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+--- Thread: Long vowel sound (/thread-2795.html)
Long vowel sound - oggthegoblin - 2009-03-24
I can’t seem to hear them dose anyone have any advise on ways to improve? Who hear can hear them?
Long vowel sound - Tobberoth - 2009-03-24
Just listen to a lot of Japanese and listen for the difference.
Have some Japanese person say "tokyo" then "toukyou". After hearing it enough, it becomes second nature.
Long vowel sound - mattyjaddy - 2009-03-24
I had trouble with that too. Like Tobberoth said, you get used to it after a while of listening to Japanese.
The other part is when you have a large enough vocabulary and extensive enough grammatical competence, you're going to know which word the speaker is saying. What I mean to say is, there are quite a few words that resemble each other but for one having a long vowel where the other has a short vowel. But you can treat them as you would actual homophones, of which there are also many. You understand which word it is based on context. To be honest, I'm not sure which I use to help me more - distinguishing vowel length or using context.
For me the problem is actually saying the correct length even when I know the difference. Before, I had trouble remember which ones were long and which short. Now, it's a matter of my mouth doing what my head wants it too. One that always gets me for some reason is ryokou. I think I'm better when I don't try to think consciously about it.
Good luck.
Long vowel sound - decals - 2009-03-25
My experience is that it's best to think about it in terms of emphasis, rather than pronunciation. Long vowels are stronger and short ones are weaker.
For example, 弟 おとうと.
If you say it with two short and even "toh" syllables, it sounds wrong. But if you put "emphasis" on the first one(basically making it longer than the first one), then it sounds right.
Long vowel sound - snallygaster - 2009-03-26
I'm not sure it's a good idea to think of it in terms of emphasis. I'm not totally sure about this, but I *think* that English speakers tend to perceive Japanese long vowels as having emphasis mainly because they're not used to Japanese mora-based timing. So I know what you mean. But as you get used to Japanese, you'll probably realize how different English emphasis is -- it's mainly a matter of volume, as well as pitch and duration. You really don't want to be applying English-style emphasis on Japanese long vowels.
Remember each mora lasts an equal amount of time; short vowels are one beat and long vowels two. Try reading slowly to a steady beat. As you practice, you'll start to get good at keeping this timing at a faster speed.
Check this out: Go to the NHK news site <http://www.nhk.or.jp/r-news/>, click on the "ゆっくり" radio button and then on one of the broadcasts. That's the news slowed down. You'll hear they really do keep a pretty steady beat. If that's still a bit too fast to really pick up the difference, you can use any audio file if you have a media player that lets you change the playback speed (windows media player does, depending on the audio format).
Long vowel sound - oggthegoblin - 2009-03-26
Thanks everyone for the replies. From searching on Google I found it mentioned that longer vowel sounds also have a drop in pitch has anyone noticed this?
Long vowel sound - Smackle - 2009-03-26
oggthegoblin Wrote:Thanks everyone for the replies. From searching on Google I found it mentioned that longer vowel sounds also have a drop in pitch has anyone noticed this?This is true sometimes but not all the time. 弟 for example starts low with お and rises through to the last と. The pitch does not fall in the middle of the word. To time things, try doing each kana to the beat of a clap each.
Long vowel sound - oggthegoblin - 2009-04-23
http://www.asel.udel.edu/icslp/cdrom/vol4/780/a780.pdf talking about pitch change
Long vowel sound - welldone101 - 2009-04-23
I noticed that my picking-up of these quirks in everyday speech went way up after I started doing iknow and dictation. When I do dictation I close my eyes and type in the sentences without looking at the available spaces. My mind has started finding (or memorizing?) the places where there are long vowels. It also could just be the fact I live in Japan. But there was not much improvement in my listening till I started smart.fm.
Long vowel sound - wccrawford - 2009-04-24
Don't try to logic your way through this. Just listen to enough Japanese and you'll hear it. really.
Long vowel sound - furrykef - 2009-04-26
mattyjaddy Wrote:One that always gets me for some reason is ryokou.Hahaha, that's funny, 'cause I sometimes have trouble with the same word. I always think it's ryoukyou for some reason.
oggthegoblin Wrote:Thanks everyone for the replies. From searching on Google I found it mentioned that longer vowel sounds also have a drop in pitch has anyone noticed this?I don't think that's the case at all. Many, many words have long vowels but no drop in pitch.
- Kef
Long vowel sound - onafarm - 2009-04-26
oggthegoblin Wrote:Thanks everyone for the replies. From searching on Google I found it mentioned that longer vowel sounds also have a drop in pitch has anyone noticed this?This is a good example of when you can't rely on the Internet for everything. A good dictionary will show you the pitch. For this I use Kenkyusha's Japanese-English Learner's Dictionary.
Long vowel sound - Tzadeck - 2009-04-26
Early on when you are learning Japanese it's a good idea to clap out the mora of a word every once in a while to make sure you are saying it right. For example, it seems like 70% (<--made up number) of the people learning Japanese pronounce こんにちは wrong. That is, everyone says こにちは. But, if you clap for each Hiragana you'll get it right with 5 beats.
Anyway, this works for long vowels too. For example, try clapping to きょうは、とうきょうにいく as 10 claps(probably it's best to just pause for a moment for commas, rather than clapping). Don't overdue this by any means, just do it once or twice when it seems you're having a problem. Of course, in reality a long vowel is slightly shorter than 2 beats, but even if you practice as two full beats you'll still end up doing it as slightly less than 2 when you're not practicing.
If you practice it yourself it like this it should become easy to notice other people doing the long vowel too. Besides, from the context you'll usually know which word they mean anyway, so it's not that big a deal for comprehension.