I've never studied Japanese pronunciation "properly". 98% of the sounds are more or less identical to my native language, double vowels/consonants give me absolutely no trouble. As far as pitch accent goes I'm getting there. But I've never learned to distinguish the chi, ji and zi (+ cha, ja, za etc.) sounds from one another.

These sounds don't exist in my language so I think I need some assistance to be able to replicate them in my own output. Does anyone know some good ways to accomplish this?

This interests me as well, I seem to share your problem for the same reasons. I can tell a difference between these sounds in other people's speech, but trying to say the likes of ７時 myself always comes out wrong. Instead of しちじ it turns into something like しじじ. Finnish problems... XD

Didn't know Finns have such issues with pronunciation.

How do you pronounce English "cheese"?

toshiromiballza Wrote:How do you pronounce English "cheese"?

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I think most of us can pronounce something close to cheese but if you ask us to pronounce geez/jeez we'll say "cheese".

In my pronouncing, there is a clear difference between "geez" and "cheese", so that is not the problem for me. But jumping from one of these kind of sounds to another is the problem (like in the ７時 case). My tongue just doesn't keep up XD

This might help:
http://www.sinosplice.com/learn-chinese/...-chinese/4

This is written for Chinese pronunciation, but the Japanese chi and ji are identical to the Chinese qi and ji (to the left in the diagram on Sinosplice).

Betelgeuzah Wrote:I think most of us can pronounce something close to cheese but if you ask us to pronounce geez/jeez we'll say "cheese".

How would you say jungle or jazz then? Chungle? Chazz?

Although I was wondering about ず and ぜ recently. It's not actually z at all (Z as zoo), or am I wrong? It seems like complete romaji crap now that I think of it, to me it sounds more like a soft j (or we'd probably call it a soft đ). Am I correct, or can it be a zooish sound as well?

for reference

ち and じ are different in that じ is voiced. Voiced means that you use your voice in addition to just letting out air through your mouth.
This is what makes d and t different. V and f, b and p, g (as in grave) and k (as in kill).

It might be time to learn some phonetics. Linguistic stuff can be a bit difficult to break into, but it is often worth it for a bit of a deeper understanding.
The consonant for 'shi' is /ɕ/. The voiced equivalent of this consonant is written /ʑ/.
To make the 'chi' sound, you just add a /t/ in front, which is is a consonant made from a burst of air called a plosive. The plosive starts the consonant, and afterwards, you articulate it as normal. Thus, you get /tɕ/ for 'chi'.
As northern_lord says, ji is the same as chi, but voiced. The voiced equivalent of /t/ is /d/, so you get /dʑ/.

Since the consonant above seems to be in your native language, it seems unlikely that you'll use the wrong sound. On the other hand, english doesn't have it, so there's always some fear that native speakers will substitute /ʃ/ (voiced /ʒ/) for it. Think 'shoe' and 'rouge' for those two (and remember not to use them, because they aren't in Japanese at all).

As for 'zi', I'm not sure what you mean because zi = ji in the IME.　The normal 'z' sound is just /z/, the voiced equivalent of /s/. Think zoo and sue. Probably every language has that one.

Haych Wrote:Since the consonant above seems to be in your native language, it seems unlikely that you'll use the wrong sound. On the other hand, english doesn't have it, so there's always some fear that native speakers will substitute /ʃ/ (voiced /ʒ/) for it.

What language is that? Finnish only has /s/. Sh and z (which only appear in non-native words) will either be rendered into /s/ (/z/->/ts/) or pronounced the English way.

Haych Wrote:As for 'zi', I'm not sure what you mean because zi = ji in the IME.　The normal 'z' sound is just /z/, the voiced equivalent of /s/. Think zoo and sue. Probably every language has that one.

Ah yes, za ze zu zo then.

I probably just need to practice that one more. Finnish has only d as an original voiced consonant...

"涼しい" is rather difficult for me to pronounce for example. s + z + s combo is a killer.

Thanks for your help so far everyone.

