Notes on Pronunciation

Let's have a look at some words that most people are very familiar with; These words are so common they're used in the English Language too. I bet you'll recognise them!

Pay attention to differences in the pronunciation of both the English and Japanese sounds.

English speakers pronounce these words based on English rules but the original pronunciation of these words are quite different in Japanese (Be prepared to get so much hate by westerners who'll say you're wrong when pronouncing these words correctly or refer to you using insults such as weeaboo).

Here are some words to start you off with:

now let's compare the sounds with the English versions to the Japanese (Based on English pronunciation):

Notice that not only did the sound change but also the meaning too:

In English, for example, manga and anime refer to Japanese styles of visual novels and animations (US: comics and cartoons).

In Japanese, manga refers to ALL visual novels (comics) and anime refers to ALL animations (cartoons)! Also, most Japanese people don't even use the word kamikaze.

Now have a look at these words and remember them. Also, try to check out the English Pronunciation and compare it against the Japanese if you can. There is no need to remember the Kana or Kanji just yet. We'll look at that much later.

I should also point out that Romaji is what we call Japanese that is written in English letters instead of Japanese (Roma = Roman | Ji = Characters) and is usually used for integrating foreign (non-Japanese words) into the Japanese language using Katakana. Anime is short for Animation (aka. Cartoon in US).

Also, a Futon is a kind of mattress that you sleep on. They are really super comfortable!

Now, you should understand that it's very important to know how to pronounce words correctly in Japanese so try your best and listen to native speakers. Use these words if you can.

Pitch Accent

Whenever you learn a new word, it is best to do more research on it as you may find many words have different readings and even different meanings based on how they are pronounced.

How do we tell the difference between "ame" and "ame" when spoken? Maybe it's "rain" or maybe it's "sweets". You may say it depends on the context but what if context suggests it could be either?

What you can see above is a representation of pitch on each character. In the first example, "rain" falls in pitch on the last /me/ sound while the example for "sweets" has a raising pitch on the last /me/ sound. You may find some online sites that provide audio clips demonstrating this; a good site is japandict.com. Try out the two words above:

※ For legal reasons as well as hosting restrictions, I cannot provide any audio clips but you should be able to find plenty of resources on other sites.