Vocabulary dictionary

Kanji dictionary

Grammar dictionary

Sentence lookup

test
 

Forums - HIRUGOHAN vs KIRUGOHAN

Top > 日本語を勉強しましょう / Let's study Japanese! > Anything About Japanese



avatar
Level: 163

The hiragana says HIRUGOHAN, but the audio says KIRUGOHAN

I did some investigations but haven't found the latter variant on the web

0
3 years ago
Report Content
avatar
Anonymous123
Level: 1467

For me, the audio says HIRUGOHAN. However, when it comes to listening it is very easy for the mind to play tricks on you (especially on similar sounding or rhyming sounds). If you start to think it sounds like one sound, that's the sound your ears will hear.

Try thinking HIRUGOHAN and play it over and over, and there is a good chance it will start to sound like HIRUGOHAN to you.

0
3 years ago
Report Content
avatar
Level: 163

Are you referring to the first one? I'm talking about the latter, no matter how hard I try I swear it's KI !

0
3 years ago
Report Content
avatar
Anonymous123
Level: 1467

Both sound like HIRUGOHAN to me. But again, you hear what you think. So, if if I think KI, I hear KI, but if I don't, I just hear HI.

0
3 years ago
Report Content
avatar
Level: 163

Are you reallysure? i tri3d turning my volume up a lot but the difference between HI and KI is very noticeable
I think im going crazy

0
3 years ago
Report Content
avatar
Anonymous123
Level: 1467

I'm sure, but maybe it's a Laurel or Yanny thing

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

(I hear Laurel)

1
3 years ago
Report Content
avatar
gillianfaith
Level: 1206

The Japanese H sound in ひ is not the same H sound as in English. The H you're expecting to hear is glottal (pronounced at the back of the throat), but the sound you're hearing is either velar or palatal (pronounced father forward on the roof of the mouth). K is also a velar consonant, so if you're not used to hearing ひ, your brain could be confusing it with a closer sound (the same way that native Japanese speakers have difficulty distinguishing L & R, or non-Canadians hear our "about" as "aboot").

The solution to this is just practice, and as much as possible stopping yourself from leaning on English letters to describe Japanese sounds. It might also help to do some pair drills between ひ & き specifically, so you can train yourself to differentiate better between those two sounds.

2
3 years ago
Report Content
avatar

What @gillianfaith says is all true, but somewhat irrelevant, since we talking about hearing the difference, not making it. It’s about what is happening in your ear more than in your mouth. And the two sounds are incredibly similar: if you can find a spectrogram comparison somewhere out there on the net, you’ll be amazed.

1
3 years ago
Report Content
avatar
Level: 163

Actually, I don't think this is too much of an audio trick to my ears, the HI I thought was KI was actually just a "rougher" version (or version with more hold at the beginning) of the softer HI in the first definition's audio. In other words what I thought was K was probably just a slightly different way of pronouncing H.

0
3 years ago
Report Content
Getting the posts




Top > 日本語を勉強しましょう / Let's study Japanese! > Anything About Japanese


Loading the list
Lv.

Sorry, there was an error on renshuu! If it's OK, please describe what you were doing. This will help us fix the issue.

Characters to show:





Use your mouse or finger to write characters in the box.
■ Katakana ■ Hiragana