I have had this doubt for a while now. Should J vowels (じ、じゃ、じゅ、じょ) be pronounced as /dʒ/ (as in the word "cage") or as /ʒ/ (as in the French word "cage")? Sorry, I can't think of any example in English. Edit: Ha! Just thought of an example: /ʒ/ as in "measure".
I think I have heard both, but I would like confirmation. Also, if both are possible, is it a matter of accent, style or something like that? Thanks!

It's neither.
The sound is [dʑ] or [ʑ]. The closest, I'd say almost identical, is Polish dź or ź. So learn Polish.

Thank you for your answer. More than an IPA notation concern (both sound the same to me ), what I wanted to know is whether that "d" should be there or not. Unfortunately your suggestion is quite unhelpful.

To me it's closer to /dʒ/ than /ʒ/.

Yes, Fillanzea, I, too, believe /dʒ/ (or /dʑ/, for that matter) is used more often. However, I'm pretty sure I hear /ʒ/ at times. So that's what I wanted to know. When to use one or the other? Does it actually make any difference? Is it a matter of accent? Is one "more correct" than the other? If I were to guess, I would say /ʒ/ is more informal, as it's easier to pronounce, perhaps? lol! Thoughts, anyone?

I think /dʒ/ is the closest English sound. When I was teaching Japanese people pronunciation, I found it very very hard to get them to make a /ʒ/ sound. The Japanese "j" is really quite different, in my experience...

The wikipedia article on Japanese phonology has /j/, and my intro to Japanese Linguistics book has j with an inverted carat over it. I'm not sure what sound that's supposed to represent and I don't see it in the IPA table.

The sound is definitely not /ʒ/ in standard Tokyo pronunciation. I don't even think it becomes that in informal speech. I'm also not sure that you should be putting a pronounced /d/ in there, but this can be variation in English speech as well. For myself, the consonants in "judge" are both stronger than when I say じ in Japanese. Of course I'm not a native Japanese speaker so I can't promise I'm right.

If I understand ktcgx right, this is a question whether the j-vowels are plosive or fricative.

In my experience some words use a fricative j-vowel, especially inside a word, and others use it plosively, especially in the beginning of a word.
For example I always hear じゅ in じゅんび pronounced harder than the じゅ in きじゅん. And the じ in 時間 is harder than the じ in 感じ.

Thanks for your answer, ktcgx! Really? They had a hard time pronouncing /ʒ/? Hum, perhaps I should clean my ears? lol!
But, for example, listen to the last sample sentence of this Anki deck: https://ankiweb.net/shared/info/4104492901.
Isn't he saying "kanoʒo"?

Yes, Northern_Lord, that's what I *seem* to have noticed too (even though I'm not quite sure about the meanings of "fricative" and "plosive", lol!).

The p in plosive is a plosive consonant. By pressing your lips together and building up pressure, then "violently" letting the air burst out of your mouth. The same thing happens with b, k, g, t, d, and some other consonants.
F in fricative is a fricative consonant. The air is allowed to flow freely through the gap between your teeth and the lower lips of the mouth.

hk4673 Wrote:Thanks for your answer, ktcgx! Really? They had a hard time pronouncing /ʒ/? Hum, perhaps I should clean my ears? lol!
But, for example, listen to the last sample sentence of this Anki deck: https://ankiweb.net/shared/info/4104492901.
Isn't he saying "kanoʒo"?

No, it's not a full /ʒ/ sound, it's just a weaker consonant than the usual English "j" pronunciation. The Japanese consonants don't have as much aspiration as English ones which sometimes makes them sound like different consonants altogether.

yudantaiteki Wrote:

hk4673 Wrote:Thanks for your answer, ktcgx! Really? They had a hard time pronouncing /ʒ/? Hum, perhaps I should clean my ears? lol!
But, for example, listen to the last sample sentence of this Anki deck: https://ankiweb.net/shared/info/4104492901.
Isn't he saying "kanoʒo"?

No, it's not a full /ʒ/ sound, it's just a weaker consonant than the usual English "j" pronunciation. The Japanese consonants don't have as much aspiration as English ones which sometimes makes them sound like different consonants altogether.

