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Japanese phonology

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Note: This page contains IPA phonetic symbols in Unicode. See IPA chart for English for a pronunciation key.
This article deals with the phonology (i.e. the sound system) of the Japanese language.

Contents

Consonants

  Bilabial Dental Alveolar Post-
alveolar 		Palatal Velar Glottal Place-
less
Stop b d       ɡ   Q
Flap            
Fricative   z    
Affricate          
Nasal          
Approximant          

Note that this table does not cover all the consonantal variation in the Japanese language. Please refer below for the details of pronunciation.

Vowels

Japanese has 5 vowels:

Japanese vowels are pronounced as monophthongs, unlike in English; they are similar to their Spanish or Italian counterparts. However, the high back vowel /ü̜/ is somewhat centralized as well as "compression rounded", rather than protrusion rounded as [u], or unrounded as [ɯ]. More precisely, /ü̜/ is pronounced with the lips compressed toward each other but not spread to the sides. The IPA transcriptions on the right side of the diagram at right are suggested by Okada (1999). Note, however, that there is no IPA symbol for lip compression, so no transcription will be complete. /ü̜/ is transliterated as u.

Japanese a is a low, non-palatal, non-retracted low vowel, IPA [ɑ], though it is also often represented as [a]. It is between the English a in "father" and the English a in "dad." The Japanese o is a "flat" o, unlike the English one, which is a diphthong. Try to keep your tongue lowered while pronouncing the Japanese o. The i is like English ee in "feet." The e sounds to English speakers like a mix between short e in as in "bed," and long e as in "lay," though it is closer to the former than the latter.

Vowels have a phonemic length distinction (i.e., short vs. long). Cf. contrasting pairs of words like ojisan /ojisaN/ "uncle" vs. ojiisan /ojiisaN/ "grandfather", or tsuki /tsuki/ "moon" vs. tsūki /tsuuki/ "airflow".

In most phonological analyses, all vowels are treated as occurring with the time frame of one mora. Phonetically long vowels, then, are treated as a sequence of two identical vowels, i.e. ojiisan is /ojiisaN/ not /ojiːsaN/.

Although the phonotactics of Japanese lead some to believe that the language lacks diphthongs, this is not correct. A diphthong is defined as "two vowels pronounced in one syllable," so Japanese, like so many other languages, has them. However, unlike English, in which diphthongs are perceived as single vowels, Japanese diphthongs are perceived as sequences of two different vowels. These vowel sequences are phonetically different from the diphthongs that occur in languages like English. In English, a diphthong such as the one in eye is pronounced as a vowel with a following off-glide: [aɪ̯] or [aj]; while in Japanese the sequence in ai 愛 'love' is pronounced as [ai] (as in naïve) where each vowel segment is of equal length. A glide plus a vowel is analyzed as a sequence of consonant and vowel. Furthermore, unlike English, Japanese distinguishes between /au/ 'to meet' and /ao/ 'blue,' as well as between /ai/ 'love' and /ae/ 'dressing,' and also between /oi/, e.g., koi 'carp' and /oe/, e.g., koe 'voice.' Furthermore, because Japanese has long vowels, it also distinguishes between "regular" and "long" diphthongs, e.g., between /oi/ 'hey' and /ooi/ 'to be numerous.'

Within words and phrase, Japanese allows long sequences of phonetic vowels without intervening consonants, although the pitch accent and slight rhythm breaks help track the timing when the vowels are identical.

hōō o (鳳凰を) 'phoenix (direct object)'
tōō o ōu (東欧を覆う) 'to cover Eastern Europe'
(this artificial example is not something that would normally be said)

Phonological processes

Japanese contains a number of phonological processes which greatly alter the phonetic realization of consonants and vowels. A few are listed below.

Consonant processes

Weakening

Non-coronal voiced stops /b, ɡ/ between vowels may be weakened to fricatives, especially in fast and/or casual speech:

    bilabial fricative [β]: abareru 暴れる 'to behave violently'
    velar fricative [ɣ]: hage はげ 'baldness'

However, /ɡ/ is further complicated by its variant realization as a velar nasal [ŋ]. Standard Japanese speakers can be categorized into 3 groups (A, B, C), which will be explained below. If a speaker pronounces a given word consistently with the allophone [ŋ] (i.e. a B-speaker), that speaker will never have [ɣ] as an allophone in that same word. If a speaker varies between [ŋ] and [ɡ] (i.e. an A-speaker) or is generally consistent in using [ɡ], then the velar fricative [ɣ] is always another possible allophone in fast speech.

