Japanese, unlike English, is made up of a very limited number of phonetic symbols. In fact, there are only 46 Japanese phonetic symbols used to pronounce every other possible syllable in the Japanese language and those are represented by the kana, hiragana and katakana.In English, vowels and consonants change their sounds seemingly at random. There are homonyms, synonyms, homographs and various other rules and exceptions to how things are pronounced. A common expression is, "You say potato, I say potato.", whereby each instance of potato is pronounced differently, yet has the same meaning. Just look at the "a". It can be pronounced "ah" or with a long "a" sound, giving each instance of its use a different meaning.
In Japanese, you never have to worry about these things 99% of the time because each phonetic symbol has only one pronounciation, except under very specific and easily understood instances.
Today, I'll talk about one such symbol, -ん, and how it is pronounced and how it modifies other syllables.
-ん
When I was first starting out, I had many problems with the -ん syllable. Sometimes it is pronounced with the expected 'n' sound, as seen in the word, ごはん, and other times with an 'm' sound, such as in the word, せんぱい. It always confused me as to why it did this. At least, until I eventually found out, months later.
Luckily, it's not as random as I originally thought and it boils down to a simple rule. ん always modifies the preceeding vowel sound into a nasal vowel and, if it is followed by a syllable beginning with a b- (ば, び, ぶ, べ and ぼ), m- (ま, み, む, め, and も) or p- (ぱ, ぴ, ぷ, ぺ, and ぽ), the ん is pronounced with the m sound.
"n" Sound
So, ごはん isn't pronounced like ごは with an ん sound tacked on the end. The ん actually changes the は sound into a nasal version, similar to how it is pronounced in the word, "son", in English (it's not identical to how son sounds, but that's the closest comparison to the Japanese version I could think of).
"m" Sound
In the case of せんぱい, the following ぱ modifies the ん to make it more of an "m". So, when you watch various anime or Japanese television shows and a student calls his upperclassman, "sempai", it still uses ん for it's spelling, but the ぱ that follows the ん changes its pronounciation to the "m" sound. The same would happen for any of the other b-, m- or p- symbols if they followed an ん.
Conclusion
I hope this cleared up some of the confusion around the pronounciation of -ん and it's modification of the vowels that precede it. It is the only kana that has multiple pronounciations that does not require the addition of a long vowel, such as the use of the syllable う when it is added to words such as どうも or ありがとう to modify the と and ど syllables.
When I was first starting out, I had many problems with the -ん syllable. Sometimes it is pronounced with the expected 'n' sound, as seen in the word, ごはん, and other times with an 'm' sound, such as in the word, せんぱい. It always confused me as to why it did this. At least, until I eventually found out, months later.
Luckily, it's not as random as I originally thought and it boils down to a simple rule. ん always modifies the preceeding vowel sound into a nasal vowel and, if it is followed by a syllable beginning with a b- (ば, び, ぶ, べ and ぼ), m- (ま, み, む, め, and も) or p- (ぱ, ぴ, ぷ, ぺ, and ぽ), the ん is pronounced with the m sound.
"n" Sound
So, ごはん isn't pronounced like ごは with an ん sound tacked on the end. The ん actually changes the は sound into a nasal version, similar to how it is pronounced in the word, "son", in English (it's not identical to how son sounds, but that's the closest comparison to the Japanese version I could think of).
"m" Sound
In the case of せんぱい, the following ぱ modifies the ん to make it more of an "m". So, when you watch various anime or Japanese television shows and a student calls his upperclassman, "sempai", it still uses ん for it's spelling, but the ぱ that follows the ん changes its pronounciation to the "m" sound. The same would happen for any of the other b-, m- or p- symbols if they followed an ん.
Conclusion
I hope this cleared up some of the confusion around the pronounciation of -ん and it's modification of the vowels that precede it. It is the only kana that has multiple pronounciations that does not require the addition of a long vowel, such as the use of the syllable う when it is added to words such as どうも or ありがとう to modify the と and ど syllables.
No comments:
Post a Comment