Yes, their "shi" and the voiced version (written with "shi" and tenten marks) are different to the sounds in English "she" and "judge". But based on my experience, with learners from around Japan who came to my country for an intensive English course, those sounds are much closer to English "she/ judge" than to the /ʒ/ sound. Now that's not to say that variations in those sounds won't exist somewhere across the country, but in terms of the pronunciations I've encountered, I'd say in general, it's better to start pronoucing them with the "she/ judge" sounds, and gradually try to move closer to the Japanese ones, as you get a better ear for them.

This: The sound is [dʑ] or [ʑ].

I was going to say it should never be without the d, but look up anything with じゅう on WWWJDIC. Seems like some speakers favor the [ʑ] for that combination.

So maybe only before /u/?

If you're having trouble distinguishing, note that [ʑ] is just the voiced version of [ɕ], which is a sound you should know. It is most definitely NOT [ʒ]. That is a very different sound.

More edits: Now I am hearing it in others like じ also like in 一時間. It seems more likely to happen if it comes in the middle of the word. These cases seem more out of mouth-laziness than anything, though.

Haych Wrote:This: The sound is [dʑ] or [ʑ].


If you're having trouble distinguishing, note that [ʑ] is just the voiced version of [ɕ], which is a sound you should know. It is most definitely NOT [ʒ]. That is a very different sound.

Does [ɕ] occur in English? This computer is too old for me to look up the sound on wikipedia or something, and I'm unfamiliar with it.

I can say that I just did a random survey of about 20 native speakers, 5 teachers, and about 15 students, ranging from 8-11 year olds, and oddly, 2 11 year olds used [ʒ]. I studied linguistics in university, and I'm pretty sure that that is definitely what I heard. It's the first time I've ever heard a Japanese speaker use [ʒ] before.

Everyone else used a sound like /dʒ/, butwith not as much of a stop in forn of it like we would put in English.

It's [dʑ]~[ʑ] in Standard Japanese, although there seem to be some dialects that retain a functional distinction between the two sounds:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yotsugana

Lots of English native speakers misprounounce Japanese /dʑ/ and /ɕ/ as /English /dʒ/ and /ʃ/ and we get away with it, but end up sounding foreign as a result. If you want to have a good accent, it's worth getting these sounds right.

As well as being articulated further forward in the mouth, the Japanese sounds have less liprounding that their English (near) equivalents.

Some insights on this here:
http://www.sinosplice.com/life/archives/...d-japanese

Go to
http://www.csse.monash.edu.au/~jwb/cgi-b...dic.cgi?1E
and listen to 十 and 什, both pronounced 【じゅう】.
They're almost identical with Polish ź and dź respectively.


A general remark.
Some learners (the majority) usually ignore pronunciation training (and listening) at the beginning. No wonder they have trouble later.

fugu68 Wrote:http://www.sinosplice.com/life/archives/...d-japanese

sinosplice Wrote:[...] (diligent) Chinese students make excellent students of Japanese. [...] the Chinese meticulously study the pitch accent for every Japanese word.

Interesting post. I'm glad that it's not just me who is obsessed with studying the pitch accent.

buonaparte Wrote:Go to
http://www.csse.monash.edu.au/~jwb/cgi-b...dic.cgi?1E
and listen to 十 and 什, both pronounced 【じゅう】.
They're almost identical with Polish ź and dź respectively.


A general remark.
Some learners (the majority) usually ignore pronunciation training (and listening) at the beginning. No wonder they have trouble later.

My guess is that most people here won't be able to hear the difference because their hearing is not accustomed to such similarly sounding sounds (unless you are Polish, that is).

This actually reminds of a scene that I witnessed once on a train, here, in Sydney. Two friends were talking about their other friend. One of them (P) had Polish background, the other (E) didn't, so it went:

E: I met Aszka yestarday.
P: You don't say "Aszka" you say "Aśka"!
E: "Aszka", "Aśka", what's the difference?!

