Below (じょう) and woman (じょ) phonetic difference?

I’m confused what う does to change how you say a word. Even more confusing when you have a word like “Ten” and there is also a う at the end even though there is already “Jyu” in hiragana so it ends up being “Jyuう”. Sorry I’m terrible at explaining stuff, even worse at japanese.

The う extends the vowel. So じょう is like じょお.
If I’ve screwed that up, someone correct me.

  1. じょ->“Jyo”
  2. じょう->“Jyoo”

In the first case, just pronounce it as you read it.
In the second case pronounce as above but make the ‘o’ sound at the end last twice as long. This is definitely not pronounced ‘ou’ like in English.

じゅう is one “beat” longer than じゅ
じょう is one “beat” longer than じょ

Clap your hands as you say each part.

じゅ-う
じょ-う

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Pronounce the beat “mora” properly, and you will feel the difference.

Also to note, ん and っ also equal one beat.

Make quite a difference when listening to songs.

Thanks everyone! :grin: :grin: :grin:

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