The Rhythm of the Japanese Language - Japanese Pronunciation

In this Japanese pronunciation video, you will learn about the rhythm of the Japanese language, one of the most important keys to speaking like a native Japanese speaker, along with the pronunciation of Japanese vowels and consonants and the Japanese pitch-accent.

In the Japanese language, each Kana (Hiragana and Katakana) takes the same amount of time to pronounce. For example, the word “にほんご” takes 4 beats to pronounce: |に|ほ|ん|ご|. This unit, with the equal duration of a sound (a Kana), is called a “mora.” The Japanese language is known as a mora-timed language, with a mora being at the core of its sound system. So, understanding a mora is an important step to sounding like a native Japanese speaker.

ん, a small Tsu, and long vowels are called “special morae” because these special moras never come at the beginning of a word, and these are pronounced in different ways depending on a sound preceding or succeeding them. Also, a mora and a syllable differ when a Japanese word contains special moras. Because these special moras also take 1 beat to pronounce like other Kanas, Japanese learners often struggle to pronounce them correctly. In this video, there are many pronunciation exercises for special morae.

This video also covers the bimoraic foot, the basic rhythmic unit in the Japanese language. When it comes to natural spoken Japanese, Japanese people tend to pronounce 2 moras as a pair. For example, the word “しゅくだい” is divided into 2 parts: |しゅく|だい| and this unit with 2 moras is called a “foot.” Each foot also takes 1 beat to pronounce. For example, the word “しゅくだい” takes 2 beats to pronounce. How to divide a Japanese word into feet is a little complicated. The following moras are prioritized to be put into feet:

1. a kana + a long vowel
2. a Kana + a small Tsu
3. a Kana + ん
4. a Kana + a vowel
5. です or ます

For example, the word “にほんご” is not divided into |にほ|んご|. Since ほ is followed by ん, these moras are put into a foot first like |に|ほん|ご|. In this word, ほん takes 1 beat to pronounce, and に and ご take half a beat to pronounce.

In this video, there are also many exercises for dividing a word into feet and understanding the bimoraic foot, that is, the rhythm of the Japanese language.

0:00 3 keys to speaking Japanese like a native
1:50 Mora
3:20 Special moras
4:09 Common Japanese pronunciation mistakes
6:35 Quiz 1: How many moras?
7:47 Pronunciation exercise for words with ん, a small Tsu, or long vowels
9:15 Bimoraic foot
11:29 Quiz 2: Divide a word into feet
13:49 Japanese rhythm exercise
15:11 Amenbo no uta to improve your rhythm in the Japanese language
15:24 Outro



#japaneselanguage #japanesepronunciation #japaneseforbeginners

[jessswann]

After watching a few videos, I realized that he has clearly used all of this information to sound more natural in English. It's something I didn't even think about at first, but he IS very easy for me to understand, and it's probably because of all the effort he's put into the rhythm of English, the accents/stress of English words, and the pronunciation of English words. So we have proof that his methods work. He isn't just preaching—he's talking the talk AND walking the walk.

[gregoriobonini]

I mean... how could someone even think to dislike such high quality videos?

[sqronce]

You're the first person I've seen explain feet, and I had been struggling to get my head around moras without this extra explanation because it felt like moras was never actually applied when I was hearing any word being spoken. This makes so much more sense!

[semro]

I feel like I need to learn music theory before learning Japanese.
Great video, thank you!

[dick-diddling-bandit]

I’m Hispanic and I feel like both languages (Spanish and Japanese) have similarities in pronunciations.

[zeropoints]

Love how you injected quite a bit of metrical phonology into this. 本当にすごい！

[banditsc]

Japanese made simple... love this guy!!

[hooligans]

This is fantastic! You're literally the best teacher for this!!!!

[chris]

The more im seeing how complicated the japaneese language is to me the more excited I am to really learn it. Thank you

[localnyraccoon]

these videos are underrated, they are so helpful.

[sufianstevens]

This is the first time in 9 years studying Japanese that I've ever heard about the concept of feet. Thanks for the explanation, it was really helpful

[ddd]

Thank you for taking the time to make and share this video. As a musician, this is right up my alley. You've earned a subscriber!

[Chibi]

Glad I used to take music classes. Putting this into notations like a music sheet helps it click much easier.

[jamc]

the only problem is that native japanese dont speak in notes, but in 32nd notes 😅

[GokuAnimePiano]

Man your videos are really high level quality everytime. That's so impressive..
I can't wait for the day when you make a video about pitch accent ! Especially about pitch accent in sentence level ( I never found any video about that except a very bad one)

Keep up the good work :)

[かえる]

Releasing a few videos of just word drills could be useful. 5 mins of just word shadowing would be efficient.

[WerIstWieJesus]

Best video on rhythm! If you attach the single moras to the preceeding foots you get a 2-3 rhythm, like in classical gregorian chant, I love.

[sebimoe]

Thank you for the video. I really like the use of IPA instead of romaji, although it may be confusing to some learners. (I encourage everyone to learn the subset of IPA used for the languages you are learning). I just found this channel, but I would encourage you to keep including IPA if you still make videos. Also it may be easier if you include broad transcription instead - and if you also use narrow, then pitch accent markers would make it complete. Thank you.

[TokyoXtreme]

I enabled YouTube notifications just so I could be notified about this channel's videos. I'm amazed at how well-presented these videos are, and how much attention you pay to detail — marking the video regions with timestamps, writing robust video descriptions, and of course all of the aspects within the video itself.

I've never heard about the foot measurements in Japanese before, but after hearing you discuss it in depth, it now seems so obvious. I'm sure I'll start hearing it everywhere I go now (Baader-Meinhof phenomenon AKA "frequency illusion").

[Gokuyen]

Wow, the musical analogy is great because I know how to read music! Language is really like music, the universal language :)