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Post by ambulocetus on Nov 6, 2022 20:27:39 GMT
One time I dragged a friend of mine down to Mazon Creek to look for fossils. We stopped in a diner and chatted with the waitress a bit. We told her we were going to Mazon Creek, and she said "it's pretty long drive from Chicago, isn't it." We were astonished how she knew where we came from, and asked her how she knew. She told us that if we were locals, we would have pronounced it mah-ZONE Creek, b ut since we pronounced it MAY-zon Creek, she knew we weren't from around there. So if I ever go back, I will try to remember to pronounce it correctly, but if I'm talking to a scientist or a museum curator or a librarian I will pronounce it the way I originally did, because that's the way they pronounce it, and I want them to know what I'm talking about. So it's great to know the correct way, but it's also good to be understood. The reason we talk is to communicate, and if the people you are communicating with don't know the words you are using, at best they might not understand you, and at worst they might think you're being pretentious.
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Post by peterm1 on Feb 6, 2023 8:38:51 GMT
Here is the official word:
"Why do Japanese drop the u sound? An allophone is a phoneme, or discrete sound, that is pronounced differently when put next to other sounds. In Japanese, the sounds romanized as i and u are devoiced - not pronounced - when they're either between voiceless sounds or when a voiceless sound comes before them at the end of an utterance."
and elaborating on that-
".............What are the rules regarding "mute vowels" ("u" after "s" and "i" after "sh")?
When you first begin to learn Japanese you are taught that Japanese has no stress and each syllable should be pronounced equally.
You also learn that certain vowels are not pronounced, or only pronounced very slightly, such as the "u" in "desu" and the "i" in "deshita".
But it seems that sometimes these vowels are pronounced if they occur in the first syllable of a word such as "sugoi", "subarashii", "shiro", "shimbun"."
Apparently the technical term is "Vowel devoicing".
This sounds consistent with what I had been told - that in Japanese, barring the kind of exceptions mentioned above, the U sound is often under pronounced (devoiced). It is not necessarily wholly silent but if you listen closely and are attentive, there can be a hint of it in the relevant word.
You will often see this in some Japanese names -female names Setsuko and Ritsuko are pronounced something like "Setsko" and "Ritsko" respectively.
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