/g/ may be weakened to nasal [ŋ] when it occurs within words — this includes not only between vowels but also between a vowel and a consonant. There is a fair amount of variation between speakers, however. Some, such as Vance (1987), have suggested that the variation follows social class; others, such as Akamatsu (1997), suggest that the variation follows age and geographic location. The generalized situation is as follows.

At the beginning of words:

  • all present-day standard Japanese speakers generally use the stop [ɡ] at the beginning of words:  /ɡaijɯɯ/ → [ɡaijɯɯ] gaiyū 外遊 'overseas trip'   (but not *[ŋaijɯɯ])
In the middle of simple words (i.e. non-compounds):
  • A. majority of speakers uses either [ŋ] or [ɡ] in free variation:  /kaɡɯ/ → [kaŋɯ] or [kaɡɯ] kagu 家具 'furniture'
  • B. minority of speakers consistently uses [ŋ]:  /kaɡɯ/ → [kaŋɯ]   (but not *[kaɡɯ])
  • C. smaller minority of speakers consistently uses [ɡ][1]:  /kaɡɯ/ → [kaɡɯ]   (but not *[kaŋɯ])
In the middle of compound words morpheme-initially:
  • B-speakers mentioned directly above consistently use [ɡ]: 
So, for some speakers the following two words are a minimal pair while for others they are homophonous:

  • sengo 1,005 (せんご) 'one thousand five' = [seŋɡo] for B-speakers
  • sengo 戦後 (せんこ゜) 'postwar' = [seŋŋo] for B-speakers[2]
To summarize using the example of hage はげ 'baldness':

  • A-speakers: /haɡe/ → [haŋe] or [hage] or [haɣe]
  • B-speakers: /haɡe/ → [haŋe]
  • C-speakers: /haɡe/ → [hage] or [haɣe]

Palatalization and affrication

The palatals /i/ and /j/ palatalize the consonants they follow:

    palatalized [mʲ]: umi 海 'sea'
    [ɡʲ]: gyōza ぎょうざ 'fried dumpling'
    etc.    

The coronals /s, z, n, t/ and glottal /h/ are affected as follows:

    alveolopalatal fricative [ɕ]: shio 塩 'salt'
    /z/ → alveolopalatal [dʲʑ] or [ʑ]: jishin 地震 'earthquake';
/ɡozjɯɯ/ → [ɡodʲʑɯɯ] ~ [ɡoʑɯɯ] gojuu 50 'fifty'
    alveolopalatal [ȵ]: niwa 庭 'garden'
    alveolopalatal affricate [tʲɕ]: chijin 知人 'acquaintance'
    palatal fricative [ç]: hito 人 'person'

Of the allophones of /z/, the affricate [dʲʑ] is most common, especially at the beginning of utterances and after /N/ (or /n/, depending on the analysis), while fricative [ʑ] may occur between vowels. Both sounds, however, are in free variation. The (laminodorso-)alveolopalatal [ȵ] allophone differs from a palatalized apico-dental [n̺ʲ], a palatalized apico-alveolar nasal, [nʲ] or a palatal nasal [ɲ]. Similarly, while the symbols [c] and [ɟ] may be encountered, they are not strictly correct, as they represent palatal stops, whereas the Japanese sounds are articulated more forward as alveolopalatal. Since there are no IPA symbols for alveolopalatal stops, [tʲ] and [dʲ] are reasonable compromises, if properly explained.

In the case of the /s/, /z/, and /t/, when followed by /j/, historically, the consonants were palatalized with /j/ merging into a single pronunciation. In modern Japanese, these have become separate phonemes:

    sh): shabon シャボン 'soap'
    j): じゃがいも 'potato'
    ch): cha 茶 'tea'

The vowel /ɯ/ also affects consonants that it follows:

    bilabial fricative [ɸ]: futa ふた 'lid'
    affricate [ʦ]: tsugi 次 'next'

Moraic nasal

Some analyses of Japanese treat the moraic nasal as the archiphoneme /N/. However, other, less abstract approaches treat a syllable-final nasal as a regular coronal /n/. In either case, it always follows vowels (never consonants) and undergoes a variety of assimilatory processes. Within words, it is variously:

  • uvular [ɴ] at the end of utterances and in isolation.
  • bilabial [m] before [p] and [b]; this pronunciation is also sometimes found at the end of utterances and in isolation. Singers are taught to pronounce all instances of this sound as [m].
  • dental [n] before coronals [d] and [t]; never found utterance-finally.
  • velar [ŋ] before [k] and [g].
  • [Ṽ] (a nasalized vowel) before vowels, approximants (/j/ and /ɰ/), and fricatives (/s/, /z/, and /h/). Also found utterance-finally.
Some speakers produce /n/ before /z/, while others produce a nasalized vowel before /z/ (see Akamatsu 1997).

