How do japanese people actually pronounce ファミコン?

I know that it’s short for ファミリーコンピュータ. I also know that this full name is pronounced “Famirii Kompyuuta” because the “ン” is before a “ピ”.
So please don’t bother explaining that.

What I would very much like to know is whether the “ン” in the colloquial, abbreviated form ”ファミコン” is pronounced, by actual japanese speakers, like an ”ン” at the end of a word would normally be - meaning it would be pronounced like famikon - or whether the ”ン” retains its pronunciation from the full term and is hence pronounced more like an “m”, making it famikom.

I would say ン is ン no matter what comes after it, so yeah, it sounds like an “n” at the end of ファミコン.

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That’s what I thought, but it’s nice to get confirmation and examples, so thank you very much

Sounds to me like Famicom in this commercial (about 10-15 seconds in).

However, around 28 seconds in, it sounds like Famicon, which is the one I would go with.

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Considering how こんにちは is said there, it sounds like someone trying to do an American accent or something.

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Isn’t that more about it being a “song”?

It’s definitely a song, so I don’t think you need quotation marks :slight_smile:

It wasn’t that in isolation, I was comparing it to the part that comes after, with the same こんにちは and マリオの国から… just seemed like they were intentionally doing them differently. That second set of こんにちは’s don’t hit the に with nearly as much “oomph”.

You may be right, that they just intended it to be a particular singing style and not an accent per se, but in either case, songs are not what I would use for determining how to pronounce words in conversation, and that’s the biggest thing.

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Sounds to me like Famicom in this commercial (about 10-15 seconds in).


I don’t know. Even with Mario’s “unique” accent I still heard Famicon as opposed to Famicom. This might just be a Blue Dress-Red Dress scenario though.

Edit: I have no idea why my quote looks so weird though…

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If you want to do a blockquote you can just use a > at the start of the line.

But it looks like you did intend to quote them. Did you manually insert the ``` around the text?

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@Basalt

I just want to recommend Youglish for the future. It scans youtube transcripts for your search term and then goes to the portion of the video with that term.
ファミコン | 150 pronunciations of ファミコン in Japanese?
Clicking the next button lets you go to the next clip. It also has the transcript displayed below the video so you can see it in the context of the sentence.

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Now add this to @ChristopherFritz 's script that looks for words in manga. :eyes:

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I think it’s important to note that the pronunciation of ん is not the same as the English N except in words like 女 where the ん is immediately followed by a kana starting with n. So it’s better to think of the two options for pronunciation in ファミコン as ん and m.

If there is nothing after ファミコン, it should sound like こん as in 大根. The morphing of ん to m should not occur because there is no consonant afterwards. However, I have observed some native speakers pronounce ん in this context (word-ending position) with their lips together, when they are speaking deliberately or singing, making it sound more like “m”. So you still may hear it like “m” depending on the situation.

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I used the built in quote feature. Although something must have gone wrong. Undoubtedly user error.

Great to know that “>” also creates a blockquote! Thanks for the heads up!

If you want to quote somebody and keep a reference to their post (like I did here), you can just highlight the text you want to quote and then click on the “Quote” hover thingie that appears.

Works also for multiple quotes and messages :slight_smile:

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That is incredibly handy! Thanks guys, I’m learning so much!

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Hey! I just wanted to correct a small comment made in the solution. When the “n” sound appears at the end of a Japanese word, it will sound like “n”, but when it comes before certain sounds (like “bi”), it is actually pronounced with an “m” shape with your mouth. An example of this is “kombini”, which is actually spelled like “konbini”, but you pronounce that “n” as an “m”.

That’s a good approximation and definitely a way to pronounce the word better, but there actually is an ん sound before the び, it’s just the ん sound is done with the back of the throat.

It’s the same for something like 千円 where the えん part sounds like yen because of the back of the throat closure from せん.

For most purposes, it sounds like kombini so it’s not something to worry about much unless you’re really particular about your accent. And honestly if I didn’t come from a native language with a glottal stop I doubt I would have noticed it.

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