OzarM wrote:

My understanding of Japanese was that what you see is what you get. If it's not in the syllabary, then it's not a natively pronounceable sound.

More or less true, although a few kana symbols (like ん) can stand for more than one sound, and the consonant is not necessarily the same throughout a whole row (e.g. the consonant of ひ is different from へ and は).

But I'd swear that I've heard words that I'd expect would use the regular sound that you'd hear for "い," that is,"⟨i⟩," or this:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Close_fron … nded_vowel

as "⟨ɪ⟩" instead (Which is the 'i' sound you hear in the word "inn" for example.)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Near-close … nded_vowel

It's either that your ear isn't accustomed to Japanese sounds yet (sorry I don't know your level), or it could be small dialect difference or individual speaker variation. Speaking prescriptively there is no place where the -i vowel "should" be pronounced as a short "i" as in "inn", but that doesn't necessarily mean you will never hear it at all.

Part of the problem for native English speakers is that we don't distinguish between longer and shorter vowels in the way they work in Japanese (e.g. い vs. いい).  This may result in a short い sounding more like the "short i" in English.  I think that when a native english speaker says a word like "Bee", it's closer to びい than び although it's probably somewhere in between the two.

Speaking as a native speaker of American English, the vowels of "sit" and "seat" are totally different.  I can feel the different position of my tongue also.

From my own experience, unless you grew up with some vowels, they can be very hard to differentiate.

Yep. I really don't recognize what's so totally different about seat and sit.

Japanese, unlike English, is really simple though (especially for someone with a native language where short/long wovels alone can define the meaning of a word). English pronunciation is such a pita

I think these two vowels [i] and [ɪ] are allophones of a single phoneme /i/ in Japanese.

As nadiatims says, if you plot sounds in the vowel chart by analyzing F1 and F2 formants, first い in おいしい is a bit closer to the /ɪ/ sound I hear in SoCal than the second one. My real name has two moras with this vowel, and I pronounce them slightly differently like the おいしい case. Using the wrong one doesn't make it sound like a different word though.

Also, the typical [i] native English speakers use is actually a diphthong in that if you plot it on the vowel chart, it moves along a smooth curve because the vowel quality gradually shifts within a syllable. The Japanese sound is always a pure vowel, so it would look like a fixed dot on the chart. I don't know if untrained native English speakers can hear how their [i] is a gliding vowel just like "Oh" and "Eh" sounds though.

In any case, if I were to choose only one vowel from the English phonetic inventory as a catchall equivalent sound for い, I'd go with /i/. You should stop pronouncing it as a diphthong though; it sounds very "gaijin" if you will.

Also, it seems like the /ɪ/ sound in American English differs greatly from dialect to dialect, and even within the same dialect, it can be slightly different depending on the phonetic context. A native Japanese speaker who doesn't speak English typically hear American /ɪ/ as either え, い or an ambiguous sound between the two, depending on how you actually pronounce it. I quite often hear /ɪ/s used by Americans that would sound like え in Japanese, but the same sound that sounds clearly like い is rare.

But all of this is kind of marginal. In English, if you get your vowel qualities wrong, you sound like accented, foreign, exotic, etc. But they're not really important in the Japanese language. It's the pitch accent that has the same effect when it comes to sounding accented/foreign. Besides, [i] vs. [ɪ] is a difference within a single phoneme, so using the wrong one doesn't make your Japanese unintelligible.

Its been said already, but there is no short 'i' sound in Japanese.  It doesn't exist, so if you hear it, you are almost certainly hearing it wrong.  I would say that its actually quite bad to trust your ears, because ears are often wrong.  Trust the standard structure of the language, ie the basics, and work from there.

In reality, a lot of sounds get cut short, or butchered in conversational language.  The worst thing you can do for yourself is to copy butchered language.  Just don't do it.  You will almost certainly copy it wrong, and you'll build bad habits.  As you get more comfortable with the language, you will butcher it naturally.  Just wait for that to happen.

*Most* butchering of language comes from speaking so fluently.  People speak so quickly and easily that they tend to forgo enunciation in favor of communication.  It *will* happen naturally if you are that sort of person.  Don't try to do it on purpose.

nadiatims wrote:

OzarM wrote:

You don't pronounce "sit" as a shorter version of "seat," do you? I always thought of them as very different sounds..

