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Level: All About

Learn Japanese with JapanesePod101.com! Remember the song “you say po-TAY-to, I say po-TAH-to, you say to-MAY-to, I say to-MAH-to?” Have you ever debated which way is the correct way to pronounce these words? Well, the Japanese would never need to have such a debate, because these issues don’t exist in their language—in Japanese, each vowel has only one sound! The same is true of other words with the same spelling but different meanings depending on which syllable you stress. For example, take the word “present.” If you stress the first syllable, it means “gift” or “existing,” but if you stress the second, it means, “to offer.” The same is true of words like “contract” and “object.” The Japanese simplified our lives by eliminating the stressed syllables. All syllables are created equal and receive the same amount of stress: none! Talk about stress-free!

Learning Japanese with JapanesePod101.com is the most fun and effective way to learn Japanese! This Japanese All About lesson will help you with your Japanese pronunciation skills. You’ll learn about the fourteen Japanese consonants and five vowels you’ll need to know and about how to handle words with multiple syllables—with no stress! Visit us at JapanesePod101.com where you will find many more fantastic Japanese lessons and learning resources! Leave us a message while you are there!

learn Japanese pronunciation

 

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This entry was posted on Monday, July 27th, 2009 at 6:30 pm and is filed under All About . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

16 Responses to “All About #4 - Learn Japanese Pronunciation”

JapanesePod101.com says:

Hello everyone! Pronunciation is an important topic for both beginning and advanced students alike, so we think everyone can learn something from this lesson!

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Green Airplane says:

No stress accent, fine. And what about the pitch accent? Do you plan on getting to that one? :smile:

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Carlos Ruiz Checa says:

Estimados Amigos;
Español y Japonés son similares en muchos aspectos, en esta lección acerca de las silabas es un muy buen ejemplo
Cuando alguien trata de hablar Español conmigo les digo que separen las palabras en silabas de esta manera es mas fácil pronunciarlas, otra cosa que les digo es que todos los lenguajes tienen su ritmo y que traten de imitar como lo hablan los nativos de ese lenguaje.
Sinceramente,
Carlos Ruiz Checa

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Jessi says:

Green Airplaneさん,
There is a pitch accent lesson that comes with the Gengo Japanese series, but we’re not sure if we’re going to put it out on the site yet. We’ll consider it :smile:

Carlos Ruiz Checaさん,
Thanks for the comment - I agree that Spanish and Japanese are similar when it comes to vowel sounds. I think Japanese pronunciation would be easy for Spanish speakers to pick up!

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Sp3ctre18 says:

I know it’s obvious these All About series are pretty introductory and more for newbies (which can include me :mrgreen: ), so I’m hoping you guys made this only the first one of a few pronunciation lessons. After all, this was really a lesson of the general workings of pronunciation, how the syllabary makes words, and the idea of stress. But not really pronunciation; you didn’t go over sounds at all; we just heard Naomi say the vowels one or two times. I think the content of this lesson doesn’t really fit the title at all. :cry:

Even though it’s covered in other lessons, as a specific lesson that was to be about pronunciation, there should have at least been a mention of pitch-accent. So i’m hoping you’ll make a second lesson that TRULY gets into pronunciation because, this didn’t, really.

If you do this, let me also recommend to either go over or at least MENTION the pronounciation of ん, ふ and the “r” sound. Also, though I could be wrong, I think the “k” sound sometimes has a sound that lets air through, like “ksh” instead of the hard k in english, romance languages, etc.?

Think about it. When do you want a newbie to learn exact pronounciation? AS SOON AS POSSIBLE so that they don’t learn bad habits! So even if you don’t want to go over the more “advanced” concepts yet, at least mention them so newbies are aware and can research if they want.

I, personally, would like to hear about ん and the “k” (if true) because I still haven’t found anything that explains it well enough. I don’t want to keep saying things the wrong way, I want to know how to say it right! :grin:

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Zoran says:

This is extremely easy for me and I am not Japanese origin.
I like this lesson , happy for me my native language are pure phonetic クロアチア語 , with no excuse so I have trouble with other west languages.
I love Japanese :nihon:
ゾラン

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wael says:

Japanese Pronunciation
it’s Pronunciation like this
o お ko こ so そ to と no の
in english
or
oh お koh こ soh そ toh と noh の

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Joyce says:

Great lesson!

Now I’ve finally understood Japanese no-stress pronunciation.

Thank you!

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Fire stone says:

:???: why does it sound like japanese has tone like chinese has 4?

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gorillaztin71harumi says:

I think I’m lucky that I’m on trial…
This makes some sense, an I have notes… maybe ill be fine… maybe I’ll need a native speaker, maybe not… you never know…

Also, are the rest of them going to be on basic???? If so, I only will be able to have a free account for nothing. :cry:

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gorillaztin71harumi says:

Sorry, forgot to sign it.

-Harumi^_~

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gorillaztin71harumi says:

Oh, forgot to ask, do you happenTo have a list of them all/chart of them? (Vowels, stand alones, combined, & their kanji/kana) it would be EXTREMELY helpful! Thanks! Domo!

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Jason says:

roll your tongue on the back and say (la) couple of times
and then put your tongue on the front and say (da)
now say la…..da…la…da…la
try to find between those to the (ra)

it works a little when u say
Butter (american accent) the (tt)
is close to the (ra)

thats how i learned to pronounce the r
ra,ri,ru,re,ro…^_°

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Motoko says:

Firestone-san,
Good point :wink:
Actually Japanese language has tone as you mentioned but it is different that of Chinese language.
We basically have high-low and low-high and their conbinations.

harumi-san,
Unfortunately this Lesson notes doesn’t have a chart but you can see it with audio on the page of “hiragana chart” and “Katakana chart” in Reference Materials.

Jason-san,
good :grin:
Da sound is phonetically similar to Japanese ra sound.
I think you have a sensitive ear and tongue :wink:

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wout says:

When you went over genki and said how it means energetic.
It reminded me of how I ussually explain the meaning of genki desu ka,
because genki means energie, your actually asking if that person has a lot of energie and if you have a lot of energie your doing fine.
Would that be a good expanation? Because there are a few people, that are also trying to learn Japanese and sometimes ask me questions so I’m pretty much there senpai. of course i tell them it’s a good idea to go here, because you guys know way more then me.

Now if you want to learn kana i strongly recommend to buy my japanese coach thars how i got it done it has a lot of games and different evaluation methods to test your knowledge of kana and japanese language.
there are a couple of features in the game where you can decide if you want to have your tests in kana or romaji.
hope it’s usefull

mata ne

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Lydia says:

I think it’s too bad that this lesson’s audio is under the basic/premium section. I’m really interested in learning everything I can about Japan and Japanese, but I don’t have even a Basic account because I don’t have any way to pay online. Will the rest of the all about lessons be only for paying members?

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