Bunpro is constantly making me wrong for typing zu instead of du for づ. It’s infuriating! Is there a setting to change this?
Wikipedia states zu for the romanization of this. Other apps I’m using to learn use zu. My native Japanese wife says she would also use zu… why is Bunpro different here?
Its probably because the づ is a rendaku of つ. Maybe typing du instead of zu ensures you know the original pronunciation of the kanji (つ not す)? In any case, when it happens to me I just correct my answer and move on to avoid dropping the SRS level
If you use an IME keyboard and type zu, you get ず and if you type du, you get づ. Even though they have very similar pronunciations they are in fact two different characters and there will be times where you need to use the correct one. This should not be infuriating as it is the correct way to type in order to get the correct kana.
Hey @wpragnell !
There is no setting to change this since づ (du) and ず (zu) are different letters!
It has been standardized to use ‘du’ and ‘zu’ on the Japanese keyboard to differentiate between ず and づ because they are pronounced the same, but they are different letters.
When wikipedia states that ‘zu’ is the romanization for づ, it is talking about the Hepburn romanization. This is different from JIS X 4063:2000 which is the standardized method for converting keystrokes to kana. The difference between the two is that JIS X 4063:2000 is not meant for romanization, but simply a input method.
What this means is that to type ぬまづ, you have to type ‘numadu’, but if you want to romanize ぬまづ you can use ‘zu’ instead of ‘du’ (Numazu).
Hope this answers your question!
I heard that in some places they are pronounced slightly differently. Is that right? 
Thanks for the detailed explanation. I guess the frustration comes from this being implemented differently across apps and platforms. Not much to be done about that I suppose.
zu and du do produce different characters when you type in Japanese, so that’s why it’s incorrect.
zu = ず
du = づ
You made me curious so I asked 4 of my coworkers and they all said it was pronounced the same. I live in Hokkaido, so maybe there are regional differences, but they all seemed very confident that there aren’t.
Yeah my wife (from Fukuoka originally, but spent a long time in Fukushima) also says they are pronounced the same.
Are they really pronounced the same? In my native language (slovak), we have a letter “dz”, so it is natural that I see づ as “dzu” and ず as “zu”. There is a tiny difference in pronunciation. The scale from softest to sharpest sounds is: “su” (す) - “zu” (ず) - “dzu” (づ) - “tsu” (つ)
At least that is how I have been looking at it, I’ll have to iron it out once I get to level where I can actually listen to japanese.
Depends on dialect. You can look up yotsugana (四つ仮名) if you want, but they, along with ぢandじ, originally represented four different morae but now have been assimilated to varying degrees based on dialect. 東京弁 and 関西弁 only recognize ji and zu, which is why it’s represented as such in Hepburn, and why it’s slowly becoming the default, but some distinguish all four or even only one sound for all four kana.
Regarding both ず/づ and じ/ぢ:
Phonetic differences exists in some dialects, in others it has with time been merged.
In modern Tokyo dialect and Kyoto dialect there’s no difference in either pair.
Ōita dialect maintain a difference for ず/づ , and Kōchi dialect maintain a difference for both ず/づ and じ/ぢ.
For the Kyoto dialect the transition happened in the 1600’s, with indications that じ/ぢ probably merged some time before ず/づ.
The merger of sounds has also altered the spelling of some words, for example 屑 used to be written as くづ.
My source for this info is ”Handbook of Japanese Phonetics and Phonology” chapter 15 ”Historical phonology”.
What do you tape for ぢ please?
Di = ぢ
Thank you!
The funniest part to me is that there is a difference in English.
and most Japanese speakers struggle with this difference.
It helps to know we you are saying つづく.
Hi!
ちなみに, I was doing my kanji review for today and was going through the different forms of かたい, when I noticed that 難しい can be written either as むずかしい or むづかしい (and even むつかしい!).
During 1930’s type era づ also was pronounced Zu or Dzu but I’m not sure about the reason for that, but pretty sure it’s about old phonetics, they were distinct zu was for a Z sound but dzu was a softer z, some words written with zu used to be pronounced dzu most often used in onyomi and classic usages
When you say ”softer”, are you talking about there being a different amount of air exhalation force for zu and dzu?
Interesting if that was the case, sounds quite similar to ㅈ and ㅊ in Korean.
Yeah, it’s not exactly spelled Dzu it’s just a sound, and they put it into words after they had to make romaji and stuff, so it’s just a sound that was softer and changed to Zu for some people, they will say it’s du, maybe some readings are Du? I never saw any like that though, like tsudzuku 続くit sounds weird to say 2 nearly identical sounding letters so it’s dzu ( I think ) never heard anyone say Tsuduku lol
What I mean is in Japanese they don’t say Dzu or Du or Zu they just have kanjis as you know so, who knows whats the right spelling, I say it’s Dzu though since its the way to read it, I found it odd sometimes its read Zu though, maybe it needs some context to change the sound? Dont know
Also in the Microsoft IME it’s written du for whatever reason but its said dzu, I’m not an expert or anything so don’t take my word for granted ;-;