Japanese Phonology - Consonants

Consonants

^1 /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. Before /i/, these sounds are alveolo-palatal and before /u/ they are alveolar .

^2 /ɴ/ is a moraic nasal. Before another stop, it becomes homorganic with that consonant; before fricatives or between vowels, it nasalizes the preceding vowel. Word-finally before a pause, it may be realized as a uvular nasal stop, a bilabial nasal stop, or as a nasal vowel. Some analyses treat this as an abstract archiphoneme /N/; some as a coda /n/.

^3 Voiceless stops /p, t, k/ are slightly aspirated: less aspirated than English stops, but more so than Spanish.

^4 Voiced stops /b, ɡ/ do not always achieve full occlusion, being sometimes realized as fricatives or approximants. Intervocalic /ɡ/ is realized as in many dialects, especially in eastern Japan.

^5 /z/ in pronounced in pausa by many speakers. It is before /i/.

^6 /r/ is an apical postalveolar flap undefined for laterality. That is, it is specified as neither a central nor a lateral flap, but may vary between the two. It is similar to the Korean r. To an English speaker's ears, its pronunciation varies between a flapped d (, as in American English buddy) and a flapped l, sounding most like d before /i/ and /j/ listen, most like l before /o/ listen, and most like a retracted flap before /a/.

^7 The compressed velar is essentially a non-moraic version of the vowel /u/. It is not equivalent to a typical IPA, since it is pronounced with lip compression rather than rounding.

^8 /h/ is before /i/ and /j/ listen, and before /u/ listen, coarticulated with the labial compression of that vowel.

^9 // is consonant gemination. It may be equivalent to glottal stop, at the ends of a few words.