we’d lose a mark if we got it wrong. =P

    千円 is “sen en” as you observed, but when ん is followed by あ-line characters, you’ll tend to find that native speakers don’t quite complete the ん sound, because it makes it easier to transition to the next mouth position. The upshot is that “sen en” comes out as something closer to “sei-en”. 円, by the way, is always pronounced “en” when referring to the currency – the “yen” that we use in English is a result of some… rather curious etymology.

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