Yeah, I do *hear* them as different but if i really try to analyze them i have to concede that they are almost the same except for length. In terms of mouth mechanics i think the corners of the mouth are pulled back a little further for (i). But if I say "different", it feels like my mouth is making the (i) shape for the stressed "di", thought it is not as long as ee (free, see etc) and does *sound* different to me. I think maybe in Australian english i in a stressed syllable can sound a lot like (i). I remember when I was teaching English, my students had trouble distinguishing "eat" and "it" but the difference is as clear as light and day to me. when a Japanese speaks English with a heavy accent, they might say イト　イズ...To me that イ is not as extreme (tight?) as eat but maybe a little stronger than it. To me イト sounds closer to it than to eat, but they are all distinct.

In phonetic terms, the vowel in "eat" and the vowel in "it" are pronounced in the same part of the mouth, but "eat" has a long, tense vowel (your vocal cords are tense -- if you hold your hand against your mouth while switching between "eat" and "it" you can hear the difference) and "it" has a short, lax vowel.

One of the things that causes problems for speakers of Japanese learning English, and speakers of English learning Japanese, is that (except perhaps for ア and the devoiced イ and ウ) Japanese doesn't have lax vowels (the sounds in bet, bit, and book are all lax) and English doesn't have short tense vowels, only long tense ones. That can make イ sound somewhere between the vowels in "seat" and "sit" and エ sound somewhere in between the vowels in "bait" and "bet."

amtrack wrote:

I'm talking about non-standard contractions of the language that you won't find in any reference book.

そんなんあんの？
あっ(´・ω・｀)

I don't know whether the IPA ı exist in japanese but I sometimes think there is a turkish ı / IPA ɯ.

wakaranai- the i here is definitely the japanese one.
wakaranainda- the i here sounds more like ɯ to me.

a comparison of how I pronounce these two words:
http://vocaroo.com/i/s0uXybBMspl6

Inny Jan wrote:

Obviously amtrack failed to provide an example but I will give it a go.

Here you have two tracks: Track 1 and Track 2.

There is a word that is clearly enunciated on Track 2 but “butchered” on Track 1. A question to you: which word it is?

… if you were shadowing Track 1. without seeing it's transcript, or understanding what is happening with the pronunciation, you would sound odd.

(I can provide you with transcripts on request...)

For what it's worth, both clips sound like very correct and proper in enunciation. I thought she received formal training or at least has a lot of experience. If there's any butchered pronunciation, it'd be a forced proper pronunciation; your average Japanese person won't enunciate each word in a normal conversation as properly as she does.

drdunlap wrote:

@magamo- I think Inny Jan meant "butchered" as in the "correct way as done by Japanese natives."

Yes, that's what I meant.

But here are the transcripts:
１．たとえば高校時代、学校帰りに電車の中で友人同士でおしゃべりをしていたら、おじさんが何も言わずに「ＳＨＵＴ　ＵＰ」と書いてある紙を差し出して去っていったので、「シャットアップって何？」

２．また大学時代にハワイに行った帰りは、楽しかった旅の興奮さめやらず、飛行機の中で友達とずーっとしゃべったり歌を歌ったりし続けた結果、イケメンのスチュワードさんに、「シーッ！」と咎められて、恥ずかしい思いをしたりもしましたっけか。

In 1. 学校帰り（がっこうがえり）  sounds more like  がっこうがあい to me (I simply fail to hear がえり there).

In 2. 行った帰り（いったかえり） I don't have any problems - かえり is かえり.

I understand that this is how native speakers actually pronounce that text (the narrator is a professional actress), but if I was to rely on the sound only, I would never get  学校帰り (and consequently pronounce it correctly myself).

OTOH, I know that if I start with がっこうがえり I will naturally arrive to this "がっこうがあい" - which is how it should really sound (and what was the amtrack's point).

drdunlap wrote:

I hear がえり with the り clearly.. maybe it's soft?

It's quite subjective what we hear - especially for people from different language backgrounds. I believe you that you can hear がえり clearly - in fact I envy you that a bit now