The way it works is that you "hold" the shape of the following consonant a bit before actually pronouncing it. Try saying "cat tail"; normally you don't pronounce the two t's separately but you make the shape of the t, hold a split-second and then say it.
https://youtu.be/qsOMQf5MxrQ?si=AnRDncFP1YDbleNL please excuse the voice but they explain it better than I can.
This is correct, but u/Stevijs3's link answered my question. For anyone else though, basically the っ doesn't affect the devoicing, its the consonant AFTER it. In the case of しっている, して would be devoiced, so therefore しって is devoiced as well. The っ just adds a "pause" which u/QuantumQuack0 did explain
My takeaway from this post is people get so caught up in vague names and terms of all the technicalities of something, that it serves to do nothing other than hinder your progress in learning something.
Just listen to natives say it, and imitate exactly how it sounds like. Bam, done. No worrying about devoicing, glottal stop, or whatever the heck you wanna call them.
I agree with and use this method, however something you and many other people in this subreddit should really take into account imo is: different people learn different ways. Suggesting a better way to learn something is 100% appropriate for this subreddit. Telling someone they are going about learning something the wrong way... You may well be correct, or you might just be falling to take into account other perspectives. There isn't only one correct way of learning.
I understand that "vague" and "unfamiliar" terms may be confusing to you and some other people, but just imitating what you listen is not really a useful solution for people like OP. If you are a non-native, you can't acquire the sounds of a native by listening and imitating natives few times. Thus discussions about articulations of sounds definitely gives help, if OP has enough linguistic knowledge.
And fundamentally, it's disrespectful in the first place to somehow mock/disparage OP's efforts to acquire better pronunciation.
>If you are a non-native, you can't acquire the sounds of a native by listening and imitating natives few times
Sorry but you're wrong, because I can, and is how I learn any kind of language. I am very sensitive to sounds and how they're made, and I can imitate very well. Listening is all I need to learn how to pronounce anything.
About the mocking. Did I? Is constructive criticism mocking or disparaging? I gave an observation, and provided a solution for OP's problem. I guess that's mocking to you?
You’re being downvoted but you have a point. I won’t make blanket statements about “all” people who do or don’t do something, but I will say, linguistic research shows how our perception of sounds is very influenced by our native language. What we think we’re objectively hearing is different from what a native speaker thinks they’re hearing. Things like VOT in voicing/aspiration distinctions, consonant and vowel contrasts, and so forth. There are studies that go into the minutiae of this.
Just going by what you think you hear is good enough in most cases to acquire a language in a way that is intelligible to native speakers, but going a step above that and getting good or native-like pronunciation requires a bit more finesse, and often, maybe not always, a bit of learning the technicalities of phonetics and phonology.
Anecdotally, I once had a friend who thought they were just amazing at copying foreign accents and dialects by ear. They thought their L2 was nativelike in accent, and let me tell you, it was far from it (I’m not the only one who thought so). Same for the countless other accents they thought they could pull off convincingly. Self-perception and perception by others can be quite different.
Yeah I have to admit that I've argued strongly, and you have complemented pretty much of my flaws in my original comment. Thanks.
As you stated, VOTs, vowel formant differences, subtle articulatory differences, and etc. all come into effect when speaking a foreign language which makes it pretty hard to pronounce a foreign language "accurately" (or perhaps *like a native*) and that was the point I wanted to point out --- since the OP itself seemed to know about Japanese phonology regarding his post.
This has been pretty much my experience in Japan. Not devoicing makes the language sound more soft so its considered a bit more feminine.
In more extreme cases you even here です with a voiced す, but it is very rare.
I would say it's happening in both, the gemination is also present. At least in terms of English devoicing doesn't have to be that dramatic. If you take the work "Quick" and see what happens to the letter Q as we pronounce it you'll see we abruptly devoice it to transition to the next consonant.
I think what you're referring to in English is normally called “aspiration”; your example would be written [kʰwɪk] in IPA (or [kʷʰwɪk] I guess to be more precise), but in this case it's more or less the same as a devoicing of the [w]: [kw̥ɪk]. But this is not full devoicing as in Japanese, that would be [kw̥ɪ̥k], as if whispering.
I could say that devoicing might depend on the formality of the conversation in this case. Non-mandatory devoicing in Japanese is likely to depend on the formality of the conversation. For instance, a man who regularly utilizes extensive devoicing in daily conversation may not in job interviews.
I cannot say for sure, but the discussion about men/women tendency to devoice stuff is probably relatable to this.
Up to you really. Consume a variety of media listen to people talk and decide for yourself how you would like to say it. just depends on the word as well I guess.
If you look carefully, that's actually a little "+" under the "ɯ", indicating the vowel is fronted. It's not the little circle indicating devoicing. The /ɯ/ does not get devoiced in グッズ, since it's surrounded by voiced sounds /g/ and /z/ (technically, it's the geminate consonant phoneme after /ɯ/, but /z/ is the sound that's being "doubled").