Helltrixz Wrote:

Betelgeuzah Wrote:I think most of us can pronounce something close to cheese but if you ask us to pronounce geez/jeez we'll say "cheese".

How would you say jungle or jazz then? Chungle? Chazz?

To be honest man I don't know what it sounds like (to a native speaker). I'm not trying to generalize here as some of us have got the differences down but as for me it'd probably come out wrong. Especially jazz. It would be... chass/jass. lol

Also, cab would be "cap".

Betelgeuzah Wrote:

Helltrixz Wrote:

Betelgeuzah Wrote:I think most of us can pronounce something close to cheese but if you ask us to pronounce geez/jeez we'll say "cheese".

How would you say jungle or jazz then? Chungle? Chazz?

To be honest man I don't know what it sounds like (to a native speaker). I'm not trying to generalize here as some of us have got the differences down but as for me it'd probably come out wrong. Especially jazz. It would be... chass/jass. lol

Also, cab would be "cap".

Interesting. What I can say though is that in the end it comes down to exposure and practise. When learning the pronunciation you need to learn two aspects, to hear the difference and physically learn how to move your mouth and tongue so that it produces the correct sound. It takes dedication, much like learning to play an instrument and learning how to play a new music style. It can easily take months and even years to polish the subtle differences that occur in a language.

It had happened to me in multiple languages before, just stick to it! And it can be confusing. As a matter of fact, as you could see a few posts earlier I just realised there are actually two distinct sounds represented by ず. For example ずっと and ねずみ (rat) have what I'd consider completely different sounds and it makes me wonder why no site I've been on ever mentioned that. Maybe the Japanese don't make a difference, like l/r? It's true that when you compare す、ず、つ、しゅ and じゅ that they're all similar. For me a ず can sound like either zu or tzu, depending on the word, and from my other languages I also know a sound similar to the ones above, zhu (sorry I never learned the phonetic script though).

Vempele Wrote:

Haych Wrote:Since the consonant above seems to be in your native language, it seems unlikely that you'll use the wrong sound. On the other hand, english doesn't have it, so there's always some fear that native speakers will substitute /ʃ/ (voiced /ʒ/) for it.

What language is that? Finnish only has /s/. Sh and z (which only appear in non-native words) will either be rendered into /s/ (/z/->/ts/) or pronounced the English way.

Finnish. I don't know jack about the language, but I just saw that on the wikipedia for /ɕ/ it shows up in the word "sjok".

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voiceless_a...l_sibilant

So I guess maybe you can think of it as an 's' plus a palatized 'j'?

Betelgeuzah Wrote:

Haych Wrote:As for 'zi', I'm not sure what you mean because zi = ji in the IME.　The normal 'z' sound is just /z/, the voiced equivalent of /s/. Think zoo and sue. Probably every language has that one.

Ah yes, za ze zu zo then.

I probably just need to practice that one more. Finnish has only d as an original voiced consonant...

"涼しい" is rather difficult for me to pronounce for example. s + z + s combo is a killer.

Thanks for your help so far everyone.

Yeah, I agree with the practice part. Stuff that isn't in your native language is hard to grasp sometimes. Just pay attention to when your voicebox is 'on' though. For a word with voiced consonants, it should start up a bit sooner.

The phonetics stuff is really only useful for finding out where the major distinctions are. It needs to be supplemented with practice to hear and understand the differences.

Helltrixz Wrote:It had happened to me in multiple languages before, just stick to it! And it can be confusing. As a matter of fact, as you could see a few posts earlier I just realised there are actually two distinct sounds represented by ず. For example ずっと and ねずみ (rat) have what I'd consider completely different sounds and it makes me wonder why no site I've been on ever mentioned that. Maybe the Japanese don't make a difference, like l/r? It's true that when you compare す、ず、つ、しゅ and じゅ that they're all similar. For me a ず can sound like either zu or tzu, depending on the word, and from my other languages I also know a sound similar to the ones above, zhu (sorry I never learned the phonetic script though).

