Sorry if this is in the wrong board, but I’ve been curious about this for a while. I’ve noticed that Kyoko, of example-reading fame, tends to pronounce the g-series with a harder g, and Kenichi tends to pronounce it more like ‘ng’ with a very soft g. A good example is in the voice examples for 中学生 . Sometimes Kenichi will do a hard g or Kyoko will do the ng, but I don’t think I’m fully incorrect in thinking that they have a tendency one way or the other. They both are said to have a Tokyo accent, so where does this difference come from, does anybody know? Is it, for example, a more masculine/feminine thing or a regional thing or just a personal thing? It doesn’t really matter, I was just wondering!
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It’s a Tokyo dialectical thing, but supposedly it’s gradually disappearing.
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On the subject of differences in Kyoko and Kenichi’s pronunciation, can I ask another question?
I have the pitch accent add on installed and I’ve noticed that, quite often, Kyoko and Kenichi use different patterns in the same word. Now, I’m aware that pitch accent can vary by dialect and the like, so I assume it’s just that. However, just wanted to be 100% sure – since various speaking differences exist that are more traditionally “masculine” or more “feminine,” is this difference related to that at all? Or is it simply two variations within Tokyo-based speech that gets coupled with (assumed) gender here but is not necessarily related?
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Which one is disappearing, the hard or soft g?
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The nasal “ng”-style g.
(Hard and soft Gs are a whole different cookie.)
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I see, that makes sense! Thank you so much for answering! (And haha sorry I figured I’d mess up the terminology but I wasn’t sure how else to explain what I meant.)
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For some words, multiple pitch patterns are valid. It could also be the case that it’s a rare word that one of the two speakers hasn’t heard pronounced before and is therefore using an “incorrect” pitch accent, but at that point, for rare words, you’ll probably not raise any eyebrows if you learn an incorrect pitch pattern.
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