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All the “v” pronunciations are confusing me. They don’t really sound like v’s to me (I don’t hear the buzz from the English “v”). For ヴァ、ヴィ、ヴ、ヴェ、ヴォ, can someone clarify the pronunciations a little bit? Thanks.
In general, Japanese people can’t pronounce the “v” sound very well so it usually comes out as sounding more like a “b” or a “w” or a mix of the two. If reading the actual letter, it sounds like “bwee” to me.
AnonymousYeah, they sound more like ‘bw’. I believe they’re just named ‘v’ for the sake of representing katakana words that derive from English words that use the letter ‘v.’ But they sound like ‘bw.’
The only English loans I’ve heard with the letter V have just been pronounced as B, straight up, no BW-ness. To my ears, stuff like ビデオ and バラエティー just sound as they’re written, no attempt at a V sound. Maybe there are other words that are different, I don’t know…
Rhino Spike!
Get some kata kana words like テレビ、etc. and submit to rhino spike and you should get some very nice japanese people to do some recordings for you.
I’ve also seen loan words have ウ be both w or u.
I see katakana as a giant game of Mad Gab (http://www.madgab.org/)
Hollered Hay We Canned => Holiday Weekend
He Legs Shunned Hey => Election DaySo if you can hear yourself saying it, then you’ll likely know the loan word.
If you’re a computer guy then think of going from English to Japanese, with the loan words, like using a hash table. You’ll find the answer based on approximation, but you risk collisions. ;)
If you’re a math guy then it’s not unlike the Pigeonhole principle, but I think that’s a weaker comparison.
Usually w is ウイ ui, like in french oui.
But yes the transliteration of words can be a little tough, the whole r/l thing makes words like “rule great”. ルール… *mind blown*
Its pretty easy until you try and shown off your skills by transliterating zero wing and then fall on your face *sigh*
Interesting Factoid time!
Did you know that there are many more combinations of sounds in English than in Japanese? Its true, and is one of the reasons why there are so many homophones in the language. Its also why its hard to transliterate English into Japanese with some resemblance of the original word. I forget where I read this, I tried to find the source which had numbers attached, was it in Textfugu, was it in one of the books I’m working through, or a website I read…
One thing to consider is the whole pitch accent thing, when you listen to Japanese you’ll hear inflection changes in some words and not in others.
Consider the word rule above. ルール。
How do you even make that sound like anything? Well apart from the first ru being held for two beats you also change the pitch for the second sound. So you have two ways to inflect ru, which allows you to say rule without sounding like you’re a train. If you can inflect every sound high and low you’ve just doubled the number of sounds you can use, woo yeah, thats the trick to working out homophones in speech, kanji is how you work them out in writing! (Of course accepting that there are exceptions as always :P)Its useful to be aware of the pitch variations, and the way to extend the vowels, as these nuances are really subtle but really hard to get right, at least for English speakers, but in a be aware but don’t sweat it, you’ll just go oh right, I see eventually. way.
@Andrew – According to the Android app HJ Lite (https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.braksoftware.HumanJapaneseLite&hl=en):
“…Japanese on the other hand, has very strict rules about what is and isn’t a language sound. The total number of one-syllable building blocks out of which any Japanese word can be constructed is – wait for it – about 110.” It goes on to say that we can only guess how many are in the English language, but many estimates say it’s safely 8,000.
I’ve read on one other site that it was closer to 200 sounds in Japanese, but I don’t remember that source or the exact number. The other source may have decided to define uniqueness slightly differently as well. Either way you can see why I compare it to a hash table or the Pigeonhole principle.
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