Japanese Phonetics Episode 49—LIVE (now with native recordings)!
Added 2018-09-17 05:37:05 +0000 UTCBibliography
Japanese Phonetics Index Page
Good afternoon Patrons! The forty-ninth episode of Japanese Phonetics, now updated with new native recordings, is live! In this lesson we look at the consonants 'b' and 'p', as well as some advanced phonetic phenomena related to these sounds.
If you have any questions or concerns with regards to this lesson, please don't hesitate to leave a comment below. Thank you very much for your continued support, and good luck with your Japanese studies!
Best from Beppu,
Dōgen
Comments
Hi, Gambel. JP here. I discussed your question with Dōgen. He said, “You are correct in assuming that it should be pronounced as B, and Vance talks about this in The Sounds of Japanese. If you are pronouncing it as a V then they’re essentially mixing languages while speaking. Vance talks about this on pages 80 and 81 of The Sounds of Japanese (you can find this in the bibliography here: https://www.patreon.com/posts/17345632). Some people might use it, but it’s not standard, and would probably make people raise eyebrows.” If I can add in my own little anecdote to Dōgen’s reply—years ago I had a classmate with a surname beginning with “Von…”. When translating everyone’s surname to katakana our (native Japanese) teachers intentionally used ヴォン instead of ボン because it more closely fit the pronunciation, but they also emphasized that ヴォ is uncommon and many Japanese people might prefer to use ボ. Hope this helps!
Dogen
2024-10-21 02:16:50 +0000 UTCHi Dogen, sorry if you've answered this before but I can't find it anywhere. Are you aware of what ways one can/should pronounce "v" sounds suck as ヴァ、ヴィ、ヴ、ヴェ、ヴォ? I know the consonant [v] does not occur in standard Japanese so I would think most speakers pronounce the sounds with a [b], but I'm wondering if any speakers (particularly Japanese people who speak a language that DOES have [v]) ever pronounce the sounds with a [v], and if this sounds unnatural or incorrect.
Gambel
2024-10-11 17:39:26 +0000 UTC[p] becoming [ɸ] when slurred is actually the reason that [p] is represented by ぱ and not は. From what I understand, dakuten serves as an indicator that the marked kana should be pronounced voiced. Originally, [p] and [b] followed the same pattern as the rest of the voiced-unvoiced kana pairs; however (from my understanding), because [p] becomes [ɸ] when slurred, the entire は行 row shifted to [ɸ]. Thus, when [p] was reintroduced to the language, it got a "half-voiced mark" (I assume to indicate that it was somewhere between [ɸ] and [b]).
RedAgent14
2020-01-23 18:33:49 +0000 UTCThanks for pointing this out Maksymilian! Updating now.
Dogen
2018-09-26 00:02:29 +0000 UTCHi Dogen. Is there any reason why the index page doesn't list new episodes? The last one on the list is the 43rd episode.
Maksymilian Strzelecki
2018-09-25 21:18:17 +0000 UTCGlad to hear you enjoyed it Simon! Haha I enjoy that bit as well because until that point I’m usually standing and talking in front of the camera for 1~2 hours. Thanks for the continued support!
Dogen
2018-09-20 10:54:26 +0000 UTCAnother great episode, interesting that "p" is so uncommon, I'd never really thought about that before. Also, I love your jaunty walk off screen at the end, I find myself looking forward to it every episode...
tensaimon
2018-09-20 10:02:44 +0000 UTCThank you for pointing that out—it's now fixed!
Dogen
2018-09-17 08:05:52 +0000 UTCHi Dogen. You might want to fix the title as well. The youtube thumbnail currently says Episode 48.
DKierk
2018-09-17 07:50:23 +0000 UTC
