Green Tea Forum

spacesamurai · 2nd Degree Black Belt Joined: 02 Feb 2007 Posts: 204

My first question is how to pronounce words that contain "ai" like hai or gomen nasai. When I here it, it sounds like I, but the book I'm using sounds it out like ah-ee. Do the Japanese just say it fast, so it sounds like I, or, or what?

The next question is about the verb desu. When it is used at the end of a sentence, is it pronounced dehs, or deh-soo. I think I remember reading something about dropping the u if its at the end, and I think I hear dehs when I watch films, but again the book spells it out as deh-soo. Which is it.

Maybe I need a new book. It's Japanese for Dummies, so I felt it applied.

Thank you.

It sucks living in Texas, there are no Japanese to be found. There is one guy at work, but apparantly he was born here, and I speak more Japanese than he does.

Kevangogh · Forum God Joined: 19 Jul 2005 Posts: 928 Location: Japan

The "ai" sound sounds just like when you say "hi!"

"desu" sounds like "desk" without the "k" at the end. The "u" is barely if at all perceptable.

If you are going to study Japanese, I must say that before you really get into it make sure to get the pronunciations down (which it appears you are doing) in the beginning. Pronunciation first and formost, before you learn anything else. Although it is one of the worlds hardest languages to master (because it is so cultural and set up so differntly from English, French, etc), from a pronunciation point of view it is rather easy. That said, I have aquaintances who can speak pretty mean Japanese but have terrible pronunciantion because they didn't learn that right at the beginning and it's now a bad habit.

When I first started 25 years ago, I was in the Navy and bought "Living Languange" tapes on my way to Japan. The pronunciation section of that is worth the money, I'm still thankful I ran into that course for that alone. The rest of the course is more like survival Japanese.

spacesamurai · 2nd Degree Black Belt Joined: 02 Feb 2007 Posts: 204

Thanks for the help. I'm glad you are available, as I have no one else to ask. I'm trying to learn how to speak it first, grammar, sentence structure, and pronunciation, as I figure my vocabulary will grow over time. I've been relying heavily on anime and movies to learn how to hear and understand Japanese.

Do you have any other suggestions?

Kevangogh · Forum God Joined: 19 Jul 2005 Posts: 928 Location: Japan

Anime and manga are full of slang; it can be hard to follow. My first 2 yeas of college Japanese classes were mostly full of kids wanting to understand manga. Most of them dropped out by year 3 as manga is actually quite advanced Japanese.

Japanese was my second language, French is my third. When you learn French after spending half your life with Japanese, you realize how close French and English are to each other and how different Japanese really is. It's basically a different thought process. You cannot really directly translate most things from Japanese to English; you have to learn in English "how" they might say something equivalent. "I have a book" - there is no word in Japanese for "have", it's "hold." If you say "I have to go", it's a completely different verb. The verb "go" is put into a different format; there is no use of "have", etc. In French you can use "have" exactly like you do in English. So one way to learn Japanese is to first figure out how they would word it in English first, and then translate the actual words. Not sure if that makes sense.

If you want to learn how to speak Japanese real quick, correctly, and efficiently (minus grammar, reading/writing, etc) I think the Pimsleur cd's are hard to beat. I learned decent French from those things. It has been said ( Wink

) they can often found on Limewire, bittorent, etc....

Canundrum69 · Posted: May 29, 2007 10:38 am Post subject: Re: Questions about pronunciation.

Canundrum69 · Posted: May 29, 2007 10:46 am Post subject:

Kevangogh · Forum God Joined: 19 Jul 2005 Posts: 928 Location: Japan

spacesamurai · 2nd Degree Black Belt Joined: 02 Feb 2007 Posts: 204

From what I understand, and please tell me if I am wrong, because I don't want to start off with bad habits to break later, but the U is dropped when it falls between the letters ch, h, k, p, s, sh, t, or ts, as these are "voiceless," meaning they don't make your vocal cords vibrate.

Kevangogh · Forum God Joined: 19 Jul 2005 Posts: 928 Location: Japan

I'll have to think about that, but I know for sure the "u" in "mitsumi" is pronounced.

You should learn the hiragana/Katakana tables - if you do that you'll pretty much know all the sounds of the Japanese language.

Buzz Fledderjohn · Uh, Can I Add Sugar? Joined: 05 Nov 2007 Posts: 11

What about the word futsuka (2 days) which is pronouced more like ffftska? That will screw up your theory Smile

I started learning Pimsleur's Japanese a few months ago before taking a trip to Japan.

FataliTEA · Posted: Jan 05, 2008 6:07 am Post subject:

Did they train you well, Buzz?

Buzz Fledderjohn · Uh, Can I Add Sugar? Joined: 05 Nov 2007 Posts: 11

Pimsleur? ...or the Japanese? Smile

Yes, the stuff that I learned through Pimsleur came in very handy. A lot of the Japanese people that I met seemed very appreciative of the fact that I made an effort to learn their language.

Kevangogh · Forum God Joined: 19 Jul 2005 Posts: 928 Location: Japan

You are supposed to pronounce the "u" in futsuka. You may not hear it that clearly when someone is speaking fast, but it's there. fu - tsu- ka is correct. the "fu" is pronounced more like "hu"...

spacesamurai · 2nd Degree Black Belt Joined: 02 Feb 2007 Posts: 204

Kevangogh · Forum God Joined: 19 Jul 2005 Posts: 928 Location: Japan

By the way, if you want to learn the basics of a language (survival plus some) the pimsleur method is really good. I can't think of a better method as far as trying to just get by, you will be able to speak somewhat after you finish it.

I spent a lot of time learning French with it and I did pretty well in France. The only problem there is that unless your French is "really" good, they will speak to you in english. In Provence, I didn't have that problem as not as many speak english down there.

The weak point of Pimsleur is that it's only conversation so the first time I went to Paris I was kind of lost when it came to reading menus, etc. I takes about 6 months to get through each version of it, I managed to finish two versions. My main problem was actually switching between Japanese and French. If you've spent time learning a second language and then attempt to learn a third, your brain kind of defaults to the second one automatically when it encounters something it doesn't understand. I would occasionally speak in Japanese in France without thinking about it. Took me about a week or so to get over that. Then when I got back to Japan I had the opposite problem - French coming out of my mouth instead of Japanese.