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Nihongo (Japanese) is spoken by around 130 million people as a native language and spoken by millions of other people as a secondary language. It belongs to a family of languages called the Japonic languages, composed of Japanese as well as several other minority languages scattered throughout the Japanese archipelago. 

Japanese pronunciation is characterized as having fewer sounds than English, but it still has its own unique sounds which you may have never heard before. For your first lesson, you will learn about the vowels. Vowels are sounds like "ah" and "eh," but every language--including Japanese--will have its own quirks to them. 

The purpose of covering pronunciation before basic phrases is simple: so that what you do learn will be understood by native speakers. Having said this, however, over the course of the next two lessons, you will still be exposed to a significant amount of basic vocabulary to form a solid mental word bank to work with once you start learning sentence structures.

In fact, learning phrases out of context in Japanese is not a smart idea. As you will find out, Japanese takes into account many factors such as age, gender, relation between speakers when using even the most basic phrases. And so, unless your first language similarly takes into account these distinctions, you're better off taking the time to learn how the language works step-by-step. 

■Front/Back Mid-Vowels　　前舌・後舌中母音

The Japanese /o/ is also made with the tongue midway in the mouth.  The difference between /e/ and /o/ is where the highest point of the tongue is positioned. For /e/, it's at the front of the mouth, but for /o/, it's at the back of the mouth. 

■/o/ vs /oo/　「オ」と「オー」の区別

Don't pronounce /o/ just like the word "oh." Unless you are dealing with an actual long vowel, Japanese vowels remain crisp, and even when they are doubled in length, each part is treated as a separate syllable; thus, "oo" = "oh-oh."

As has been emphasized, Japanese distinguishes between short vowels and long vowels. Short vowels count as one syllable whereas long vowels count as two syllables. To conceptualize this, view each syllable as one clap. Each clap corresponds to one syllable. Each clap is equal in length, which means vowel length is uniform regardless of how fast the speaker is talking. 

■The Mora 　「拍」の概念

When syllables are described as being equal in length in relation to one another, they may also be called morae, which is synonymous to the concept of viewing iterations as separate beats/claps. 

 ※Again, "oo" should never be pronounced as a long "u" sound. /oo/ is always a long o. 

■Macron Use　　長音記号の使用

When romanizing Japanese text, a macron may be used to indicate a long vowel. So long as you have grasped Japanese syllable construction, you are free to do this. However, to prepare you for Japanese writing, this practice will be avoided for the time being.  

■Final /n/　撥音

Obasan is four morae and obaasan is five morae is because the final "n" is treated as a separate mora. There are only three valid syllablic/moraic structures in Japanese: vowel (V), consonant + vowel (CV), and consonant (C). We'll learn more about this in Lesson 2.

Pronouncing long vowels is mostly straightforward. However, there are three special spelling conventions that confuse learners. 

■"ee" vs. "ei"　「エー」と「エイ」の区別

"ee" is always equivalent to /ee/. Not that many words are spelled this way, but those with it are of native* origin (rare) or loanwords (common). Ex. "oneesan" (older sister). 

The Standard Japanese pronunciation of "ei" is not so set in stone. Pronouncing it as "eh + ee" is always "correct," but so long as the vowels don't cross a word boundary*, "e" is usually pronounced as /ee/. For example, the word for clock is "tokei," but it's usually pronounced as "tokee."However, in certain dialects, singing, and careful speech, /ei/ is the preferred pronunciation. 

※Native vocabulary with /ei/ never exhibit the /ee/ pronunciation. Exs.: ei (stingray), hei (wall/fence), etc.

Though it is correct to pronounce "ei" as it is spelled, it is not suggested for native English speakers because they are very likely to pronounce as a diphthong. A diphthong is what's called a "gliding vowel" in which two adjacent vowel sounds combine to form a single syllable. The syllables/morae of Japanese don't allow for diphthongs, and so fusing the "e" and "i" together entirely into a diphthong would sound unnatural. 

※Japanese words largely come from three distinct sources: the 'native' original words of the language, loanwords from modern foreign languages, or Sino-Japanese words (words from Chinese roots). 

Words with /ee/ 

Words with /ee/ or /ei/

※Out of brevity and to not make spelling any more confusing than it has to be, the alternate/standard /ee/ pronunciation is understood from the "ei" spelling. 

■"oo" vs. "ou"　「オー」と「オウ」の区別

"oo" is always pronounced as /oo/, but "ou" may correspond to /oo/" or /ou/ depending on the word. Until you are more comfortable with Japanese, this may be difficult to comprehend, but there are several scenarios that can help you determine which is which. 

