No matter how many times I listen to the audio of Level 14 vocab 悪気, I hear waruNi. I haven’t had this problem on any other vocab. In real life, I often confuse ryou for yo and ryu and yu, but never have I confused k and n. It’s likely a minor issue because I knew the word before studying today and should I hear it out and about, I doubt I’ll confuse it. Still it’s baffling why I’m mishearing it on Wanikani.
2 Likes
ぎ (the G sound in general) can be pronounced with a harder G sound or with a more nasal G sound. The wanikani example is pronounced with the nasal G sound and might be the reason for your confusion here. This confusion goes away after hearing it a few times usually.
I guess you could think of the nasal G as a “ng” sound? “warungi” instead of “warugi”.
3 Likes
Just had Jp husband say the word and had no problem hearing the ぎ. It must just be the pronunciation of the guy here on wanikani.
You can definitely pronounce it with both a hard and a nasal G. It depends on the speaker yes. If you look at 右 you will hear a man say something that sound like mingi to me. While the woman for 右側 says something that sounds like migigawa
Here you can hear two different version of pronouncing 右 or at least I do.
1 Like
The recording on WK is fine for me.
I definitely hear the nasally g in that video.
I replayed the wanikani audio to my son and he hears waruni too. I’ve listened to it on both my computer and my phone and it’s waruni on both to me. We live in the inaka of Shikoku and I wonder if we are more attuned to the harder g and so have a hard time hearing the nasally g. 不思議！
The nasal g is surely heard all the time on television, no?
True!
Grasping for any reason why I can’t hear that ぎ。Perhaps I just have to admit that I have an old, slow brain…although that would not account for my son’s listening ability.
1 Like
The consonant [g] sound sometimes turns into the nasal [ŋ] sound. The sound is made in the same place as g and c, but it’s a nasal consonant instead. I’ve heard this kind of often with ですが.
You can hear the difference between the sounds on this interactive ipa chart I found.
http://www.ipachart.com/
By the way, learning a little bit about linguistics has helped me greatly. I also recommend watching Dogen’s accent series on his patreon.
He has over 50 episodes of extremely useful information which did cover this topic. He starts with pitch accent, but then gets into normal pronunciation around episode 30.
Edit: (Sorry, it does cost money. But it’s well worth it for 10 dollars a month. You could binge watch all of them then cancel the subscription.)
1 Like
I enjoy Dogen’s youtube videos and have wondered if his Patreon would be worth it. Good to know you think it is. I will try it out.
1 Like
This topic was automatically closed 365 days after the last reply. New replies are no longer allowed.