I was recently going through my N2 vocab list, and got given 雰囲気.
I had learned this word naturally in Japanese contexts from natives, and on media and online would see ふいんき pronunciation be used often.
It wasn’t until I received the Bunpro vocab word that I realized that it was in fact ふんいき.
However, this is a topic that even Japanese people discuss such as here.
In fact, these two pronunciations are in a sense correct, but ふんいき would always be correct.
Anyone else have similar experiences?
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You are not alone 
I always pronounced it/read it as ふんいんき and recently found out its real reading. Now I’m having a hard time switching to the right one 
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I feel like literally everyone says ふいんき
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There’s a few pronunciations of it here by japanese natives. I’m overthinking it now, but yeah ふんいんき・ふんにんき is probably what I’ve over-confidently been saying, but you know, not corrected as usual
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When I’m not sure about something I usually use youglish: 雰囲気 | 6782 pronunciations of 雰囲気 in Japanese
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I’m glad I wandered across your comment. I didn’t know there’s something that searches YouTube. I’ve been using Forvo, so I’d usually see what @jrmr50 posted just before you.
I added YouGlish as a keyword search bookmark on Firefox: https://youglish.com/pronounce/%s/japanese. I’ll add it to my Anki cards when I get some time.
It works with partial phrases. For example, I can see what videos てはならない would pop up in. By extension, this also works as a video/channel recommender based on my searches.
Thank you.
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welp, i suppose i was today years old when i realized its not technically pronounced ふいんき. Now, the real question is whether or not to change the way i pronounce it to the technically correct version when everyone around me is saying ふいんき
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good recommendation thanks
(often find getting too into watching the clips and missing the actual word Ive looked up lol)
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When I’ve said it before as ふんいき - I was corrected by a Japanese person who said when it’s used in conversation you use ふいんき because it’s easier to say
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I’ve always read this as ふんいき because that’s how I learned it prior to hearing it, and I never really noticed until now that people say ふいんき, but I also have a hard time hearing sounds and now I wonder how I say it aloud if I’m not thinking about it! I’m pretty sure when I say it, I say something closer to ふんいんき and kind of mix the two, but I’ve never paid attention to this before.
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Maybe its regional? Everyone here says ふいんき too.
Yeah this outlier is talked about in Wani Kani. Lots of exceptions to prove the rule. Just like 美味しい.
The real pronunciation sticks in my head because it reminds me of funicular.
The way I eventually learned the pronunciation for ん+vowel for words ふんいき is that you make the n sound by closing your throat slightly, sort of like when you pronounce ng in “song,” but without the glottal stop from the g sound. It’s a very soft n sound. In Japanese and English, the hard n is pronounced by touching the the tongue to the top of the mouth, like “nice” or “の.”
its the same as saying instead of " the day after tomorrow" just “aftertomorrow”, except that the english version would be still technically correct but the japanese one not since those readings for the kanji don’t even excist.
Japanese butchered it for the sake of convenience.