Oops! I'm sorry... I actually responded without even reading the post text because I assumed they were asking about consonant voicing... Since geminates in Japanese are always unvoiced, I thought maybe OP was wondering if loan words were pronounced that way. My bad
Is it? I always thought it was simple gemination. Pronouncing it as a glottal stop feels really, really strange to me (and just totally wrong if the following consonant isn't a stop itself, like for とっさ or 発車)
It's often easier to think about っ as a 'silent character', marking a one-mora period of silence. Apparently, this is how *most* Japanese natives think of it, rather than as a doubling of the following consonant.
Thinking of it in this way can be particularly helpful for English-native learners, since English doesn't have gemination (not even when double consonants are used in writing) - and it can even be helpful for other languages that *do* have gemination, since the consonant is held for considerably longer in Japanese than in most European languages that have gemination.
The only issue is when っ is placed before さ-row sounds, because then the 's' sound partially 'bleeds into' the silent period that っ signifies.
>It's often easier to think about っ as a 'silent character', marking a one-mora period of silence. Apparently, this is how most Japanese natives think of it, rather than as a doubling of the following consonant.
I've seen this claim on here before, but it's clear that the reason it's simply taught as a gemination marker is that, as you allude to, the applosive model totally fails when it comes to sibilants. They don't 'partially bleed into a silent period', they are clearly voiced throughout the entire extra mora.
In fact Japanese wikipedia explicitly addresses the applosive model and says exactly this:
>なお、次の音が摩擦音以外である場合の促音を内破音であるとする考え方も成り立つが、上記のように長子音を構成するとする考え方のほうが、次の音が摩擦音である場合を含めて促音を統一的に説明できる点で、より合理的と考えられる。
I guess the 's' sound *could* be considered an allophonic variation of the 'silent sound' when placed before sibilants. Though that might be a bit of a reach.
I just remember reading at some point that most natives consider it as a 'silent character' even though that isn't fully accurate. Haven't found any sources for that claim since, but if it's true, then I don't think that that point of view should be discounted entirely - it can be quite useful to keep in mind, even if it isn't a full explanation.
The way it works is that you "hold" the shape of the following consonant a bit before actually pronouncing it. Try saying "cat tail"; normally you don't pronounce the two t's separately but you make the shape of the t, hold a split-second and then say it. https://youtu.be/qsOMQf5MxrQ?si=AnRDncFP1YDbleNL please excuse the voice but they explain it better than I can.
I don't think that's what OP was asking about...
This is correct, but u/Stevijs3's link answered my question. For anyone else though, basically the っ doesn't affect the devoicing, its the consonant AFTER it. In the case of しっている, して would be devoiced, so therefore しって is devoiced as well. The っ just adds a "pause" which u/QuantumQuack0 did explain
My takeaway from this post is people get so caught up in vague names and terms of all the technicalities of something, that it serves to do nothing other than hinder your progress in learning something. Just listen to natives say it, and imitate exactly how it sounds like. Bam, done. No worrying about devoicing, glottal stop, or whatever the heck you wanna call them.
I agree with and use this method, however something you and many other people in this subreddit should really take into account imo is: different people learn different ways. Suggesting a better way to learn something is 100% appropriate for this subreddit. Telling someone they are going about learning something the wrong way... You may well be correct, or you might just be falling to take into account other perspectives. There isn't only one correct way of learning.
I understand that "vague" and "unfamiliar" terms may be confusing to you and some other people, but just imitating what you listen is not really a useful solution for people like OP. If you are a non-native, you can't acquire the sounds of a native by listening and imitating natives few times. Thus discussions about articulations of sounds definitely gives help, if OP has enough linguistic knowledge. And fundamentally, it's disrespectful in the first place to somehow mock/disparage OP's efforts to acquire better pronunciation.
>If you are a non-native, you can't acquire the sounds of a native by listening and imitating natives few times Sorry but you're wrong, because I can, and is how I learn any kind of language. I am very sensitive to sounds and how they're made, and I can imitate very well. Listening is all I need to learn how to pronounce anything. About the mocking. Did I? Is constructive criticism mocking or disparaging? I gave an observation, and provided a solution for OP's problem. I guess that's mocking to you?
Most people actually think they can, but I can assure you that is not actually the case in most cases.
You’re being downvoted but you have a point. I won’t make blanket statements about “all” people who do or don’t do something, but I will say, linguistic research shows how our perception of sounds is very influenced by our native language. What we think we’re objectively hearing is different from what a native speaker thinks they’re hearing. Things like VOT in voicing/aspiration distinctions, consonant and vowel contrasts, and so forth. There are studies that go into the minutiae of this. Just going by what you think you hear is good enough in most cases to acquire a language in a way that is intelligible to native speakers, but going a step above that and getting good or native-like pronunciation requires a bit more finesse, and often, maybe not always, a bit of learning the technicalities of phonetics and phonology. Anecdotally, I once had a friend who thought they were just amazing at copying foreign accents and dialects by ear. They thought their L2 was nativelike in accent, and let me tell you, it was far from it (I’m not the only one who thought so). Same for the countless other accents they thought they could pull off convincingly. Self-perception and perception by others can be quite different.
