Pronouncing Japanese Correctly
Posted: March 10, 2010 | Author: Doug | Filed under: Japanese | 6 Comments »Recently, after a revealing conversation from my wife about my own language skills, I decided to work more on my pronunciation after she described my accent as “strong”. The problem seems to be twofold:
- I tend to stress the second syllable of words, whereas Japanese tends to not stress syllables at all (sounds flat). You say the place Yokohama very even and flat like yo-ko-ha-ma, not yo-ko-HA-ma, if that makes sense. Or the girl’s name Masako: I tend to say ma-SA-ko, not ma-sa-ko as it should be.
- Related to this, I do not pronounce particles smoothly. It seems in Japanese that particles get tagged at the end of the previous word whereas I tend to overemphasize them. Example, one could say 一時に会おう (let’s meet at 1:00) as ichijini aou but I say more like ichiji NI aou which works if you’re trying to emphasize something, but not all the time.
- My actual pronunciation of things is a little funny too. My wife teases me when I say tsumetai (cold) as it sounds more like chumetai since I struggle to pronounce つ (tsu) correctly.
Trouble is, I actually really don’t know how to pronounce Japanese correctly, despite years of study and listening to podcasts and such. I can approximate fine, but clearly not close enough. Long ago,1 when I was sixteen I first began learning Japanese by self-study, and I remember a good mnemonic for the vowels: Ah, we soon get old. This nicely approximates the Japanese vowels あ(a) い(i) う(u) え(e) お(o), but as time passed, I haven’t revisited the subject in a long time.2
Recently, while traversing the web, I found a nice article written by a fellow Japanese student on pronunciation, which taught me some things:
- The ‘u’ sound is more like a German ü sound (the only thing I remember from 2 years of high-school German).
- American-English ‘o’ is kind of lazy, while the Japanese ‘o’ sound is more strict (eluded to mnemonic too above).
- Section on “Ta, chi, tsu, te, to” is quite helpful too.
Now comes the hard part: putting this into practice.
Since I’ve been reading Japanese manga more lately, I decided to try and read it aloud, slowly, and really focus on pronouncing it right. If I am slow and pay attention I can do this, but I am use to speaking Japanese at a reasonably normal speed so when I lapse into normal speed, my pronunciation goes bad again. So, it requires a lot of practice and self-discipline until the correct pronunciation can reach normal speed.
And it really matters too. I’ve met people who understand English very well, but speak it poorly, so people assume they know less English than they actually do. Same with Japanese, or any language: if you pronounce it well, people will be more willing to talk to you, and get a good impression of your conversation skills, so it helps to really shore this up. It’s not enough to live in that country and know the language, it requires a certain amount of practice and care to get it right, and that’s what I am struggling to do now.
Wish I had thought to do this years ago before bad habits set in. Time will tell. :-/
1 Or as we said in the olden days “many moons ago”. Back in those days, wireless Internet worked by banging animal bones loudly on a log to make 1′s and 0′s, but we liked it that way, even with the terrible reception.
2 So long, that I voted for the Bull Moose Party! I’m here all night, folks. 
Hello, this blog is about my life as a father, Buddhist and Japanophile. Any useful information I can pass along will hopefully make the 
I think English is much more tolerant of accents. Mostly due to more phonemes and partly due to multi-culturalism and the diversity of people speaking English. I wouldn’t correct an American accent or Japanese accented English just because it’s sounds different from what I’m used to. Indeed I find Japanese speaking with English (American, Scottish etc.) accents a bit strange. Mind you I find Indian accented English difficult at times.
Japanese having less sounds is much less tolerant of differing accent and I dare say that because there is such a small percentage of non-native speakers Japanese are not used to trying to deal with this.
Anyhow. I found that it’s hard to correct your accent. Mostly because you can’t hear it. I think you need to record yourself and compare it to a model recording. I’ve even seen applications where you try to match waveforms (in a similar way to how deaf people are taught an accent)
Written explanations of pronunciation just seem too vague and imprecise to me.
I think I tend to mix stress into elongated vowels いえ、おう etc. I also think regardless I’m going to have a strange furrin accent.
