Japanese phonology

The phonology of Japanese features about 15 consonant phonemes, the cross-linguistically typical five-vowel system of /a, e, i, o, u/, and a relatively simple phonotactic distribution of phonemes allowing few consonant clusters. It is traditionally described as having a mora as the unit of timing, with each mora taking up about the same length of time, so that the disyllabic [ɲip.poɴ] ("Japan") may be analyzed as /niQpoN/ and dissected into four moras, /ni/, /Q/, /po/, and /N/. Standard Japanese is a pitch-accent language, wherein the position or absence of a pitch drop may determine the meaning of a word: /haꜜsiɡa/ "chopsticks", /hasiꜜɡa/ "bridge", /hasiɡa/ "edge" (see Japanese pitch accent). Unless otherwise noted, the following describes the standard variety of Japanese based on the Tokyo dialect. Voiceless stops /p, t, k/ are slightly aspirated: less aspirated than English stops, but more so than Spanish. /p/, a remnant of Old Japanese, now occurs almost always medially in compounds, typically as a result of gemination (as in 切符 kippu, 切腹 seppuku or 北方 hoppō) or after /N/ (as in 音符 onpu), and in a few older compounds as a result of the contractions of pronunciations over time (as in 河童 kappa). It occurs initially or medially in onomatopoeia. Some few non-onomatopoeic exceptions where it occurs initially include 風太郎 pūtarō, although as a personal name it is still pronounced Fūtarō. As gairaigo, loanwords of non-Middle-Chinese origin (non-Middle-Chinese Chinese borrowings such as パオズ paozu, ペテン peten as well as borrowings from non-Chinese languages such as パーティー pātī, etc.), enter the language, /p/ is increasingly used in transcription, initially or medially. /t, d, n/ are laminal denti-alveolar (that is, the blade of the tongue contacts the back of the upper teeth and the front part of the alveolar ridge) and /s, z/ are laminal alveolar. /w/ is traditionally described as a velar [ɰ] or labialized velar approximant [w] or something between the two, or as the semivocalic equivalent of /u/ with little to no rounding, while a 2020 real-time MRI study found it is better described as a bilabial approximant [β̞].

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Japanese pitch accent

Japanese pitch accent is a feature of the Japanese language that distinguishes words by accenting particular morae in most Japanese dialects. The nature and location of the accent for a given word may vary between dialects. For instance, the word for "now" is [iꜜma] in the Tokyo dialect, with the accent on the first mora (or equivalently, with a downstep in pitch between the first and second morae), but in the Kansai dialect it is [i.maꜜ]. A final [i] or [ɯ] is often devoiced to [i̥] or [ɯ̥] after a downstep and an unvoiced consonant.

Romanization of Japanese

The romanization of Japanese is the use of Latin script to write the Japanese language. This method of writing is sometimes referred to in Japanese as ローマ字. Japanese is normally written in a combination of logographic characters borrowed from Chinese (kanji) and syllabic scripts (kana) that also ultimately derive from Chinese characters. There are several different romanization systems. The three main ones are Hepburn romanization, Kunrei-shiki romanization (ISO 3602) and Nihon-shiki romanization (ISO 3602 Strict).

Rendaku

is a phenomenon in Japanese morphophonology that governs the voicing of the initial consonant of a non-initial portion of a compound or prefixed word. In modern Japanese, rendaku is common but at times unpredictable, with certain words unaffected by it. While kanji do not indicate rendaku, it is marked in kana with dakuten (voicing mark). Rendaku was initially an automatic and predictable process in Japanese.

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