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0 pointsretrac6mo ago0 comments

In the phonetic alphabet it's /e:/ vs. /ei/ and /o:/ vs. /ou/.

If you're an English speaker, you can be forgiven for a very stereotypical trait of the English accent. English speakers have a real hard time with the /e/ or /e:/ sounds as well as the /o/ and /o:/ sounds. Most English dialects don't have either a monophthong /e/ or /o/. Both the long and short tend to get heard as /eɪ/ and /oʊ/.

French enchanté /ɑ̃ ʃɑ̃ te/ is heard and borrowed as /ɑn.ʃɑn.teɪ/. German gehen /ge:n/ is heard as "gain" /geɪn/. And Japanese /o:/ and /ou/ both get heard as /oʊ/.

It's arguably a minimal pair in Japanese: 負う /ou/ (to carry), 王 /o:/ (king).

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8 comments · 1 top-level

Anon10966mo ago· 7 in thread

負う and 王 are both hepburn-romanized as ou though. 方 and 頬 (hou vs hoo) is a better example. I don't really think native speakers still distinguish these.

Feel free to try listening yourself though:

頬, note that it has multiple pronunciations but we only care about hoo: https://forvo.com/word/%E9%A0%AC/#ja

方 https://forvo.com/word/%E6%96%B9%E3%80%80%EF%BC%88%E3%81%BB%...

In some cases though there is still a clear difference in pronunciation for most speakers, ex 塔 vs 遠

uasi6mo ago

> 方 and 頬 (hou vs hoo) is a better example.

As a native Japanese speaker, this example is eye-opening. I hadn't even realized that the u in 方 is pronounced as /o:/ — I believe most Japanese people haven't either, despite unknowingly pronounce it that way.

Also, I have no idea how to Hepburn-romanize 方 vs 頬, 負う vs 王, and 塔 vs 遠. If I had to romanize, I would just write it as whatever the romaji input method understands correctly (hou/hoo, ou/ou, and tou/too, in this case).

kazinator6mo ago

Your comment is astonishing.

If you know the word 方, that it is /ho:/, and you know that it has a う in it when written out, how can you not know that う stands for making the o long? The only vowel is the long o.

Japanese kindergarten kids can recognize hiragana words with "おう", correctly identifying it as /o:/. By the time they learn the 方 kanji they would have seen it written in hiragana upmpteen times, like AよりBのほうがいい and whatnot.

2 more replies

BalinKing6mo ago

Could you elaborate on the last sentence? Wiktionary claims they're pronounced the same modulo pitch accent, but Wiktionary's phonetic transcriptions are (mostly?) auto-generated AFAIK.

uasi6mo ago

塔 can be pronounced as tou, too, or somewhere between the two. It depends on the speaker, speaking style, and possibly dialect. Either way, Japanese speakers rely more on context and pitch accent than actual pronunciation, so it communicates fine.

2 more replies

decimalenough6mo ago

> 負う and 王 are both hepburn-romanized as ou though

No, it's ou vs ō.

_0ffh6mo ago

Oh, I thought the added u and the bar were just two different ways to indicated that the o is stretched (the u looking like a workaround to avoid special characters).

kazinator6mo ago

Nope! Writing 王 as "ou" is "wāpuro rōmaji" or modified Hepburn. Proper Hepburn wants ō. Which cannot be used for 負う.

j / k navigate · click thread line to collapse

0 comments

8 comments · 1 top-level

Anon10966mo ago· 7 in thread

負う and 王 are both hepburn-romanized as ou though. 方 and 頬 (hou vs hoo) is a better example. I don't really think native speakers still distinguish these.

Feel free to try listening yourself though:

頬, note that it has multiple pronunciations but we only care about hoo: https://forvo.com/word/%E9%A0%AC/#ja

方 https://forvo.com/word/%E6%96%B9%E3%80%80%EF%BC%88%E3%81%BB%...

In some cases though there is still a clear difference in pronunciation for most speakers, ex 塔 vs 遠

uasi6mo ago

> 方 and 頬 (hou vs hoo) is a better example.

kazinator6mo ago

Your comment is astonishing.

If you know the word 方, that it is /ho:/, and you know that it has a う in it when written out, how can you not know that う stands for making the o long? The only vowel is the long o.

2 more replies

BalinKing6mo ago

Could you elaborate on the last sentence? Wiktionary claims they're pronounced the same modulo pitch accent, but Wiktionary's phonetic transcriptions are (mostly?) auto-generated AFAIK.

uasi6mo ago

2 more replies

decimalenough6mo ago

> 負う and 王 are both hepburn-romanized as ou though

No, it's ou vs ō.

_0ffh6mo ago

Oh, I thought the added u and the bar were just two different ways to indicated that the o is stretched (the u looking like a workaround to avoid special characters).

kazinator6mo ago

Nope! Writing 王 as "ou" is "wāpuro rōmaji" or modified Hepburn. Proper Hepburn wants ō. Which cannot be used for 負う.

j / k navigate · click thread line to collapse