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!
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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.
6 Responses to “All About #4 - Learn Japanese Pronunciation”
Monday at 6:30 pm
Hello everyone! Pronunciation is an important topic for both beginning and advanced students alike, so we think everyone can learn something from this lesson!
Monday at 10:36 pm
No stress accent, fine. And what about the pitch accent? Do you plan on getting to that one?
Tuesday at 1:07 am
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
Tuesday at 9:26 am
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
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!
Tuesday at 2:06 pm
I know it’s obvious these All About series are pretty introductory and more for newbies (which can include me
), 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. 
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!
Thursday at 11:04 am
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
ゾラン
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