Moraic obstruent

In some analyses of Japanese, the archiphoneme /Q/ is posited. However, not all scholars agree that this is the best analysis. In those approaches that incorporate the moraic obstruent, it is said to completely assimilate to the following obstruent, resulting in an geminate (that is, double) consonant. The assimilated /Q/ remains unreleased and thus the geminates are phonetically long consonants. /Q/ does not occur before vowels or nasal consonants. This archiphoneme has a wide variety of phonetic realizations, for example:

    [p]: [nʲipːõɴ] nippon 日本 'Japan'
    [pʲ]: [hapʲːakɯ] happyaku '800'
    [s]: [kasːẽɴ] kassen 合戦 'battle'
    [tʲɕ]: [satʲːɕi] satchi 察知 'inference'
    etc.

Another analysis of Japanese dispenses with /Q/ and other archiphonemes entirely. In this approach, the words above are phonemicized as shown below:

    [p]: [nʲipːõɴ] nippon 日本 'Japan'
    [pʲ]: [hapʲːakɯ] happyaku '800'
    [s]: [kasːẽɴ] kassen 合戦 'battle'
    [tʲɕ]: [satʲːɕi] satchi 察知 'inference'
    etc.

  • The contrast between /d/ and /z/ is neutralized before /ɯ/ and /i/. By convention, it is often assumed to be /z/, though some analyze it as /dz/, the voiced counterpart to /ts/. Among younger speakers, the contrast between /du/ and /zu/ has been reintroduced through loan words.

Vowel processes

Devoicing

Japanese vowels, especially /i/ and /ɯ/, tend to be devoiced when between unvoiced consonants except when they are in accented moras. Additionally, /i/ and /ɯ/ are optionally devoiced following a voiceless consonant and at the end of an utterance.

    kutsu 靴 'shoe'
    suhada すはだ 'bare skin'   ([sɯ] is not devoiced since it's accented)
    hikan 悲観 'pessimism'
    himo 紐 'string'   ([çi] is not devoiced since it accented)
    [çi̥kakɯ̥] hikaku 比較 'comparison'

To a lesser extent /o/ (and even rarer /a/) may be devoiced with the further requirement that there be two or more adjacent moras containing /o/.

Devoicing is common in even normal slow speech and is not restricted to only fast speech.

The common sentence-ending copula desu is pronounced [desɯ̥].

Gender roles also play a part: it is regarded as effeminate to pronounce devoiced vowels, particularly the terminal "u" as in "arimasu". Basilectic varieties of Japanese can sometimes be recognized by their hyper-devoicing, while in some Western dialects and some registers of formal speech, every vowel is pronounced.

Nasalization

Japanese vowels are slightly nasalized when adjacent to nasals /m, n/. Before the moraic nasal /N/, vowels are heavily nasalized:

Glottal stop insertion

At the beginning and end of utterances, Japanese vowels may be preceded and followed by a glottal stop [ʔ], respectively. This is demonstrated below with the following words (as pronounced in isolation):

When an utterance-final word is uttered with emphasis, this glottal stop is plainly audible, and is often indicated in the writing system with a small letter tsu っ called a sokuon.

Moras and phonotactics

If considered as a system of morae (or moras) instead of syllables, (as the katakana and hiragana phonetic writing systems explicitly do) the sound structure is very simple: The language is made of morae, each with the same approximate time value and stress (stress, here, being correlated with loudness, not pitch). The Japanese mora may consist of either a vowel or one of the two moraic consonants, /N/ and /Q/ (the less abstract analysis that dispenses with archiphonemes defines possible moraic consonants as any voiceless obstruent, or a nasal, in the syllable coda position. Scholars disagree over whether the coda nasal is limited to /n/ or can also include /m/). A vowel may be preceded by an optional (non-moraic) consonant, with or without a palatal glide /j/.

  • In this table, the period represents a division between moras, rather than the more common usage of a division between syllables.
Consonantal morae are restricted from occurring word initially, though utterances starting with [n] are possible. Vowels may be long, and consonants may be geminate (doubled). Geminate consonants are limited to a sequence of /Q/ plus a voiceless obstruent, though some words are written with geminate voiced obstruents. In the analysis without archiphonemes, geminate clusters are simply two identical consonants, one after the other.

