Pronunciation - ~っ , う, and double kana

Japanese
#1

So. I’ve been studying Japanese for a whopping three months now, but I have a question tingling in the back of my mind.

What the heck is up with the pronunciation of ~っ , う, and double kana ??

Some days I think I understand but then others I’m completely lost. So now it’s time to clear it up once and for all.

I’m going to use the following examples -

-なかった : The negative plain past tense ending
だろう : casual assertive “right ?”
お母さん : mother

So for the itty bitty つ kana, what I’ve gathered is that it just means when you read the word you kind of cut off the length of the kana preceding it, んですか ? So のみなかった sounds more like "nominaka-ta"like you’ve choked a bit on the “ka” sound than nomina"kah"ta, yeah ?

It’s more the う and double kana sounds that mess with me. Do they both extend the sound of the preceding kana ? If so, why would you have two different ways of saying it ? And how would one then differentiate a word with no double kana sound and the mini つ ? For example, when you write out お母さん in furigana, you do おかあさん instead of おかさん - but for simplicity sake, let’s say it was pronounced as おかさん - what’s the difference between saying か and かっ ?

As for the difference between using a double kana and う, is it just you use double kana for any syllable you’re extending that isn’t お ? But then, if that’s the case, why is 通る said とおる ?

Hopefully I explained myself clearly :sweat_smile:

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#2

Everything really is as simple as it is written everywhere :slight_smile:

っ just doubles the following consonant.
So, from your example なかった = nakatta
but without it, it would be なかた = nakata

As for う after other vowels - it just lengthens it.
だろう = darou or daroooooooooo
while だろ would be jast daro

And finally double kana. It’s literally the same situation as with う.
But you can’t really use う after i or a, right?
So, in order to lengthen the vowel - another one is added.
おかあさん = okaaaaasan (long vowel)
while おかさん = okasan (just single short vowel)

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#3

ー＞飲まなかった（のまなかった）:slightly_smiling_face:

The "ー” found in katakana is another example.

You could probably find youtube listening more informative, the rule kinda clicks in the more you hear/read it. A native listener’s feedback is probably the quickest way to more accurate pronunciation IMO. Dogen’s YT channel goes into elaborate detail on pronunciation if you are interested as well.

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#4

The っ is called a glottal stop. In english we use it when we say uh-oh. You completely cut off the air flow while in anticipation of the next consonant.

The vowel doubling is a little inconsistence, and the おうis by far the most common followed by the ああ. In general it just means to lengthen the first vowel buy one length unit. In Japanese these are called mora. Each kana take up one mora. So instead of a single mora vowel its a double mora noun.

The break down is like this
おお・おう
ああ
ええ・えい
うう
いい

As you can see there are really only two inconsistent ones. The おう・おお and the えい・ええ.

The first two 99% of the time are pronounced the same. And reflect an old sound shift in japanese. The /e/ sound and /ei/ are somewhat interchangeable and there is a lot of disagreement in the phonetic/linguistic community on just what the correct way to pronounce it it is.

So in general you can always just treat it like a long vowel in english, but Japanese people think of it as a double mora vowel. The spelling can be inconsistent but its usually not that big of a deal.

Also in katakana its very transparent and consistent:
アー
イー
ウー
エー
オー

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