Japanese phonology

This article contains phonetic transcriptions in the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA). For an introductory guide on IPA symbols, see Help:IPA. For the distinction between [ ], / / and ⟨ ⟩, see IPA § Brackets and transcription delimiters.

This article deals with the phonology (sound system) of the Japanese language.

Consonants

	Bilabial	Dental	Alveolar	Palatal	Velar	Uvular	Glottal
Stop	p b	t d			k ɡ
Nasal	m	n				ɴ̩
Flap			ɺ
Fricative			s z				h
Approximant				j	ɰ

Voiceless stops /p, t, k/ are slightly aspirated: less aspirated than English stops, but more so than Spanish.
/t, d, n/ are apical and denti-alveolar (i.e. the tongue apex contacts the back of the upper teeth and the front part of the alveolar ridge.) (note: before /i/, these sounds are alveolo-palatal.)
/s, z/ are laminal and alveolar.
/ɺ/ is an apical alveolar lateral flap. Japanese "r" is similar to Korean "r". To an English speaker's ears, its pronunciation lies somewhere between an "r" /ɾ/, an "l", and a "d". The sound may be made by lightly placing the tongue on the back of the upper set of teeth and producing the sound [l]. Japanese "r" is somewhat close to the Spanish "r" or the flap in American English, that is, the "t"s in be[tt]er and the "d"s in la[dd]er.
The compressed bilabial /ɰ/, transliterated "w" in Romaji, is essentially a non-moraic version of the vowel /ɯ/. This sound is not equivalent to rounded [w] since it is pronounced with lip compression and not lip rounding. (English /w/ is rounded.). The sound is also not equivalent to the velar approximant that occurs in Spanish, which is neither compressed nor rounded.

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

Vowels

Japanese has 5 vowels:

/i, ɯ, e, o, a/

Japanese vowels are pronounced as monophthongs (unlike English) similarly to their Italian or Spanish counterparts. The high back compressed vowel /ɯ/ is generally unrounded. More precisely, it is pronounced with "compressed lips", which is a different articulatory gesture from either rounded or unrounded lips: it is unrounded, but with lip spreading. While [ɯ] is an IPA representation of this vowel, the "ɯ=" to the right of the diagram is a possible narrow transcription as suggested by Okada (1999). (Note that there is no IPA symbol for lip compression.) It is often transliterated as u.

In some English dialects, Japanese vowels can be approximated as follows:

/a/ as in father
/i/ as in feet
/ɯ/ as in soup
/e/ as in get
/o/ as in go

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

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

In some analyses, Japanese has no diphthongs, instead having sequences of two different vowels. These sequences of two vowels are phonetically different from the diphthongs that occur in languages like English. In English a diphthong such as 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. However, based on pronunciation and syllabification, most phonologists would say that Japanese does have diphthongs, and that their different phonetic realization is due to language-specific rules.

Within words and phrase, Japanese allows long sequences of phonetic vowels without intervening pauses or consonants, as in [hoooo] hōō 鳳凰 'Firebird Goddess' and [toooooooɯ] tōō wo ōu 東欧を覆う 'to cover Eastern Europe'.

Phonological processes

Japanese contains a number of allophonic processes which greatly alter its phonetic realization.

Consonant processes

weakening

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

/b/ → [β]: /abaɺeɺɯ/ → [aβaɺeɺɯ] abareru 暴れる 'to behave violently'
/ɡ/ → [ɣ]: /haɡe/ → [haɣe] hage 禿 'baldness'

However, /ɡ/ is further complicated by its variant realization as a velar nasal [ŋ]. /g/ may be also weakened to a 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. The 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 *[ɡaijɯɯ])

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 (Akamatsu guesses only 10% of population) consistently uses [ɡ]: /kaɡɯ/ → [kaɡɯ] (but not *[kaŋɯ])

In the middle of compound words morpheme-initially:

B-speakers mentioned directly above consistently use [ɡ]: /kaɡɯ/ → [kaŋɯ] or [kaɡɯ] kagu 家具 'furniture'

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 (せんこ゚) 'postwar' = [seŋːo] for B-speakers (note that the symbol ゜is used by Japanese academia to distinguish between [ɡ] and [ŋ])

palatalization & affrication

The palatals /i/ and /j/ palatalize (and affricate) the consonants they follow.

