I’ve recently started learning Japanese and spending free time with Wanikani session, I’ve hit a reading that has me a bit confused. I also have auditory processing disorder, so it can take me a while to hear nuances.
But when I hear the word ‘person (ひと)’ - I hear Shhto, and I’m expecting Heeto. I did’nt think too much of it until I got to 'people (ひとびと) and heard it again.
There was nothing in the notes to explain this, am I hearing it wrong and not processing it correctly or is there a rule for ひ I may be missing?
I’ve never had my ears decieve me so much, I’m going to use this sounds as a marker that my listening has improved. Thanks for all the replies, they were very helpful.
If you have any experience with phonology, you might find this chart useful for some of the subtleties of Japanese pronunciation. Having hearing loss myself, categorising sounds made it possible for me to actually distinguish them.
The way I understand it, ひ is not actually a sound we have in English. I think of it like an unvoiced and shorter version of the English “hee”, where the sound is produced by the moving air, rather than producing a sound in the throat. That Tofugu article posted above goes into it well!
It is actually in English (at least the pronunciation that I use in the US), it’s just in an unexpected place – the word “human” and “humid”, among others have this kind of sound (the “voiceless palatal fricative” in case anyone was curious)
If you want to pronounce ひ really well, try saying the word “human” a couple of times and make note of how that first sound feels in your mouth. That’s what you should be aiming to replicate.
I don’t know why some people are saying that they in fact hear a rough “hee” when in reality you clearly hear “shi”. I agree that the sound is unvoiced (if I remember correctly my rules) making it a fricative and while we don’t have this sound in English, it isn’t either a hee either!
Therefore, there’s nothing wrong with your ears on this one. They are saying shi-to
Romaji introduces some confusion. They are saying ひと, that’s the thing we can say with 100% accuracy. Different people come from different native languages (which impacts how they hear sounds) and use different romanization systems (which impacts how they write the Japanese sounds), and so to say this is “shi” as though it would be like an English word that begins with “shi” can be misleading. Especially since that’s how we usually romanize し, and he’s not saying しと there. Not unless he’s actually talking about Evangelion.
I know they are saying ひと and we just use romanization in English to try find some way to mimic the sounds in Japanese. My point was that even though they are saying ひと, in the recording it clearly sounds like shi instead of hee.
Personally, I find the video below by Fumi Sensei really helped with my Amenbo No Uta exercise for Japanese pronunciation practice. She didn’t give too much detail for the ひ pronunciation, other than describing it as a hissing sound but maybe her other videos might shed better light on how it’s verbalised.
You can click ‘Show More’ under her videos for the timestamps if they are too long for you.
Just for your information (since I think everything about the proper pronunciation has been covered above, more or less, especially by @alo’s post), from what I know, it’s usually the reverse that happens in Japanese: in certain dialects/regions, し tends to sound like ひ. I was actually mildly surprised by this post because this is the first time I’ve heard the remark being made in the ひ→し direction.
(Random extra thought about pronunciation: if the ‘hissing’ or ‘sibilant’ sound description doesn’t work for you, then… well, I actually feel that the H in ひ is like trying to whistle with your lips far apart. Or like trying to whistle by creating a narrow gap between your tongue and the roof of your mouth.)
I think this is really a matter of opinion and differing personal experience and linguistic backgrounds. To me, it doesn’t sound like ‘shee’ for one reason: the sibilant sound I associate with S is absent at the beginning. That’s how I tell し and ひ apart, and even in English, SH has a sort of sibilance that you can only get by raising the tip of your tongue.
The best way to work out the difference now, I think, at least with regard to WK recordings, would be to find a recording in which the same speaker is pronouncing a word with a し at the beginning, or is saying a word like すばらしい. Unfortunately, the closest word I can think of is 嫉妬（しっと）, which isn’t on WK, if I’m not wrong.
EDIT: I guess we can compare it to the recording for 失敗:
Does that sound a bit like an English CH too? Yes, if you ask me. But the way air is expelled is different for those two sounds: an English CH (like a Japanese one) requires stopping airflow with the tongue and then releasing the built-up pressure. SH requires a continuous stream of air.
