15 docs tagged with "phonology"

Difficult Japanese sounds by native language, sorted: English, Mandarin, Korean, Spanish, Vietnamese L1 pitfalls, what transfers, what to drill first.

Japanese geminate consonants in plain phonology: the /Q/ mora, which consonants can double, audible vs silent holds (kk, tt, pp, ss), and the L1 error fix.

How to pronounce つ (tsu) in Japanese: the voiceless alveolar affricate [ts], why English drops the t in tsunami, and the three common learner substitutions.

How to pronounce ふ (fu) in Japanese: the voiceless bilabial fricative [ɸ], the lips-only articulation, the candle-blow drill, and the English-F fix.

Japanese pronunciation drills, sorted: a 5-minute daily protocol with minimal pairs, mora taps, short-passage shadowing, and a record-and-compare loop.

Japanese vowel devoicing: why the i and u in です, ます, and した go silent between voiceless consonants, and why Kansai speakers keep them voiced.

Japanese long vs short vowels, sorted: why おばさん and おばあさん mean different things, how to count morae for length, and why English ears miss it.

Mora vs syllable in Japanese, sorted: the kana-equals-beat rule, the four mora types, why 東京 is 4 morae but 2 syllables, and how to count any word.

Rendaku in Japanese, sorted: the k to g, s to z, t to d, h to b voicing shifts, Lyman's Law (yamakaze not yamagaze), and the wago vs kango split.

Japanese stress vs pitch accent, sorted: why Japanese has no stress, the four cues English bundles, schwa reduction, and the flatten-first habit for learners.

Japanese consonant inventory in IPA: the ~15 core phonemes, how they map to the kana chart, and the allophony behind し, ち, つ, ふ, and ひ, with full IPA tables.

Japanese vowel inventory in IPA: the five vowels /a i ɯ e o/, why う is compressed not rounded, and phonemic length pairs like おじさん vs おじいさん, drilled.

Japanese ら-row pronunciation, sorted: the alveolar tap [ɾ] behind ら り る れ ろ, why it is neither English R nor L, articulation steps, and L1 fixes.

Japanese moraic nasal ん in plain phonology: the five allophones (m, n, ŋ, ɲ, nasalized vowel / ɴ), why romaji hides them, and the L1-English error fix.

Why Tokyo is four morae in Japanese but two syllables in English, worked through karaoke, Pokemon, judo, plus a three-drill protocol to retrain your timing.