It’s absolutely fine and even expected that you’d say this word as “sen-pai,” just as it’s written. But remember-since N is the only singular letter, even if it sounds like M, it must be N. You may occasionally hear the N sound change to M in front of certain other sounds (like M or P sounds). It sounds like a regular old N…most of the time. N is special, because it’s the only Japanese character that is a single letter. That’s how you start out the Japanese character tsu! #2 N Imagine describing the sound of water hitting a hot stove. It doesn’t take any extra time-if you’re saying “tuh-soo-nah-mee,” you’ve gone too far. Try sneaking a little T sound in right before you say the S. That’s quite close, but the Japanese character tsu (つ) has a T at the beginning for a reason! And if you’re anything like most people, you probably pronounce it “soo-nah-mee.” You’re likely familiar with the word tsunami (the big tidal wave caused by an earthquake). 2 Tricky Japanese Sounds: Tsu And N #1 Tsu There are two Japanese sounds that require special attention. Simple! Once you’ve learned those, you can say almost every sound Japanese can ever produce:Įasy, right? But wait-you can say almost every sound in Japanese now? What are these mysterious others that don’t fit into what we’ve already covered? However, there are still the same five, and you always say them like this: You may notice that in Japanese, these vowels are written in a different order: A, I U, E, O. The vowels in Japanese are the same as they are in English: A, E, I, O, U. If you’re ready to get started, click here for a 7-day FREE trial. With Japanese Uncovered you’ll use my unique StoryLearning® method to learn Japanese naturally through story… not rules. Plus I'll share some secrets to make you sound more like a native speaker.īy the way, if you want to learn Japanese fast and have fun while doing it, my top recommendation is Japanese Uncovered which teaches you through StoryLearning®. That means that if you learn just the vowels, you will have already learned 95% of all sounds any Japanese words can ever make.īy the end of this article, you'll know how to pronounce the vowels. With the exception of “n,” which I'll discuss later, all Japanese characters end in a vowel. You may be pleased to know that when I mentioned “consistent and predictable” above, I meant that Japanese is made of “letters” (characters) that always sound the same. In comparison to Japanese’s simple rules, English is just nonsense! So if you’re reading this in English right now, you’ve already tackled a project much, much harder than Japanese pronunciation. Good news, though-Japanese pronunciation has rules that make it: So perfecting your Japanese pronunciation is a key part of Japanese fluency. Well, mastering Japanese pronunciation will make you: If you're learning Japanese and thought you could skip out on Japanese pronunciation, you've got another thing coming!Įven if you never plan to speak to another person in Japanese for your entire life, learning the proper pronunciation of Japanese sounds is crucial to your overall Japanese fluency.
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