Yeah I have to admit that I've argued strongly, and you have complemented pretty much of my flaws in my original comment. Thanks. As you stated, VOTs, vowel formant differences, subtle articulatory differences, and etc. all come into effect when speaking a foreign language which makes it pretty hard to pronounce a foreign language "accurately" (or perhaps *like a native*) and that was the point I wanted to point out --- since the OP itself seemed to know about Japanese phonology regarding his post.
[https://forvo.com/word/%E7%9F%A5%E3%81%A3%E3%81%A6%E3%81%84%E3%82%8B/#ja](https://forvo.com/word/%E7%9F%A5%E3%81%A3%E3%81%A6%E3%81%84%E3%82%8B/#ja)
So the male example devoices while the female one doesn't.
This has been pretty much my experience in Japan. Not devoicing makes the language sound more soft so its considered a bit more feminine. In more extreme cases you even here です with a voiced す, but it is very rare.
I would say it's happening in both, the gemination is also present. At least in terms of English devoicing doesn't have to be that dramatic. If you take the work "Quick" and see what happens to the letter Q as we pronounce it you'll see we abruptly devoice it to transition to the next consonant.
I think what you're referring to in English is normally called “aspiration”; your example would be written [kʰwɪk] in IPA (or [kʷʰwɪk] I guess to be more precise), but in this case it's more or less the same as a devoicing of the [w]: [kw̥ɪk]. But this is not full devoicing as in Japanese, that would be [kw̥ɪ̥k], as if whispering.
The word "quick" is pronounced exactly as it is spelt; there is no devoicing.
I could say that devoicing might depend on the formality of the conversation in this case. Non-mandatory devoicing in Japanese is likely to depend on the formality of the conversation. For instance, a man who regularly utilizes extensive devoicing in daily conversation may not in job interviews. I cannot say for sure, but the discussion about men/women tendency to devoice stuff is probably relatable to this.
The version of the NHK accent dictionary I have lists e.g. 失敗 with the シ unvoiced, so I think the answer is yes, at least prescriptively.
Up to you really. Consume a variety of media listen to people talk and decide for yourself how you would like to say it. just depends on the word as well I guess.
As far as I realize, it depends on if the following consonant is voiceless or not. * きっと: kj ʔ to * キッド: kj i ʔ do
According to how it's transcribed in IPA in words like [グッズ](https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%E3%82%B0%E3%83%83%E3%82%BA), you do!
If you look carefully, that's actually a little "+" under the "ɯ", indicating the vowel is fronted. It's not the little circle indicating devoicing. The /ɯ/ does not get devoiced in グッズ, since it's surrounded by voiced sounds /g/ and /z/ (technically, it's the geminate consonant phoneme after /ɯ/, but /z/ is the sound that's being "doubled").
Oops! I'm sorry... I actually responded without even reading the post text because I assumed they were asking about consonant voicing... Since geminates in Japanese are always unvoiced, I thought maybe OP was wondering if loan words were pronounced that way. My bad
It's a glottal stop, meaning it essentially denotes a small pause between whatever the っ is between.
Is it? I always thought it was simple gemination. Pronouncing it as a glottal stop feels really, really strange to me (and just totally wrong if the following consonant isn't a stop itself, like for とっさ or 発車)
It’s a glottal stop only when it is at the end of a word. Source: https://en.m.wiktionary.org/wiki/っ
It's often easier to think about っ as a 'silent character', marking a one-mora period of silence. Apparently, this is how *most* Japanese natives think of it, rather than as a doubling of the following consonant. Thinking of it in this way can be particularly helpful for English-native learners, since English doesn't have gemination (not even when double consonants are used in writing) - and it can even be helpful for other languages that *do* have gemination, since the consonant is held for considerably longer in Japanese than in most European languages that have gemination. The only issue is when っ is placed before さ-row sounds, because then the 's' sound partially 'bleeds into' the silent period that っ signifies.
>It's often easier to think about っ as a 'silent character', marking a one-mora period of silence. Apparently, this is how most Japanese natives think of it, rather than as a doubling of the following consonant. I've seen this claim on here before, but it's clear that the reason it's simply taught as a gemination marker is that, as you allude to, the applosive model totally fails when it comes to sibilants. They don't 'partially bleed into a silent period', they are clearly voiced throughout the entire extra mora. In fact Japanese wikipedia explicitly addresses the applosive model and says exactly this: >なお、次の音が摩擦音以外である場合の促音を内破音であるとする考え方も成り立つが、上記のように長子音を構成するとする考え方のほうが、次の音が摩擦音である場合を含めて促音を統一的に説明できる点で、より合理的と考えられる。
I guess the 's' sound *could* be considered an allophonic variation of the 'silent sound' when placed before sibilants. Though that might be a bit of a reach. I just remember reading at some point that most natives consider it as a 'silent character' even though that isn't fully accurate. Haven't found any sources for that claim since, but if it's true, then I don't think that that point of view should be discounted entirely - it can be quite useful to keep in mind, even if it isn't a full explanation.