There is a difference between pronouncation of "ś" and "sz" (both in English would just collapse to "sh", as in "fish" or "cash") but it maybe hard to tell apart one from the other for English speaking guys...

Inny Jan Wrote:

buonaparte Wrote:Go to
http://www.csse.monash.edu.au/~jwb/cgi-b...dic.cgi?1E
and listen to 十 and 什, both pronounced 【じゅう】.
They're almost identical with Polish ź and dź respectively.


A general remark.
Some learners (the majority) usually ignore pronunciation training (and listening) at the beginning. No wonder they have trouble later.

My guess is that most people here won't be able to hear the difference because their hearing is not accustomed to such similarly sounding sounds (unless you are Polish, that is).

This actually reminds of a scene that I witnessed once on a train, here, in Sydney. Two friends were talking about their other friend. One of them (P) had Polish background, the other (E) didn't, so it went:

E: I met Aszka yestarday.
P: You don't say "Aszka" you say "Aśka"!
E: "Aszka", "Aśka", what's the difference?!

There is a difference between pronouncation of "ś" and "sz" (both in English would just collapse to "sh", as in "fish" or "cash") but it maybe hard to tell apart one from the other for English speaking guys...

I think any English speaker who listens to a Japanese person speak English will notice immediately that there is something different about their "sh", but will not necessarily be able to explain or understand why it sounds different.

Inny Jan,
that's what I'm talkining about.
You can't expect your target language sounds (phonemes) to be your native language sounds (phonemes). That's why a proper phonetic training is necessary. It's ABC, damn it!
http://users.bestweb.net/~siom/martian_m...c346179154

In Polish English 'love' and 'laugh' are identical.

We also need to remember there's a lot of phonetic variation within Japan. Where I live, old people pronounce ざ　and じゃ　the same. (right now I can't recall which one it is that they actually say!) But the young people here hear it and make fun of the old people, which I find interesting.

this is hardly the biggest thing english speakers get wrong. If you Just pronounce it like a j, while speaking kind of out the front of your mouth it should be close enough if you're getting the other aspects of pronunciation correct like mouth shape for vowels. I suspect there is a kind of forcing mechanism where if you pronunciation is mostly correct, the rest sort of follows along. After all, the reason things are pronounced a certain way historically tends to be because it is just easier that way, it's the way pronunciation tends towards when speaking lazily or quickly. A lot of minor pronunciation issues like this sort themselves out with improved rhythm and intonation which comes as you approach fluency.

ktcgx Wrote:Does [ɕ] occur in English? This computer is too old for me to look up the sound on wikipedia or something, and I'm unfamiliar with it.

I can say that I just did a random survey of about 20 native speakers, 5 teachers, and about 15 students, ranging from 8-11 year olds, and oddly, 2 11 year olds used [ʒ]. I studied linguistics in university, and I'm pretty sure that that is definitely what I heard. It's the first time I've ever heard a Japanese speaker use [ʒ] before.

Everyone else used a sound like /dʒ/, butwith not as much of a stop in forn of it like we would put in English.

[ɕ] doesn't occur in English as far as I know, but its just the s from し.

That's interesting that young Japanese people use [ʒ]. I figured that would've been associated with a foreign accent.

Haych Wrote:

ktcgx Wrote:Does [ɕ] occur in English? This computer is too old for me to look up the sound on wikipedia or something, and I'm unfamiliar with it.

I can say that I just did a random survey of about 20 native speakers, 5 teachers, and about 15 students, ranging from 8-11 year olds, and oddly, 2 11 year olds used [ʒ]. I studied linguistics in university, and I'm pretty sure that that is definitely what I heard. It's the first time I've ever heard a Japanese speaker use [ʒ] before.

Everyone else used a sound like /dʒ/, butwith not as much of a stop in forn of it like we would put in English.

[ɕ] doesn't occur in English as far as I know, but its just the s from し.

That's interesting that young Japanese people use [ʒ]. I figured that would've been associated with a foreign accent.

It was just 2 out of about 15, so I don't think it's a feature, more like a random thing perhaps... If I remember, I'll leave it a couple of weeks, and ask those two again, see if they were just tired that day, or something...