10 CHAPTER 1. THE SYNTAX
beat long, with certain combinations of kana lasting one and a half or two
beats.
The vowel sounds of Japanese, , , , and do not all have
English equivalents; is actually identical to the initial vowel sound in
”I” or ”eye” - that is, the ’a’ sound without the finalising ’i’ sound. The
is a liĴle easier, sounding like the ’ee’ in ’creep’. The is particularly an-
noying, because there is no Enlgish equivalent. It is identical to the vowel
sounds of properly ScoĴish ’you’ or ’do’, or the Dutch open ’u’ such as in
’huren’. is pronounced like in the English ’help’, and the , finally, is
pronounced like the ’o’ in ’or’.
While for most kana the consonant sound is reasonably approxi-
mated by the transcribed consonant as listed in the tables above, there are a
few notable exceptions. For instance, while romanised as ”hi”, / is usu-
ally pronounced with a consonant that doesn’t sound as an ’h’, but more
like the German or ScoĴich ”ch” as found in such German words such as
”ich” (meaning ”I”) and ScoĴish words such as ”loch” (meaning ”lake”).
Also in the -colum, the syllable / does not have an ’h’ as conso-
nant sound, or even the ’f’ consonant sound that it is typically transcribed
with, but rather uses only pure aspiration as initial sound. This is essen-
tially unknown in most western languages, and will be the hardest to get
right for people starting out with Japanese. Rather than being formed in
the mouth, the syllable starts being formed at the diaphragm, while
breathing out. Paired with the lips shaped as if casually blowing out a
match or candle (rather than tightened for whistling), this rush of air is
then given a vowel sound, and the syllable is complete.
In the –column we also see an interesting pronunciation ’quirk’:
while and , strictly speaking, have voiced versions (wriĴen and
) over the years the difference in pronunciation between and , and
and , has all but disappeared, leading to an official move towards
replacing these and with and entirely. Thus, word that tradi-
tionally use these syllables, such as and , are today wriĴen using
the voiced –column syllables instead: and. This leaves an odd
quirk when compound nouns incur a voicing, such as a noun compound
involving the verb , pronounced , ”tsuku”. These compounds typ-
ically see turning into. In modern Japanese, this voicing has be-
come less apparent, as has become an acceptable spelling as well. That
said, voicing in compound nouns is a bit strange in that there are no rules
to tell when something will, or will not voice, so the best strategy – which
applies to learning words in general anyway – is to learn words as word
first, then learn them as combinations, rather than the other way around.
Finally, the –column can be a problem because for most western