Question about the pronunciation of 手作り

wkq1

I can’t really hear the voice over for this vocabulary word. Would I read the づ as a dzu sound?

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I think there used to be a difference in pronunciation between ず and づ, but not anymore. You’d pronounce this the same as ず. Same with じ and ぢ.

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It’s regional, actually.

350px-Yotsugana

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As @sigolino mentioned there is no difference in standard Japanese, but there are still some dialects which differentiate between some or all of them. And apparently there are dialects where ぢ, じ, づ and ず all sound the same lol.

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I was just waiting for someone to correct me too :joy:

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I would pronounce it that way.

What would “dzu” even sound like? Are you learning a specific dialect (or live where one is used) that distinguishes between ず and づ?

dzu would be a mix of d and z; similar to the difference between tsu and su. Su is a pure S sound but tsu starts with a t.

ず is pronounced just like zoo. whereas in づ moves the tip of the tongue back to the position it would be in when saying “do” and dragging it through a z.

Does that make sense?

That makes sense, but I’m still curious which dialect you’re using that you bother making the distinction.

No specific dialect. Most people learning Japanese as a second language learn standard which I guess would be from Tokyo. But I guess I made the distinction based on how it’s written and how Japanese people speak. I don’t recall if it was explicitly taught to me that way.

There is no distinction between the two in standard Japanese, it’s actually the same as ず.

Did the people on the top miss the map on top that most of Hokkaidou make them one sound well most of Shikoku uses distinct sounds?

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Hello. I’m just here to regurgitate what I heard Dogen said in his patreon video series (Which I will recommend again).

づ and ず are always pronounced the same (Tokyo dialect by the way). However, the Z sounds all sometimes have a D sound in front of them.
ぜひ(是非) is closer pronounced to dzehi because of that. Whenever Z sounds are the middle of words though, this doesn’t happen. So in つづく or てづくり they are still pronounced the same as ず and since they in the middle of those words, they don’t have the D sound. (So, tsuzuku and tezukuri.)

When it comes to じ and ぢ, they are also phonetically identical and the same thing applies. They have a D sound unless they are in the middle of words. はなぢ (鼻血) is pronounced like hanaji and じだい (じだい) is pronounced closer to djidai.

It’s probably better to get this information from the source though. (Or listen closely to Japanese speech.)

edit: I’m pretty scared of spreading false information, so wait for someone to confirm this before taking it as fact.

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To be accurate, in Standard Japanese, ず and づ are allophonic depending on where in a word the sound is and the speaker! But essentially they’re considered the same.

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It seems there may be regional differences but like I said I don’t recall being specifically told to pronounce them differently. I think I made a difference when I first started learning Japanese and the book I had had the Nihon-shiki romanization that wrote it out as zu and dzu.

I talked with a native speaker here and they said they are pronounced the same and they don’t know why they are written differently. They said, perhaps a long time ago there was a difference.

Semi-related:

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Well northern Japan sounds awful now.

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