Hi everyone,got a doubt about the pronunciation of 原因
Until today I would have pronounced it like "げにん" but after hearing the pronounciation during the quizzing,it sounded more like "ゲーイン" so like extending the げ sound & not pronouncing the ん .
Is this the way it works or my ear fooled me?
I personally have heard it the same way I hear people say 千円 - the first ん is softened a lot to make it easier to connect the two vowel sounds on either side of it. But I would love to hear how other people hear it.
Oh man, the first time I saw 雰囲気 written in hiragana (had only seen it in kanji up until that point), I flipped out, thinking I had mispronounced it by mishearing others for years.
thanks everyone for the informations,this could sound paradoxal but this "ease of pronunciation" it actually make the word LOT harder to pronounce for me :))
Also people will still understand me if I would pronounce it with the ん? Or is just a thing noone does?
People will always understand you if you say something like it's written. Personally I say 雰囲気 with pronunciation of the ん. Basically I say it as ふん・いき. I also say 全員 as ぜん・いん.
It is very common for native speakers to sound like they're dropping a syllable here and there but oftentimes they are not. In French if I say "je ne sais pas" it sounds like "je sais pas" but I am actually pronouncing the "ne". It's just very subtle.
I always say to pronounce things as it's written. It'll make you more articulate and a better speaker.
Err - be careful with "always" statements :).
Examples, です and すき. すき is usually pronounced ski (with maybe a tiiiiny 'u'), and です is usually pronounced 'des' unless a)it's in a song (you hear more articulate pronunciation - I presume to help with the length/rhythm of lyrics), or b)talking on the phone (this might just be a Northern Japan thing, but I have heard it in multiple prefectures: they REALLY stress the す on the end of です.
Pronouncing it the way it is written only works if you understand that the 'rules' are not as strict as you might presume. I would argue that you would not sound more articulate and a better speaker - you would sound unnatural. You've also got stress issues (compare はし (chopsticks) and はし (the bridge)) that are not represented in the writing system.
So yea, some are contractions, and you are going to be 100% fine regardless of which way you say it. Some of them do indeed have variations due to stress or situational use that you're going to miss out on if you assume that (for example) す is always going to be す/su.
I think I still stand by my comment in terms of seeing things written in text.
If someone asked how to read "don't you" knowing that they've heard "don'tcha" I'd tell them to read it as is and to go for the more formal version. Particularly as a beginner. With practice, you learn the "rules" and stresses as you mentioned and you can add in your personal flare.
I think this allows you to create good habits at the beginning. For example words like 旅行 with the extended う. By emphasizing the おう sound, you are creating a good habit for your spelling and pronunciation. Later you can shorten your emphasis of the おう sound as your speed increases, but at the beginning, pronounce it how it is and should be.
I have to agree with マイコー on this one. As a Japanese teacher, one of the things I stress *most* in my classes is proper pronunciation and accent. In your example, someone reading 'don't you,' there is a difference between reading the word as it is on the page and the colloquies used in speech. "Don't you" and "don'tcha" are written differently (and even if you don't go to the extreme, 'don't ya' is a perfectly acceptable written version pronounced closer to the latter than the former). I feel that it is important to learn both 'written' or 'formal' speech as well as the casual, and learning how words are pronounced in everyday speech *by native speakers* is a key in language learning. If someone says Ha-ji-me-ma-shi-te, yo-ro-shi-ku o-ne-ga-i-shi-ma-su, pronouncing every kana as it seems, they will never sound fluent no matter how much they've studied; however, a beginner who knows to pronounce it more like ha-ji-me-ma-shte, yo-ro-shk(u) o-ne-gai-shmas will sound much more natural. These are habits to get into right from the get-go, before bad pronunciation habits sink in. I had a classmate in 300- and 400-level Japanese classes who still spoke very woodenly like my first example, and it was completely jarring to hear him speak. When he went to Japan, no matter what he was saying, people always assumed he didn't speak Japanese. In my mind, this is not the goal of learning a language!
I don't risk that,cause I always try to imitate the pronunciation >:D (also very easy when it comes down to drop stuff,like in です or います)
Though,for this kind of word the first times I stick with "げんいん" as is written,to make sure I am clearly memorizing there is an ん in there & avoiding mistakenly ending up learning it as げいん,then the next times I try to imitate the pronunciation renshuu gave, to sound like a japanese speaker,problem is that making that soft ん is very difficult for me,probably because of the way I usually pronounce ん,wich I make very similar to our (italian) N,though while striving for imitating the japanese pronounce I can really tell they are 2 different kind of N. So maybe I just have to get a better grasp on their way to pronounce the ん,even if doesn't come really easy, in my opinion trying to stick with "ゲーイン" & trying to put a bit of ん sound in that "ー" could be a starting point ;D
When it comes to reading, if you strengthen the connection between the kanji and the kana, you'll be much more likely to remember that 原 is げん. Otherwise, as you pointed out, you are just studying a string of kana characters that are all liken up (in this case, 4 kana). If you've got the kanji sounds, there are then only two reasons (げん and いん). Hope this helps!
Yes it help,though it is a thing that my brain figures out indirectly through seeing the same kanji over and over used in different words and the comparing all this compounds to each others to check what pronunciation words with same kanji have in common,so I end up knowing the different ways to pronunce a kanji,even if I can't tell you wich one is On and wich one is Kun.
I attempted once to first learn the kanji with On and Kun pronunciation,but that way didn't worked out well for me because they are only sounds associated just at the image of the kanji & I ended up more than once mixing things up,instead learning first the words is way easier for me because I got to associate the pronunciation of those kanji to the images or feelings or actual meanings of that word and call them back later when I meet that kanji again is really easy.
