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Questions tagged [phonetics]

音声学. The physical properties of the sounds of Japanese. Divided into articulatory phonetics (how the sounds are produced physically), auditory phonetics (the physical sounds we're able to hear physically), and acoustic phonetics (the measurement and analysis of the sound waves produced in human speech). Please put phonetic transcriptions in [square brackets].

Phonetics describes the physical properties of a language's sounds. Distinguished from phonology, or "phonemics", which is concerned with the underlying abstract mental representation of sounds.

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Siri's pronunciation of ふ

Recently, I've been using Siri in Japanese to set cooking timers. I've noticed she pronounced the「フ」in「十五分」clearly as /hu/, not /fu/. From Wikipedia: Old Japanese does not have /h/, but rather /ɸ/ (preserved in modern fu, /ɸɯ/), which has been…
katspaugh
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Yet another seemingly unvoiced voiced sound?

In a recent Japanese movie, the leading actor is acting as Uncle Vanya on a stage, saying 「おまえはぼくの人生を踏みにじった」, in which the 「じ」sounds to me very similar to 「し」. I wonder how this sounds to a native speaker and what's happening here: audio…
null
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Pronunciation of words with ん followed by sokuon

How do you pronounce words like 「ごめんってば」 or 「日本人っぽい」?
Axe
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Why isn't the word for triangle トラヤングル?

What's the phonetic difference between toraianguru (トライアングル, the correct word in Japanese) and torayanguru (トラヤングル)? Do they both sound the same and it's purely a matter of orthography, or is there some deeper difference?
user78898868
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Pronunciation of マッハ or シャッフル

How do the Japanese actually pronounce words such as マッハ (Mahha - Mach) or シャッフル (Shaffuru - Shuffle)? I know gemination is a feature of Japanese phonology, but I've only managed to articulate such clusters as /pp/, /kk/, /tt/, /ss/. I'm not sure…
Vun-Hugh Vaw
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How to convert Japanese Kana to IPA phonetics?

I'm a Chinese student interested in Japanese language processing. As far as I know, ususally Japanese Kana can be represented in Romaji letters. But I wonder how can I convert Kana into IPA phonetics? Is there any mapping?
Sophiefy
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How is the あ vowel produced?

I've been reading about the sounds of Japanese and always thought the あ's highest point is shown as in this diagram: Which I learned narrowly can be transcribed like [ɑ̞] (the diagram is taken from here, which my book also shows it as) But reading…
firuvi
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How are unvoiced vowels represented in IPA？

As far as I know, there are some unvoiced vowels in Japanese. For example, when 「す」 is at the end od a sentence, it will sound like [s]. Such process is referred to as 「無声化」. I wonder how to represent these unvoiced vowels in IPA？
Sophiefy
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