It’s pronounced as ‘hitori’, but if you stress the tone on the ‘tori’ rather than the ‘hi’, it may sound like ‘htori’, which may sound a little bit like ‘shitori’. But it is not ‘shitori’, for that would sound different and more like an ‘sh’ sound.

It’s not just about stressing the “tori” part – any word with “hi” can have a more “hissing” sound. The level of “hiss” (for want of a better word) just depends on the speaker. Also, it largely depends on the kana coming after it: “hima” will generally have less hiss than “mannenhitsu” or “hikari”. Something to do with how /m/ is a bilabial consonant while /k/ and /t/ are plosives… or something.

If anyone knows what I’m talking about, could you back me up, maybe rephrase it so it’s a bit clearer? :D Or tell me I’m talking BS, just whatever…

EDIT: Aha! Here we are: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voiceless_palatal_fricative (/ç/)
It’s not just a plain h as in the word “he/him”, it’s more like in the word “hue”. 人（ひと） is actually listed as the Japanese example of the phoneme :D

• This reply was modified 12 years, 6 months ago by  MisterM2402 [Michael].