The vagueness of ō annoys me. Is there a rule to know how it works?

Here’s the IPA pronunciation for both.

おおきい [o̞ːkʲiː]
おうむ [o̞ːmɯ̟ᵝ]

I’ve never heard someone say おうむ, but I wouldn’t anticipate hearing a difference in that part. I don’t know what the pitch accent is, so maybe that would have some influence on the feel of how the word starts.

EDIT: And I had another thought about romanization, when there was the discussion about おう and おお both being written as о̄. If you don’t use a macron, then 王 (おう) and 追う (おう) would appear the same in romaji, but they don’t share the same pronunciation, so the macron is both helping clarify the shared pronunciation of おお and おう while distinguishing it from おう as in 追う.

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It’s the difference between “taught” and “taut”, in common every-day language they’re pronounced similarly (or identically by those that don’t enunciate) but there is a difference.

If someone can get me a source that says there’s a difference, I’ll be happy to acknowledge it.

I’m not sure making comparisons to English is going to be helpful. I’m not sure that someone’s particular accent is equivalent to just “not enunciating”.

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well then maybe i see it (the word spelt out in my head) more than hear it and because i see it i imagine i hear it… ahh i dont know.

what could possibly serve as a source (if one exists) that says there’s a difference - something in/from the card game karuta? i dont know which of the 100 poems they have on the cards but i wonder if there’s a card where the difference in お and う decides which card you take… (far fetched i know)

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I was imagining something like the NHK pronunciation / accent book (which to my knowledge does not distinguish them) or a scientific study of Japanese phonology, etc.

I know there are sources for them being the same, I just haven’t heard of sources for them being different.

Not so far as I can see. This page has a list of the distinctive syllables (they’re called “kimariji”) as a fairly large image, and from a quick scan of it, none of them appear to hinge on the difference between ~おう and ~おお.

Though, I’d honestly be quite surprised if any did. Aside from anything else, the Hyakunin Isshu predate the kana overhaul by a great many years.

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https://www.reddit.com/r/LearnJapanese/comments/7lasa7/おお_vs_おう/

“As with so many things in French, the trick is to not try to pronounce it differently but to consciously remenber which spelling it has… this will subconsciously add the right “spin” on the pronunciation.”

Well, for a definitive source, here’s the definition of 現代仮名遣い from the MEXT (Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology) saying that both sounds are the same:
http://www.mext.go.jp/b_menu/hakusho/nc/k19860701001/k19860701001.html
(Specifically in parts 第1、5、(5)(for おう) and 第2、6 (for おお))

So, yeah, in standard Japanese, those two writings (おう when it is extending the お sound and おお) represent the same sound. I’ve also never heard of there being a difference between the two, but I don’t know much about different dialects in Japan.

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わかりました。there’s no difference, we’re imagining it.

here’s another irrelevant but interesting contribution. its not on topic at all ごめんなさい.

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At least I don’t feel too bad that I wasn’t the only one with a brain hearing a difference where there should be none. :sweat_smile:

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Ahh, I think I misunderstood Nihonsiki.

sorry for the necro

all of this may be due to regional accents. I do hear(and try to practice, saying 父さん as O TO U(softly) Sa n). But I have also heard it as OO.

now as for the English equivalent. It may also be due to accents. In my Urban Southern accent There is a slight difference between

taught (T au ht) and Taut( T au T) [kinda like the devoicing of ふ from a (F U, to H U)
Caught (K au ht) and Cot (K au T)
Flour (Fl ow r) and Flower(Fl ow wer)
Hour (Ow wer) Our (ow r)

Ones that are a little more obvious, but may not apply to this discussion

Affect (Ae fe k t) and Effect (ee fe k t)
Then (th e n) and Than (th a n)
Illicit (ill li sit) and Elicit (ee li sit)

Wait, are they different? I’ve been pronouncing them the same! (It probably has something to do with how I pronounce every pair on that list the same way as well. I’m a native English speaker, that doesn’t even make any sense…)

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the first 4 are definitely regional. I hear and say a VERY slight difference, but a difference all the same.(I’m sorry I’m not very good with describing phonetics), with the last 3, there definitely is a difference in pronunciation.

The caught/cot merger is getting more and more common nowadays, so that makes sense.

I pronounce “affect” and “effect” with a schwa.
I pronounce pronounce “than” as “then” (with an open-mid front unrounded vowel) in most cases.
I actually pronounce “elicit” and “illicit” differently, with a schwa and near-close front unrounded vowel, respectively. My bad!

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Shame they never adopted the diaresis we use in English to indicate the hiatus in words like “naïve” and “zoölogy”. 大 oo, 王 ou, 追う oü

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