Page 33 - Basic Japanese

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Voiceless Voiced

kin gold gin silver

chi blood ji graphic character,
letter

tō ten dō how

sō so, right zō elephant

pan bread ban guard,
watchman

In English, the sounds we call VOWELS, those made

without any close contact between the tongue and top of
the mouth, are always voiced, unless we are softly

whispering. In Japanese, vowel sounds are often unvoiced
when they come between voiceless consonants. Virtually

every speaker of Japanese pronounces the vowels written i
and u as unvoiced between voiceless consonants, and some

drop these vowels completely. At the end of a word and
after a voiceless consonant, these vowels are also
frequently unvoiced or dropped, so that the final syllable of

ohayō gozaimasu ‘good morning’ and genki desu ‘I’m fine’

sound AS IF there were no u there at all. The other vowels,
those we write a, e, and o, are usually pronounced voiced.

But unaccented ka and ko at the beginning of a word are