Thomas learns basic Japanese

Learn Japanese pitch-accent and pronunciation from my Patreon Series "Japanese Phonetics"

Dogen / Dōgen / Japanese / 日本語 / Thomas learns basic Japanese / Thomas learns Japanese pronunciation / Thomas' first Japanese class / トーマスの初めての授業 / トーマスが日本語の発音を学ぶ / トーマスが日本語の発音を習う / トーマスが日本語の発音を勉強する / えい is pronounced as えー, Thomas / えい vs. えー

[leonixnn]

"Every language is very logical and straightforward, except for when it isn't"

[keanugump]

This teacher character is the best. I love how he always tries to explain stuff instead of falling back to droning the same rule over and over.

[TheGreatEL]

Damn. Thomas-san is the most obedient(and attentive!) student amongst any I've ever had the... pleasure to interact with. Can we all be a bit more like Thomas please?..

[itsNyroc]

I currently teach English in Japan and I get these questions every day about English words. Usually after a while I just end up saying "English is weird, I don't know."

[junethefirst]

When you can feel the jōzu slipping through your fingers.

[TheStellarJay]

I got first place in a Japanese speech contest today between 6 different schools. I did it on Japanese pitch accent that I learned from your videos and patreon lessons. Thank you!

[TheLiverX]

時々いつも同じ風に発音されますが
"60% of the time, it works every time"

[FierceTable]

This needs to be at the beginning of every Japanese beginner textbook. The rigidity induced from following such rules causes tremendous delays in natural sounding language and can even make it difficult to acquire new words because students aren't "hearing" the sounds that aren't present in a given word....I'm sure there's a more eloquent way to say that....

[baribarijapan]

They are always pronounced the same until they are not. That's the rule.

[-Raylight]

So it doesn't matter what language it is, they always try to bamboozle you with their contradicting rules. Poor Thomas, he was too good as a student xD

[EmanPlay]

"Japanese characters are always pronounced the same way"
は: Hold my beer

[foogod]

I'm certainly nowhere near as much of an expert as Dogen in these matters, but it seems to me that the reason for pronouncing the い in 受け入れました is actually not "because it's in a verb" but more specifically because it is at the beginning of a separate component of what is basically a compound word (受け + 入れました). This is also indicated by the transition from hiragana into kanji in the written form, which implies a conceptual (and linguistic) separation between the first and second parts of the word (between the え sound and the い sound).

い is pronounced as an extended え when it _is tacked on to the end of_ some sequence involving え, but in this case the い sound is not being _added to the end_ of 受け, it is actually _the beginning part_ of 入れる, and thus should be pronounced the same way the い is pronounced in other uses of 入れる.

But it is also not really true that い following え (even at the end of words, etc) is always pronounced as a long え, IMHO. In my experience, it's a lot more nuanced than that, and can depend a lot on the particular word, the context it's being used in, and the individual speaker. It is generally true that え followed by い are not pronounced as distinct morae (so that is almost always wrong), but instead almost always merged into a single syllable, but what that syllable ends up sounding like can sometimes be ええ, sometimes be えい, or somewhere in between (えぃ, ええぃ, etc).

[joelovedaymusic]

At 0:49, I love how when Thomas says でも先生は, he still separates the せ and い sounds in 'せんせい’ because he's still diligently attempting to articulate every sound. It mirrors the way he said 学生 earlier, but the video doesn't draw attention to it, just leaves it up to the viewer to spot it. I love the attention to detail with stuff like this, it's subtle but genius.

[kougamishinya]

I know it's comedy, but this is also perfect example of why language needs to be obtained unconsciously through input rather than remembering and applying rules.

[Hannah_Z]

laughed my ass off watching this and realizing how many nuances are in the language. i think i must've just picked most of them up listening to japanese audio sources (e.g. the silent い after 学生 and the 規 in 規則, but not the 入 in 受け入れました)
give it to dogen to make me reconsider everything i know about my japanese ability

[tobindrake]

This is why experience with any language is essential. In Japanese, the best way to learn how to speak it is to remember how a native speaker says something and just repeat it that way. That is how I learned English as well. I watched a lot of TV and listened to native speakers when starting to speak English then I just repeated what I remembered others saying exactly how they said it. I had no idea what the rules were, but it really helped me learn the language.

[minorglitch]

The first time I heard a native Japanese speaker pronounce 失礼します I knew everything I learned about pronunciation was a lie. I've heard stu-reishimasu, tsu-reishimasu, hitsu-reishimasu, su-reishimasu... I'm convinced any hiss sound + reishimasu will work.

[cjbc_sd-]

As Japanese native, I've thougt that each ひらがなs are pronounced the same way. But it's true that sometime we omit(skip) some characters(sounds?) like "えい" → "え". It might be something similar to shortened word like "going to" → "gonna" ( I'm not sure thougt)
I was a bit confused about sentence "the い here is after a け. So it should be pronounced as え."
That's because "け" have "え" sound in it, right!?
I haven't paid attention that "け" have "e" sound in it. I always recognized "け" as "け", not "ke".
Also, I didn't notice that "き" in "きそく" is pronounced as "k"(without "i" sound). I always thougt I'm pronouncing "きそく" as "kisoku", but maybe I was wrong 😂
I'm happy and honoured that a lot of people are trying learning Japanese even if it's hard. Hope you're doing well!

[theonexiii]

I'm an English teacher who teaches Spanish children. I go through this on the daily.

[Dllqueen]

Thomas was already pronouncing を as you would as a particle "O" instead of the character "Wo" so "all pronunciation is the same" was doomed to be confusing from the start