The coronal consonants are affected as follows:

/s/ → alveolo-palatal fricative [ɕ]: /sio/ → [ɕio] shio 塩 'salt'
/z/ → alveolo-palatal [ɟʑ] or [ʑ]. Affricate [ɟʑ] tends to be pronounced at the beginning of utterances, while fricative [ʑ] occurs between vowels. Both sounds, however, are in free variation:
/n/ → alveolo-palatal [ȵ]:
/t/ → alveolo-palatal affricate [cɕ]:
/h/ → palatal fricative [ç] (as in German "mich"): hito /hito/ → [çi̥to]

In the case of the /s/, /z/, and /t/, when followed by /j/, the consonants are palatalized with /j/ merging into a single pronunciation:

/sj/ → [ɕ]: /sjaboɴ/ → [ɕabõɴ] shabon シャボン 'soap'
/zj/ → [ɟʑ] or [ʑ]: /zjagaimo/ → [ɟʑaŋaimo] じゃがいも 'potato'
/tj/ → [cɕ]: /tja/ → [cɕa] cha 茶 'tea'

Other (non-coronal) consonants are noticeably palatalized:

/m/ → palatalized [mʲ]: /ɯmi/ → [ɯmʲi] umi 海 'sea'
/ɡ/ → palatalized [ɡʲ]: /ɡjooza/ → [ɡʲooza] gyōza ぎょうざ 'fried dumpling'
etc.

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

/h/ → bilabial fricative [ɸ]: /hɯta/ → [ɸɯ̥ta] futa ふた 'lid'
/t/ → dental affricate [ʦ]: /tɯɡi/ → [ʦɯŋi] tsugi 次 'next'

moraic nasal

Phoneme /ɴ/, the moraic nasal, 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. (This is the "default" pronunciation.)
bilabial [m] before [p] and [b] (like English "ample", "umber);
dental [n] before coronals [d] and [t] (like English "and" and "ant");
velar [ŋ] before [k] and [g] (like English "sunk" and "sung");
[Ṽ] (a nasalized vowel) before vowels, approximants (/j/ and /ɰ/), and fricatives (/s/, /z/, and /h/).

moraic obstruent

Archiphoneme /Q/, the moraic obstruent, completely assimilates 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 occur before vowels or nasal consonants. This archiphoneme has a wide variety of phonetic realizations, for example:

[p̚] before [p]: /niQpoɴ/ → [nʲipːõɴ] nippon
[pʲ̚] before [pʲ]
[s̚] before [s]
[c̚] before [cɕ]
etc.

/d, z/ neutralization

The contrast between /d/ and /z/ is neutralized before /ɯ/ and /i/. By convention, it is often assumed to be /z/. Among younger speakers the contrast is maintained in loan words.

Vowel processes

devoicing

Japanese vowels, especially /i/ and /ɯ/, tend to be devoiced when between unvoiced consonants or at the end of sentences, except when they are in accented or lengthened syllables (as in inu or kami, for example). To speakers of other languages the preceding voiceless fricatives will appear to "wash out" the vowel altogether. For example, Matsushita is pronounced [maʦɯ́ɕi̥ta]", and 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, and formal or archaic dialects by their tendency to pronounce every syllable.

nasalization

Japanese vowels are nasalized when adjacent to nasal consonants, especially the moraic nasal /ɴ/.

glottal stop insertion

At the beginning and end of utterances, Japanese vowels may be preceded and followed by a glottal stop [ʔ], respectively. So, the word /ɯ/ u 鵜 'cormorant' uttered in isolation is realized as [ʔɯʔ]. When a utterance-final word is uttered with emphasis, this glottal stop is very audible and is often indicated in the writing system with a small letter tsu っ.

Moras and phonotactics

If considered as a system of morae 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 (or moras), 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, /ɴ̩/ and /Q/. A vowel may be preceded by an optional (non-moraic) consonant with or without a palatal glide /j/.

Mora Type	Example	Japanese	Morae per word
V	/i/	i 胃 'stomach'	1-mora word
CV	/te/	te 手 'hand'	1-mora word
CjV	/tja/	cha 茶 'tea'	1-mora word
N	/ɴ̩/ in /jo.ɴ̩/	yon 四 'four'	2-mora word
Q	/Q/ in /mi.Q.tɯ/	mittsu 三つ 'three'	3-mora word

For the most part consonantal morae are restricted from occurring word initially. Vowels may be long, and consonants may be geminate (doubled). Geminate consonants are most commonly a sequence of /Q/ plus a voiceless obstruent.

In the writing system, aach kana corresponds to a mora. The moraic /Q/ is indicated by a small "tsu" symbol (subscript ッ in katakana, or っ in hiragana). Long vowels are usually indicated in katakana by a horizontal long dash following the first vowel, as in sābisu サービス 'service'.

In English, stressed syllables in a word are pronounced louder and longer 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.)

Intonation

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

Bibliography

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