My experience with Japanese is a little different. At least with my family and Japan and my sister-in-law, the “u” sounds more like the Vietnamese ư, with the mouth open. This very different from the German ü, with rounded lips. But my perception is biased towards the way the people I know speak!
The issue with stress is a pernicious one—but at least you’ve identified it correctly! Many people have the same issue trying to learn Vietnamese, another language without stress. Turns out this is where poetry and music/lyrics can be particularly useful. For example, quintessentially English poetry like the limerick relies on a metric frame that would sound absurd in Vietnamese or Japanese precisely because these languages have no stress. Likewise, the Vietnamese luc-bat structure makes no sense in English because we don’t tie specific tonal melodies to each word. But reading Vietnamese poetry, speaking it out loud and writing poems in line with classical structures helps non-native speakers get a sense of the rhythm that otherwise eludes them. I wonder if spending more time exploring Japanese poetry might be likewise helpful.
Hi guys, great feedback:
Robert: “I think you need to record yourself and compare it to a model recording.” Or have a wife who’s kind of strict about your pronunciation.
My wife does a good impersonation of Americans speaking Japanese, and I’ve seen TV shows where they poke fun at American-sounding Japanese, so I have a reasonably good idea what I am doing wrong, but I have to really consciously restrain myself not to do it.
One other suggestion my wife had was just listen to lots, and lots of Japanese, as the constant exposure to correct Japanese might influence how I speak it. Too soon to tell if it’s working or not.
Arunlikhati: Having studied college Vietnamese, I actually know exactly what you mean by the letter ư. My teacher had described it as saying “oo” while smiling, which seems to work, and does sound like Japanese ‘u’ now that you mention it.
Good point about Vietnamese, similar stress as in English could not exist due to the shorter, mono-syllabic words, but I hadnt’ thought about the poetry aspect either.
My wife has shown me how classical Heian-era Japanese poetry sounds like and as you correctly stated, there is a sound and flow to it quite foreign to English poetry (was going to post about it one of these days if I can get a sound-clip). That’s a very interesting idea, and worth a try.
‘Chumetai’– how cute, that’s baby talk! Yeah, little kids have trouble with that sound too. Typical example: (adult): ‘Boku-chan, ikutsu desuka?’ (kid): ‘Futachu.’
When I studied ESL teaching, we had an analysis of English vowels in terms of mouth shape and degree of jaw opening. But my observation of Japanese is that they move the lips and jaw very little. They can do A I U E O without moving much at all. I guess its all in the tongue and throat. Parodies of foreigner Japanese usually have exaggerated vowels.
I like the idea of poetry and songs. I have studied singing of traditional music (nagauta). But I find that some other tasks, like speaking extemporaneously in front of a group, may take so much processing power that pronunciation gets degraded. *Sigh*
Hi John,
When I studied ESL teaching, we had an analysis of English vowels in terms of mouth shape and degree of jaw opening. But my observation of Japanese is that they move the lips and jaw very little.
I noticed this too! When I speak “better” Japanese, I have to physically restraint my mouth not to enunciate so much, but I can see it work in how my wife and others respond to my Japanese better. Hard to do without actively concentrating though.
Parodies of foreigner Japanese usually have exaggerated vowels.
Yup, seen that too. Mecha-ike did a good sketch where they really did a good impersonation of a foreigner introducing himself: watashi wa NE, HaraNIshi-san desu
I like the idea of poetry and songs. I have studied singing of traditional music (nagauta). But I find that some other tasks, like speaking extemporaneously in front of a group, may take so much processing power that pronunciation gets degraded. *Sigh*
In college, my Vietnamese teacher was very strict with pronunciation. We had to give a lecture in Vietnamese on the topic of the week each week, and if we made mistakes, she made us do it over. I usually did ok (expect the difference in Vietnamese between “t” and “đ” which I struggled with), but people who were less comfortable speaking in front of a group, using a foreign language, choked.
All the same, when I studied in Vietnam, I was real, real glad I had learned better pronunciation in school, compared to other exchange students.
Something that works for me is to consciously speak Japanese in the back of your throat. English is spoken at the front of the mouth while Japanese tends to be almost swallowed, especially the way men speak it. Practicing speaking it from the back of my mouth seemed to help. When I feel myself slipping into an American accent I switch it to the back.