Anyone else think the pronunciation of these two words is kinda crazy? Anybody wanna take a stab at explaining why or is it just the way it is because it is the way it is?

Maybe it has something to do with the mysterious 囲 kanji?

P.S. If you don't know what I'm talking about, check WWWJDIC's pronunciation flash clips.

sethg Wrote:Anyone else think the pronunciation of these two words is kinda crazy? Anybody wanna take a stab at explaining why or is it just the way it is because it is the way it is?

Maybe it has something to do with the mysterious 囲 kanji?

P.S. If you don't know what I'm talking about, check WWWJDIC's pronunciation flash clips.

I checked out the clips, and I heard nothing that sounded out of the ordinary. I guessed the pronunciation correctly just from the hiragana.

[Katsuo]

Are you referring the way "ん” is pronounced in those words?

In English to make an "n" sound we use our tongue to block the airflow through the mouth, so that the air comes through the nose instead.

In Japanese the "ん" sound is sometimes made by passing air through the nose and mouth simultaneously. More details in this post.

There's nothing particularly strange about the way 範囲 is pronounced, but you are right about 雰囲気. When pronouncing 雰囲気 you need to say it more like ふいんき... kind of swallow that second syllable.

Thanks for the link, Katsuo! Very educational.

Maybe I'm hearing it wrong, but it sounds to me like the い and the ん switch places in both words almost. Does no one else hear that?

[Katsuo]

sethg Wrote:Maybe I'm hearing it wrong, but it sounds to me like the い and the ん switch places in both words almost. Does no one else hear that?

範囲 and 雰囲気 both use the version of "ん" I mentioned above, i.e. where air passes through both nose and mouth at the same time. As we don't use this sound in English, it may be difficult to recognize it.

In English we stop the passage of air in the mouth to make an "n", so I wonder if you are interpreting the points where the air stops in those two words as a slight "n" sound. I.e. in 範囲 the sound stops after the "i" because it's the end of the word, and in 雰囲気 the sound is stopped after the "i" by the following "k".

Also, have a listen to another native saying "範囲" here. (From the Saiga Kanji Dictionary). This speaker pronounces the "ん" more clearly.

The best pronunciation (native) that you can find for 雰囲気 is definitely from Tiger&Dragon. Check the second episode... might be the first, but I think it's in the second. It's one of the scenes when they are in that place they always drink (Ryuu, Taiga, and the chick from the shop, her name escapes me at the moment... let's called her busu). They say it about 3 times rapid fire in that scene (using the classic phrase 雰囲気読めない).

Don't overthink it. Those words seem pretty straightforward to me.

Just be careful with 雰囲気, according to japanesepod101, it's not uncommon for some natives to pronounce it ふいんき but that's actually a mistake.

sethg Wrote:Anyone else think the pronunciation of these two words is kinda crazy? Anybody wanna take a stab at explaining why or is it just the way it is because it is the way it is?

Probably you're expecting to hear はに or はんに instead of はんい. If you're pronouncing はんい correctly, the tip of your tongue should not touch the top of your mouth at all in the word.

ん takes a little effort because it represents several different pronunciations (5 or so) depending on what comes after it.

Codexus Wrote:Don't overthink it. Those words seem pretty straightforward to me.

Just be careful with 雰囲気, according to japanesepod101, it's not uncommon for some natives to pronounce it ふいんき but that's actually a mistake.

Don't think of it as a mistake. Think of it as how it is actually suppose to be pronounced.

For example, when I learned the word on paper a while ago, I used it saying it how it was written. One of my Japanese friends immediately corrected me, saying that while it is written that way no one actually says that.

I listened to the clip for 家族的な雰囲気 and it does sorta sound like he's saying ふいんき or at least ふんいんき.

Wikipedia says about ん:

[Ṽ] (a nasalized vowel) before vowels, approximants (/j/ and /w/), and fricatives (/s/, /z/, and /h/). Also found utterance-finally.

It's not exactly specific about which vowel is nasalized, but it seems to generally nasalise the previous vowel, so the /a/ in 範囲 is actually /ã/.

Ryuujin27 Wrote:Don't think of it as a mistake. Think of it as how it is actually suppose to be pronounced.

I don't think that's true. Just because a mistake is common doesn't make it necessarily correct, even though at some point that might happen (あらた→あたらしい).

In this case, I think the correct version is still more common anyway.

Codexus Wrote:In this case, I think the correct version is still more common anyway.

