Auditory transposition of consonants and vowels... it this just in my head?

Japanese
#1

When listening to various training material, there are certain sound combos where I feel like the vowels and consonants get transposed. One particular example:

しつ

Actual romanization: shi-tsu
What I sometimes here: ish-tsu

My theory on how this happens:

  1. Often it seems that with syllables ending in i or u, the vowel sound is minimized or completely omitted. Especially at the end of words, this seems very accepted. I.e. ます and です are most often pronounced moss and dess… at least as I hear them. But it’s not just the end of word. I.e. スペイン usually sounds more like spain (i.e. close to the actual English pronunciation) rather than supain. So, given this transformation, instead of shi-tsu we might just hear sh-tsu. This transformation feels sometimes like an intentional choice.

  2. Imagine a word like 教室. Textbook pronunciation: kyō-shi-tsu. But, the boundary between ō and shi often feels like it gets a soft i squeezed in there during the transition. When I say soft i, I mean more like the English soft i in “kid” (which I don’t think really exists in Japanese). So this can transform kyō-shi-tsu into kyō-ih-shi-tsu (where ih is the sound I just described). This transformation feels less like a choice and more just like an intermediate sound I hear that happens as two other sounds are being squished together.

Combine #1 and #2, and you get kyō-shi-tsu → kyō-ish-tsu. Which in my brain feels like the shi sound got inverted (vowel and consonant transposed).

How crazy am I?

1 Like
#2

This definitely happens with 雰囲気 !
(ふんいき → ふいんき)

1 Like
#3

す and つ are often pronounced voicelessly which is why we get pronunciations like mas for ます and ski for 月 and 好き, but I’ve also noticed this problem, most noticeably in the word 範囲 はんい… I usually hear it pronounced more like はいん

Edit to expound more on the first point:

The vowels “i” and “u” tend to be devoiced when pronounced between two voiceless consonants (according to this list these include f,” “h,” “t,” “k,” “p,” and “s.”
They are also likely to be devoiced when they appear at the end of a word or sentence (such as in desu and masu).
There are other cases of vowel devoicing as well. I’m not a linguist so the finer details are a bit beyond me, but you can read a bit about it on this wikipedia article, though it’s definitely not light reading.

What you’re talking about with “kyoushitsu” (though personally I don’t hear it) is called “metathesis.” This is when sounds are transposed. The case of “funiki” being pronounced as “fuinki” is well known because pronouncing “fun - iki” is particularly difficult. I think this is one of the most famous examples of metathesis in Japanese.

But I do think you might be a little crazy, cause I’ve never heard “shitsu” pronounced like “ishtsu” haha. If you have a recording you can share I’d be interested to hear it!

1 Like
#4

Note that it only happens in compound words like 教室. I think both of the audio examples here kind of do it. Admittedly I think they illustrate #2 (the extra i being inserted before the shi) more clearly than #1 (the i at the end of the shi disappearing)/

#5

For some reason I can’t click this link! Could you paste it as plain text for me? :pray:

#6

Hmm, try this: https://www.wanikani.com/vocabulary/教室

Weirdly enough, I actually don’t hear the problem happening with fun-iki. I hadn’t learned that word yet, but I just listened to 3 versions of it (2 on WK and 1 on jisho), and on some I feel like the n disappears (so it just sounds like fu-iki), but I never really feel like the i and n change places. But, it’s really hard to say… it happens so fast.

#7

I think you accidentally posted the wrong link, since those are both links for the WK vocabulary page for funiki :slight_smile:
The wanikani pronunciation for funiki is how it’s supposed to be pronounced, but in the wild it is quite often pronounced transposed.

I found this interesting blog post about the metathesis of it:

Unfortunately I cant find an audio example because of course all “how to pronounce” type videos are making an effort to pronounce it properly.

1 Like
#8

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/1-cTg6dqzVI

1 Like
#9

bless the lord bunny

1 Like
#10

For a different take on the pronunciation of 雰囲気:

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/saidi3VDt2w

1 Like
#11

You’re right, I fixed it. I also fixed the link in the original comment. It wasn’t working for me either! I had originally omitted the https:// prefix in the URL, which apparently this forum doesn’t like.

#12

Thank you!
I listened but all I hear is “kyou-sh(i)tsu” - in the female audio, the i is more omitted/devoiced than it is in the male audio. But I dont hear it being transposed in either. I’ll be interested in what other people say though, since I don’t have the most sensitive ears to subtle pronunciation differences :slight_smile:

#13

Thanks!

As a completely unrelated sidenote, I often search jisho using romaji. I was having a really hard time getting a match for huniki, so I asked ChatGPT to give me the correct romaji for the kanji, and now I know why on’yomi and kun’yomi have those apostrophes! I guess it’s not very common to have a middle-of-word n like that… those are the only two places I’ve seen those apostrophes before, and I think I just assumed they were magic words.

1 Like
#14

You only use the apostrophe following the n if it’s needed for disambiguation, like bunpou doesn’t need to be written bun’pou because “npo” can’t be interpreted any other way than んぽ, while nyo for example can be either にょ or んよ if an apostrophe isn’t used to differentiate them. Not sure if you figured that out already, but just in case, thought I’d clarify.

2 Likes
#15

I definitely can immagine that い in 教室, but it’s more like echo of my internal voice.

Then I went to youglish.com and tried listening it there dozens of times, but even if my brain thinks for a second it could be い, after a replay it’s really clear that it’s actually just う

On the other side ん and い switch is definitely real and I see it quite often

2 Likes
#16

Thanks, I had not! Makes sense.

#17

Yeah, I kind of suspected I was imagining it. It’s a sort of auditory illusion. Thanks.

1 Like
#18

I was having the same issue with 靴下. But I just listened to both audio files like 20x each and eventually I stopped hearing “koo tsoo ish ta” and now just hear “koo tsoosh ta”. Brains are funny.

1 Like
#19

Talking about how funny our brains are, the next plot twist should be: you were right from the beninging and we all just made you gaslight your brain into thinking it’s not there :eyes:

1 Like
#20

(ง •̀_•́)ง