In the writing system, each kana corresponds to a mora. The moraic /Q/ (i.e., the first half of a geminate cluster) is indicated by a small "tsu" symbol called a sokuon (subscript ッ in katakana, or っ in hiragana). Long vowels are usually indicated in katakana by a long dash following the first vowel, as in sābisu サービス 'service'. The direction of this dash follows the direction of writing.

In English, stressed syllables in a word are pronounced louder, longer, and with higher pitch, while unstressed syllables are relatively shorter in duration. In Japanese, all morae are pronounced with equal length and loudness. Japanese is therefore said to be a mora-timed language.

On the other hand, since all syllables have equal stress in Japanese, some unstressed syllables in European languages tend to be inaudible to the Japanese ear, leading to confusion.

(Compare to the syllable system of Finnish and Italian.)

Prosody

In Japanese, an accented mora is pronounced with higher pitch than the following mora. This is part of the Japanese intonation pattern.

See also Japanese pitch accent.

Japanese does have a distinct intonation pattern. This pattern can be heard not only in individual words, but also in whole sentences. Intonation is produced by a rise and fall in pitch over certain syllables. In the case of questions, the Japanese intonation patterns bear little resemblance to the English ones. This is a large source of confusion for many non-native speakers.

The Japanese intonation pattern varies with regional dialect.

Notes

  1. Akamatsu (1997) speculates that only 10% of population are consistent [ɡ] users.
  2. Note that the symbol ゜is used by Japanese academia to distinguish between [ɡ] and [ŋ].

Bibliography

  • Akamatsu, Tsutomu. (1997). Japanese phonetics: Theory and practice. München: LINCOM EUROPA. ISBN 3-8958-6095-6.
  • Akamatsu, Tsutomu. (2000). Japanese phonology: A functional approach. München: LINCOM EUROPA. ISBN 3-89586-544-3.
  • Bloch, Bernard. (1950). Studies in colloquial Japanese IV: Phonemics. Language, 26, 86–125.
  • Haraguchi, Shosuke. (1977). The tone pattern of Japanese: An autosegmental theory of tonology. Tokyo: Kaitakusha. ISBN 0-8704-0371-0.
  • Haraguchi, Shosuke. (1999). Accent. In N. Tsujimura (Ed.), The handbook of Japanese linguistics (Chap. 1, p. 1–30). Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishers. ISBN 0-631-20504-7. ISBN 0-6312-0504-7.
  • Kubozono, Haruo. (1999). Mora and syllable. In N. Tsujimura (Ed.), The handbook of Japanese linguistics (Chap. 2, pp. 31–61). Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishers. ISBN 0-6312-0504-7.
  • Ladefoged, Peter. (2001). A course in phonetics (4th ed.). Boston: Heinle & Heinle, Thomson Learning.
  • Martin, Samuel E. (1975). A reference grammar of Japanese. New Haven: Yale University Press. ISBN 0-3000-1813-4.
  • McCawley, James D. (1968). The phonological component of a grammar of Japanese. The Hague: Mouton.
  • Okada, Hideo. (1999). Japanese. In Handbook of the International Phonetic Association: A guide to the usage of the International Phonetic Alphabet (pp. 117–119). Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0-5216-5236-7; ISBN 0-5216-3751-1 (pbk).
  • Pierrehumbert, Janet; & Beckman, Mary. (1988). Japanese tone structure. Lingustic inquiry monographs (No. 15). Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press. ISBN 0-262-16109-5; ISBN 0-262-66063-6.
  • Sawashima, Masayuki; & Miyazaki, S. (1973). Glottal opening for Japanese voiceless consonants. Annual Bulletin of the Research Institute of Logopedics and Phoniatrics, University of Tokyo, Faculty of Medicine, 7, 1-10.
  • Shibatani, Masayoshi. (1990). Japanese. In B. Comrie (Ed.), The major languages of east and south-east Asia. London: Routledge. ISBN 0-4150-4739-0.
  • Shibatani, Masayoshi. (1990). The languages of Japan. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0-5213-6070-6 (hbk); ISBN 0-5213-6918-5 (pbk).
  • Vance, Timothy J. (1987). An introduction to Japanese phonology. Albany: State University of New York Press. ISBN 0-8870-6360-8; ISBN 0-8870-6361-6 (pbk.).

 

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