I agree that link you posted sounds like the ず can have a bit of /d/ to it. I'm going to be listening for that now. Sometimes there's a bit more complexity to the accent in this language than would first meet the eye.

In another thread I found out that じゅ can actually drop the /d/ sometimes, and become like /ʑ/ rather than /dʑ/. It seemed to happen most often when the じゅ starts the word.

There's also that thing which is apparently an eastern accent thing where ん becomes more like 'ng'. Its good to keep an eye out for this stuff.

Haych Wrote:Finnish. I don't know jack about the language, but I just saw that on the wikipedia for /ɕ/ it shows up in the word "sjok".

Ah, that's Finland Swedish, native language of 5.4% of the population and taught to everyone in school.

By the way, if "zi" sound doesn't exist does that mean that there is no difference between ぢ and じ?

Yes (except for the purposes of correct spelling, of course). Ditto for zu=ず=づ.

Indeed, as people have pointed out, the difference between chi and ji is just that the consonant in ji uses your vocal chords. (Also, yeah, ji and zi aren't different sounds, just different ways of writing). So, perhaps you can learn it if you know how to activate your vocal chords, since you don't actually have to change your mouth movements at all.

Put your hand on your throat and make the sound k (as in か). Your throat should not vibrate (it will if you say a full か though, because of the vowel). Now make the sound g (as in が). Your mouth should move in exactly the same way but this time your throat will vibrate, because you are using your vocal chords.

(Actually, to be completely correct, there are two ways to pronounce the g in が, a nasal G and a hard G. The hard g is the same as k just with vocal chords.)

Or, actually, a better example in Finnish might be t and d, as in た or だ. Put your hand on your throat and do a T and D to see that the difference is just your vocal chords.

The same is true of s and z (as in さ and ざ). S is no vocal chords, z is with, and the mouth movement is the same.

The same is also true of the consonant in chi and ji. Chi is without vocal chords, and ji is with vocal chords. If you can just add your vocal chords with no change in mouth movement, you should be able to say it.

Betelgeuzah Wrote:By the way, if "zi" sound doesn't exist does that mean that there is no difference between ぢ and じ?

I think Haych meant that "zi" refers to the exact same kana as "ji", namely じ. ぢ, whenever it needs to be distinguished from じ, is usually referred to as "di" (いとうのいぢ transliterating her name as "Noizi Ito" seems to be simply an artistic choice not representative of any historical distinctions). Some dialects do distinguish between じ and ぢ, but the distinction isn't part of the standard language and the historical distribution of the two characters is rarely reflected in kana spellings (ditto for ず and づ).

Zorlee Wrote:This might help:
http://www.sinosplice.com/learn-chinese/...-chinese/4

This is written for Chinese pronunciation, but the Japanese chi and ji are identical to the Chinese qi and ji (to the left in the diagram on Sinosplice).

Even though I don't claim being fluent in either Japanese or Chinese, I disagree on this. While I'll agree with John, the author of Sinosplice, that the Japanese shi resembles Chinese xi (explained in another article), I think the the Japanese "chi" is probably somewhere between the Chinese "chi" and "qi" but I don't think it's really like the "qi" and, more importantly, I really think ji are very dissimilar between Japanese and Chinese: in Chinese, the ji is often rendered as "ti" for western learners, and this is because it is indeed close to a "ti" (sort of t(j)i). I've never heard the Japanese "ji" pronounced this way.
Additionally, while I really like John's inputs, he is sometimes wrong (for example, the r can indeed be pronounced as the French "j", as evidenced by reliable sources, such as Wikipedia or my Beijing native teacher, as well as... John's own co-host at ChinesePod, Jenny)...

Just a quick note on Chinese pronunciation. Chinese distinguishes between aspirated consonants and non-aspirated ones. They also distinguish between "backed" consonants and "non-backed" ones, eg the qi and chi pair. So basically every consonant in Chinese will be different to the Japanese one because Japanese does not have these differences in the manner of articulation of consonants at all.