Words written with "oo" are always either native or from loanwords. Words that are written with "ou" but are in fact pronounced as /oo/ are almost entirely Sino-Japanese words (of Chinese origin). So long as "ou" constitutes the end of a verb, it is safe to say that it is pronounced as /oo/. However, if it is at the end of the verb, it will be pronounced as /ou/. If it is isn't a verb but is in fact native in origin, then /oo/ will be the correct pronunciation.

Words Spelled and Pronounced as /oo/

Words Spelled and Pronounced as /ou/

※Some words such as tou are often pronounced with /oo/ instead of /ou/, which is a relic from older speech.

Words Spelled as "Ou" but Pronounced as /oo/

※Of these words, douzo and otousan are of native origin, but the rest are Sino-Japanese words.

■/ou/ across Word Boundaries　単語を跨ぐ「オウ」

Another case in which "ou" is pronounced as /ou/ rather than /oo/ is when the vowels cross a word boundary. For instance, ko'ushi (calf) and koushi (lecturer) are great examples of this.  Each word happens to be composed of two parts, but the breakup of those parts is not the same. "Calf" is literally composed of ko- (small) and ushi (cow) whereas "lecturer" is composed of kou (Chinese root meaning "lecture") and shi (Chinese root meaning "expert"). 

Perhaps the most irregular spelling regarding vowel pronunciation, it just so happens that iu, the verb for "to say," is not pronounced as /iu/. Rather, it is pronounced as /yuu/. However, in all other instances in Japanese in which these two vowels are juxtaposed next to each other, they are pronounced normally. Nonetheless, iu is an extremely frequently used word, and so it is important to not forget that its pronunciation is special.

The most defining difference between Japanese and English accents is that Japanese is said to have a pitch-accent system whereas English has a stress-accent system. Rather than placing more stress on one syllable than another like in English, a word can have one of its morae bearing an accent, or not at all. An accented mora will have a relatively high tone which is then followed by a drop in pitch on the next mora. 

This may sound simple enough, but that does mean a learner will have to learn where the accented morae are in any given phrase. Of course, there are rules that govern where accents go, but these rules are all relative to knowing the basic accent pattern of each word. Although other dialects have different pitch-accent systems, for the purpose of studying Japanese as a foreign language, the ability to master Standard Japanese pitch accent will greatly improve your fluency and ability to be understood by others.

The Four Patterns of Japanese Pitch Accent

There are three locations in which an accent may fall on a word, and there are words which have no accent at all, resulting in four patterns to the pitch-accents system.

1.  Accent is on the first mora. The pitch starts high then drops on the next mora, leveling out. 
2. Accent is in the middle of a word. The pitch rises, reaches a maximum at the accented mora(e), then drops. 
3. Accent is on the last mora. If anything is attached to the word, the pitch will fall accordingly. 
4. There is no accented mora. If anything is attached to the word, the pitch does not fall. 
   
   

English speakers often place the accent of any word on the first mora. However, half of all Japanese words are actually accent-less, meaning that the pitch starts off low and then remains high. Though most words that are 1-2 mora(e) long do happen to follow Pattern 1, it really is a coin toss as to which mora has the accent. 

Nonetheless, pitch distinctions are made. To visualize this, let's look at a handful of words which differ only by which pitch pattern they exhibit. 

In Standard Japanese, the vowels /i/ and /u/ often become voiceless (devoiced) when placed between or after  the consonants /k/, /s/, /t/, and /p/. These vowels become essentially silent, but the syllable the vowel is located is still pronounced separately, or is at least perceived as so. This sound change occurs in so many words that you can't go one sentence from a Tokyo native without hearing it.  For example, in the world kutsu (shoes), the accent is on the second /u/ and the first /u/ is devoiced. 

In the examples below, the devoiced vowel is in bold. 

※Aside from only occurring with the consonants mentioned above, devoicing usually doesn't happen more than once in a word, but it may also occur more the faster one talks. Devoicing is also avoided but not entirely ruled out if the pitch of the syllable is high (or accented) and nonexistent in single-mora words.

In this lesson, you not only learned about /a/, /i/, /u/, /e/, and /o/, you learned about how exactly each vowel sounds and several other principles of Japanese pronunciation. Short and long vowel distinctions are so crucial, even with the most basic vocabulary. Knowing what might cause you to sound like an English speaker in Japanese, and knowing how pitch accent can help you sound more Japanese, will all go a long way to making sure you are understood from the beginning.

If you thought that not much Japanese was learned in this lesson, almost all the words in this lesson, minus the showcasing of extreme homophones, appear in the JLPT N5, which is the elementary proficiency test for Japanese. If you were to memorize just the commonly used words, you would already know several dozen words, not including the Japanese loanwords that coincidentally exist in English and all the loanwords from English in Japanese that you may recognize. 

Now, let's begin learning about consonants!