I disagree on this point. Seems to me that Japanese people pronounce 雰囲気 as either ふいんき or ふんいんき about 95% of the time.

in these two words, just pronounce the　ん as an ng.
雰囲気:　fung-i-ki
範囲: hang-i
Obviously pronounce the vowels the japanese way.
If you pinch your nose while saying "ing" english words, "walking", "talking" etc.
You can see it still makes a sound, because air is moving out through the nose and mouth as Katuo said. Now pinch your nose and say "now" "not" "never". Blocking the air from the nose blocks maybe 95% of the sound. So we do have the ん sound in english. It also occurs when an n comes before k, pink (pingk), sink(singk), etc.

Codexus Wrote:

Ryuujin27 Wrote:Don't think of it as a mistake. Think of it as how it is actually suppose to be pronounced.

I don't think that's true. Just because a mistake is common doesn't make it necessarily correct, even though at some point that might happen (あらた→あたらしい).

In this case, I think the correct version is still more common anyway.

Trust me here, the most common way is ふいんき. It's everywhere. In any media that has the word it is said that way. Any time someone says it in conversation in Japan they say it that way. That's the way to say it.

[Katsuo]

Regarding the pronunciation of 雰囲気, here's what the "Kotoba Ojisan" had to say in 2005.

Katsuo Wrote:Regarding the pronunciation of 雰囲気, here's what the "Kotoba Ojisan" had to say in 2005.

So then you should be saying it ふいんき.

Consider how 千円 can make it sound like there's a y sound, leading to the Japanese currency being referred to yen. Also, there is the case of 全員 which may sound like ぜーいん. The Japanese ん is not like an English n. The mistake of 雰囲気's reading and such are common to the Japanese as well, so don't get too bothered by it.

Actually, 円 was written ゑん before the kana reforms, so yen (or wen) was the correct romanization, and to some extent having a bit of a y sound in there is the correct pronunciation (historically). Same thing for ゑびす beer (Yebisu) and ゑど (Yedo, now Tokyo).

雰囲気 was written ふんゐき (funwiki/funyiki), but that doesn't cause the problem here. The strange pronunciation is caused by 音便, or changes made for the ease of pronunciation. Another prominent example is て form. Ex. 泳いで (swim) is more correctly written 泳ぎて, and 書いて (write) is more correctly 書きて. The reason the writing matches the pronunciation now is that the 音便 happened before the Meiji/postWW2 writing reforms. 雰囲気's change is more recent, so it isn't reflected in writing (yet). Don't think of 音便 as a mistake (unless you think て form is wrong too), just think of it as the evolution of language.

Remember that kana isn't a phonetic writing system, even though pronunciation and writing USUALLY line up. Sometimes the かな and the reading just won't match.

Jarvik, great post! Interesting insight on 〜て stuff I still have a hard time remembering how to say 範囲, but just from this post, I've at least cemented it in my list of vocab I'll probably never forget I really agree about the evolution of language thing, too.

Jarvik7 Wrote:Actually, 円 was written ゑん before the kana reforms, so yen (or wen) was the correct romanization, and to some extent having a bit of a y sound in there is the correct pronunciation (historically). Same thing for ゑびす beer (Yebisu) and ゑど (Yedo, now Tokyo).

Well...maybe. There's no clear consensus on exactly when ゑ lost its "w".

Quote:. Another prominent example is て form. Ex. 泳いで (swim) is more correctly written 泳ぎて, and 書いて (write) is more correctly 書きて.

In modern Japanese, 書きて and 泳ぎて are wrong even in writing. I'm not sure that 書きて was ever actually *pronounced* かいて, it was just used in writing that was still being written essentially in classical Japanese. The k-onbin is pretty old, even in Genji you see うつくしうて instead of うつくしくて.

@Yudantaiteki: Please read/comprehend my posts in their entirety before "correcting" them.

yudantaiteki Wrote:Well...maybe. There's no clear consensus on exactly when ゑ lost its "w".

Maybe what? I was talking about the romanization, which there is consensus on when it changed, since it happened by rule of law. "Yen" entered English vocabulary before those romanization changes. It doesn't matter if Japanese people at the time said yen or en, it entered the English language written as yen and people pronounced it as such in English. Also, the slight "y/w" in what is now merged with え can be heard in the speech of many older people, particularly in dialect.

yudantaiteki Wrote:In modern Japanese, 書きて and 泳ぎて are wrong even in writing.

They are correct if you consider 音便 to be a mistake, countering which was the whole point of the example. 書きて etc is then the "correct" writing in that it preserves the grammatical form instead of transcribing the slurred pronunciation of onbin. I did also say it was an old 音便, predating the writing reforms of the past 100 years or so. That was another point I made. 雰囲気's onbin is rather recent (past 35 years according to a linked article), so it has not been changed in writing. If another big batch of reforms came up, it would probably be changed to match current pronunciation too.