Sounds

Today’s topic is something that very few people knew about when learning Japanese several decades ago, but is becoming a more increasingly popular topic among modern Japanese language learners. What is pitch accent in Japanese? It is both similar to … Read more

Now we get to an interesting part of the Sounds of Japanese. Well actually, it’s all been interesting, but this part is something unique. I’m talking about silent and semi-silent vowels in Japanese. The official name for the phenomenon is … Read more

Today we are going to cover a very important part of Japanese phonetics that is represented by a special character. It’s not a new kana, you’ve seen it before, just not quite like this. The reason is because it is … Read more

As you learned in the beginning of this course, the Japanese language only has five vowels. But if that’s true, then what the heck are “long vowels” in Japanese? Well, since there are such a small number of different vowels … Read more