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I know there’s an entire chapter devoted to pronunciations, but I’ve noticed the voice clips from anki often say this hiragana a bit differently. じ 、じゃ、じょ、and じゅ often have the ‘J’ part pronounced a different way. I’ll try my best to explain the two different ways.
1) Ji as in ‘gee, I wonder what my friend is doing.’ This is also the pronunciation on the texfugu pronunciation videos.
2) The other pronunciation doesn’t really have an equivalent in english, (that I can think of) but is similar to the ‘je’ in ‘je m’apelle’ only with more of an ‘a’ than an ‘e’.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1UjvjIxWo-g
^An example of someone saying ‘je m’apelle’
I’ve heard it pronounced both ways within textfugu sound clips so I assume both are correct. What I’m wondering is what the difference is. Is it a regional thing? Is it something that varies person to person? Does it even matter?
I believe what you are hearing is a combination of accent, maybe even someone mispronouncing it. The correct pronunciation of じ is romanized as Ji, pronounced gee.
But that’s the thing. It’s not. It’s very common among Japanese speakers and it’s even on sound clips from textfugu.
I think it’s just an easier way to say it when pair up with certain other syllables. Or maybe it’s even an accent thing or an intonation thing (such as the rolling of Rs in agressive/yankee speech. The Japanese language in incredibly versatile and many different accents, slang pronunciations and situational intonations can make it sound completely different.
I will say this….in no way should you refer to textfugu’s sound clips as “canon” they aren’t perfect.
The pronunciation you’re referring to almost sounds like the chinese way of saying that same type of syllable. Zhi. This was the way it used to be romanized before modern romaji came along as well.
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This reply was modified 12 years, 2 months ago by
tubatime1010.
It’s the difference between d͡ʒ and ʒ you’re talking about, yes?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voiced_palato-alveolar_affricatehttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voiced_palato-alveolar_sibilant
Don’t worry about it, it’s not anything serious haha. Just listen to a lot Japanese audio, and you’ll see people don’t pronounce things the exact same way as everyone else. Some people pronounce the “g” of “ga/gi/gu/ge/go” like the “ng” in “ring”, while others don’t (though it’s usually a mix of the two, depending on where it comes in the word and what syllables surround it).
Yes! That’s exactly the difference! Thank you so much!
The more I listen to Japanese people speak, the more I realize that Japanese isn’t a word puzzle, it’s a language.
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This reply was modified 12 years, 2 months ago by
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