Was it a Mosquito (ka) or a Moth (ga)?
“I still can’t differentiate mosquito (ka) from moth (ga)... The professor told me again that my pronunciation was wrong. My friend is having the same problem.” .
Many of you may have had similar experiences. You can get yourself in real trouble by pronouncing “I’m a university student (daigakusei)” like “I’ve been expelled (taigakusei),” or “It’s time (jikan)” like “It’s a groper (chikan).”
We could all use advice and suggestions on how to deal with this.
In this article, I will introduce the standard Japanese spoken by young people. The article will provide a practical opportunity to learn the difference between those confusing “ka” and “ga” sounds in Japanese.
What are “voiced and voiceless consonants” in Japanese?
Japanese consonants are divided into voiceless consonants (like ka/ki/ku/ke/ko) and voiced consonants (like ga/gi/gu/ge/go). Other voiced/voiceless consonant pairs in Japanese include t and d, p and b, and s and z. As you can see, most of the consonants in Japanese are part of this classification, and learning their phonetics is an extremely important part of Japanese study.
If you are struggling with both hearing and pronunciation of voiced and voiceless consonants in Japanese, try paying attention to the following two points.
Exhaling
The first important point is whether you exhale on the consonant or not. The most important thing about voiceless consonants is to exhale. The more air you let out, the stronger the voiceless consonant will be. The more you keep the air in, the closer you will be to a voiced consonant.
However, given the need for natural pronunciation as well, the ideal degree for Japanese voiceless consonants is to let out just enough air to brush the palm of your hand if you cover your mouth. Depending on the language, it can be necessary to exhale more forcefully, but in Japanese (other than shouting), there is no need to do so. For voiced consonants, conversely, it is important not to exhale.
If “watashi” sounds like “wadashi,” that is, if a voiceless consonant is being pronounced like a voiced consonant, try to exhale on the “t” so that it does not become a “d.”
Voiceless consonants are “pitched higher”
Next, note that voiceless consonants tend to be pitched higher than voiced consonants. This is a byproduct of the amount of air used, a phenomenon in which sounds with more air tend to be higher.
However, because some words in Japanese have specific accent patterns, when observing the difference in pitch between voiced and voiceless consonants, the easiest way is to compare two words with the same accent pattern.
For example, Kinkakuji and Ginkakuji are both accented with a high first syllable, but the pitch is slightly higher for the word Kinkakuji. The same phenomenon can be observed in the previously mentioned “chikan/jikan” and “taigakusei/daigakusei.”
Could voiced consonants be difficult even for native Japanese speakers?
While there are individual differences in voiced and voiceless consonants in Japanese due to regional dialects or to age, here I will introduce an example of changes in the standard Japanese spoken by young people.
According to a recent research (Takada 2011), an analysis of phonetic data from young people shows a notable tendency for voiced consonants at the beginning of words in particular to become voiceless. For example, one report has noted that some sports announcers pronounce “gin medal” (silver medal) like “kin medal” (gold medal) (Kubozono 2017). Confusion between voiced and voiceless consonants is now occurring even among native Japanese speakers.
In other words, the pronunciation of voiced consonants no longer requires exaggerated vibration of the vocal cords, as in “nga.” Therefore, a gap is appearing between the sounds that Japanese language learners actually hear and those that they are taught in class, with voiced sounds becoming even harder to understand.
The degree to which consonants are voiced or voiceless, as noted above, varies by country, region, and age; observing them in daily life, including these factors, can provide hints for Japanese study.
Many other languages have voiced and voiceless consonants the way Japanese does; however, each language is different, and the individual properties of the language cannot be conveyed simply by letters of the alphabet like t and d.
The fact is that the difference between voiced and voiceless consonants is a gradual one, not absolute. You will find it helpful for Japanese study to compare the amount of air exhaled and the pitch in Japanese and in other languages, including your native tongue.
“Cloudy” sounds?
Voiceless and voiced consonants are also called seion and dakuon, or “clear” and “cloudy” sounds. For learners of Japanese as a foreign language, it may not come naturally to think of phonemes such as /p, t, k, s/ as “clear” or /b, d, g, z/ as “cloudy.”
These terms come from the linguistic sense of native Japanese speakers with regard to these sounds. The most obvious appearance of this sense is in Japanese onomatopoeia (Kubozono ed., 2017).
For instance, the phrase “sarasara” refers to a clean, smooth, pleasant surface, while “zarazara” expresses an irregular, unpleasant, unclean sensation. In this way, switching voiced and voiceless consonants can create different meanings and impressions among words. Mastering voiced and voiceless consonants is an important item in the process of expanding your range of expression in Japanese.
Works Cited
- Kubozono Haruo (2017) Tsujinai Nihongo: Sedai sa/chiiki sa kara miru kotoba no fushigi (Misunderstood Japanese: The mysteries of language seen from generational and regional differences) Heibonsha.
- Kubozono Haruo, ed. (2017) Onomatope no nazo: Pikachu kara mofumofu made (The mystery of onomatopoeia: From Pikachu to fluff) Iwanami Shoten.
- Takada Mieko (2011) Nihongo no goto heisaon no kenkyu: VOT no kyojiteki bunpu to tsujiteki henka (A study of initial plosives in Japanese: Synchronic distribution and diachronic changes of VOT) Kurosio Publishers.