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The article is better than I thought it would be (I typically don't have my hopes high) but it does skip over something in the pronunciation section: silent let

The article is better than I thought it would be (I typically don't have my hopes high) but it does skip over something in the pronunciation section: silent letters. When reading Japanese, sometimes the "u" is, or can be, silent in the word. Most common times (but not the only) you'll see this is for words like "desu" and "masu". The "u" is usually not spoken or sounded out. So spoken, it would sound like "Des" or "Mas". But you can see it silent in other words, like daigaku or eikoku. Now I'm not a linguistic or Japanese expert so they may not use "silent" to describe not voicing the letter/vowel, but my point is that the article doesn't mention this. And given how often "desu" and "masu" are used by beginners, I'd include that in beginning for an introduction to Japanese.

bajsejohannes 10y ago
It does talk about that: https://pomax.github.io/nrGrammar/#section-1-1-3-1-Not_pronouncing_Japanese https://pomax.github.io/nrGrammar/#section-1-1-3-1-Not_prono...
gizmo686 10y ago
I'm not a trained linguist, but I do have an amature interest in the subject, and have studied Japanese from both a second language, and a linguistic perspective. The basic building block of English phonetics is the syllable. In Japanese, it is the mora. If you are fammilar with the Japanese writing system, to a first approximation, each phonetic character maps to a single mora [0]. A mora comes in three forms: 1) (C)V - A vowel, optionally preceeded by a consonant (almost all phonetic characters, and compounds like しゃ) 2) The first part of a long consonant. (little っ). 3) Syllable-final nassal /n/ (ん). Although moras map closely to the writing system, their classification is based on an analysis of spoken japanese (including word games and common mistakes by native speakers). The relevent piece of this is that there is no way to express "des" in terms of moras/. Instead, we view is as "de-su" with a devoiced vowel. Devoicing is not common in all dialects of Japanese. In the dialects where it is common, a native speaker would recognize the voiced and de-voiced variations as being different ways of pronouncing the same thing. In dialects where devoicing occurs, there are well understood rules for predicting when it will occur. The particular rule prediciting desu and masu is that high vowels (い/i as in igloo, う/u as in goose) are devoiced when they are word ending and follow a voiceless consonant [1]. [0] Compounds like しゃ are still a single mora, but little っ is its own mora. [1] A voiceless consonant is one that is made without vibrating the vocal chords. This is the difference between, for example, ka/か and ga/が.

bajsejohannes 10y ago

It does talk about that: https://pomax.github.io/nrGrammar/#section-1-1-3-1-Not_pronouncing_Japanese https://pomax.github.io/nrGrammar/#section-1-1-3-1-Not_prono...

gizmo686 10y ago

I'm not a trained linguist, but I do have an amature interest in the subject, and have studied Japanese from both a second language, and a linguistic perspective. The basic building block of English phonetics is the syllable. In Japanese, it is the mora. If you are fammilar with the Japanese writing system, to a first approximation, each phonetic character maps to a single mora [0]. A mora comes in three forms: 1) (C)V - A vowel, optionally preceeded by a consonant (almost all phonetic characters, and compounds like しゃ) 2) The first part of a long consonant. (little っ). 3) Syllable-final nassal /n/ (ん). Although moras map closely to the writing system, their classification is based on an analysis of spoken japanese (including word games and common mistakes by native speakers). The relevent piece of this is that there is no way to express "des" in terms of moras/. Instead, we view is as "de-su" with a devoiced vowel. Devoicing is not common in all dialects of Japanese. In the dialects where it is common, a native speaker would recognize the voiced and de-voiced variations as being different ways of pronouncing the same thing. In dialects where devoicing occurs, there are well understood rules for predicting when it will occur. The particular rule prediciting desu and masu is that high vowels (い/i as in igloo, う/u as in goose) are devoiced when they are word ending and follow a voiceless consonant [1]. [0] Compounds like しゃ are still a single mora, but little っ is its own mora. [1] A voiceless consonant is one that is made without vibrating the vocal chords. This is the difference between, for example, ka/か and ga/が.