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Hey guys, I’ve been signed up for a week or so now and everything was fine until I came upon these damn kanji. This might sound a bit dumb but it’s really throwing me off.
The kanji “二つ” is said to be pronounced ふたつ but when Koichi says it, it sounds like “Statsu” and its really confusing me. It’s the same with 一人 which is said to be pronounced ひとり but is spoken as “Stori”.
Did I miss something somewhere?
Thanks,
ZachWanna see photos from my trip to Japan: instagram.com/zachradgeI believe this is due in part to the fact that native speakers of a language don’t always have the most accurate pronunciations. People tend to fall into “lazy” speech patterns. This happens naturally in most languages. As a result the population as a whole may pronounce certain words differently than they learn them. There are also regional differences that will change pronunciation.
Ultimately this isn’t something you need to worry about too much at a beginners level. At some point a lot of your practice will be spent simply listening to how Japanese actually speak, and you will pick up on these nuances. In the mean time focus on how it’s “supposed” to sound, as that will give you a good baseline that you will be able to modify later.
I just relistened to the ones you mentioned:
ふたつ Does actually sound like FuTaTsu
ひとり Does sound like HiToRi
That said, I can understand why you think they sound like you said they do, as I can hear that if I try hard enough.
You have to remember that the English sounds we attribute to Kana are a close approximation, so they won’t always sound like you think they should in English. But they are closer than what you think they are in these two examples.
The key is to train your ear to hear the difference. If you actually pronounced those words as Statsu and Stori, I don’t think a Japanese person would have any idea what you wear saying, unless it was in a sentence from context, and they would think you completely mispronounced it. It sounds that way to you, but it doesn’t sound that way to them, or even me, unless I actively try to hear it the way you are.
There are subtleties to the sounds that your brain is actually missing, as the mind will take sensory stimuli and actually modify your perception of it to a degree to make sense of it. Since you are used to hearing speech sounds in a certain way, your brain makes you perceive something slightly different than what it actually sounds like. For example in American English, most Americans won’t notice a difference in saying Pen or Pin, where as someone who speaks British English will pick it up instantly.
This is the same thing that happens with words that you read that have typos, sometimes you will read them without even realizing they were there, as your brain fixes it for you, where as if you go back and search for them, they become really obvious.
You simply need to practice listening to those words until you can hear the subtler sounds that will be closer to FuTaTsu and HiToRi. Also be aware that ふ is not very well represented by Fu, it really is a unique sound from anything in English. Hu and Fu are the closest we come to it, but neither is really accurate.
If you hit “R” in Anki, it will repeat the sound. My advice is to repeat the sounds of these words quite a few times when they come up, until you can hear the difference. Once you hear it, it will become hard not to hear it.
-Cheers
The key to it is knowing Japanese doesn’t use the exact same ‘h’ and ‘f’ sounds we’re used to in English. ‘h’ has more of a “hiss” to it as it’s formed in the mouth a slightly different way, and ‘f’ doesn’t involve the teeth at all.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hi_(kana)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fu_(kana)
http://www.imabi.net/l1pronunciation.htmIf you’re a linguistics buff, this might be interesting to you, though it goes into a lot more depth than is necessary at this point: http://www.imabi.net/l193japanesephonology.htm
Ahhh thanks guys, thought I was going crazy there
Wanna see photos from my trip to Japan: instagram.com/zachradgeThere are also slight microphone artefacts from when they were recorded, so 一人 comes with a little bit more of a hiss than it usually has.
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