じゆう keeps getting marked wrong

I have reviewed this twice and every time it’s marked wrong, I then delete it and enter the exact same thing and it’s marked correct. This is very annoying.

You need to type “jyuu” (じゅう), not “jiyuu” ( じゆう) <–see the size difference between the middle ゅs?

Edit to add: here’s an explanation from the FAQ:

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I didn’t realize this was a thing. Thank you very much.

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You can also skip the ‘y’ altogether, and just type ‘ju’.

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I’ve noticed that. It’s pronounced like “jyu” though right? I am a little confused about pronunciation seeing as it’s perfectly correct to just leave that out.

‘jyu’ and ‘ju’ are the same; they’re just different ways of romanizing じゅ.

I get that. What I’m confused about is pronunciation. Would it be pronounced like ‘jyu’ or ‘ju’? So, like jew or jee-ew?

Ju/jyu/じゅ would be pronounced similar to Jew. One syllable.

Jee-yew would be closer to how jiyuu/じゆう would be pronounced.

I think I’m just not explaining myself well. I get that it’s one syllable. The separator was just for emphasis and probably a poor choice. Would there be an audible ‘ee’ sound between the j and u sounds or not? So, to try and be clearer, is it more like ‘joo’ or ‘jeeoo’ all one syllable each time. The way I’ve been thinking it was pronounce was with a short ‘ee’ between the j and u sounds.

Oh, okay, sorry about that.

:point_up: Yes, this is the じゅ sound.

The way of romanizing it with the y comes from kunrei-shiki romanization, which is meant to be consistent in spelling across all elements (for Japanese people who are producing it). The other contracted sounds all have y’s in them, so these j ones do too.

Hepburn romanization, which uses ju, tosses consistency aside and is meant to be easier for English speakers to pronounce. The two systems just have different objectives.

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Huh, that seems so strange to me. So with subordinate characters you basically just take the second half of the subordinate and the first half of the dominant and stitch them together? It’s kinda just a way to borrow the vowel from another character without creating a whole new character?

Got it, that makes more sense. Thank you so much.

Listening to audio helps with this kind of thing.

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Thank you so much, that helped a ton. So I guess it’s just a case-by-case basis whether they only inherit the vowel from the subordinate or not, based on the specific consonant being used.

I have another question after watching the video :sweat_smile: I noticed that they seem to romanize ぢ as ‘dzi’, and in my search for this after watching the video, I’ve seen it written as ‘dji’ and in my teaching through LingoDeer had it taught as ‘ji’. How is this really meant to be pronounced? It sounds very slightly different from a normal J sound in the video, but I can’t really tell enough to understand the difference and didn’t really find much from a cursory Google search. In LingoDeer they have it pronounced the exact same way as じ.

I’d also just like to thank everyone who has taken the time to help me. I really do appreciate it.

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There’s actually a Wikipedia article about じ ぢ ず and づ.

The main thing you need to know is that in almost all dialects of Japanese that you will encounter, じ and ぢ are pronounced identically, and ず and づ are pronounced identically. Idiosyncrasies beyond that are found in some less common dialects.

The article does mention that there is an extremely slight difference between じ and ぢ in standard Japanese, but they are allophones, and whether you can notice the difference probably depends on your native language. Native Japanese speakers may not even notice it.

To me, it’s kind of like how in English the “p” in “pit” is aspirated, but the “p” in “spit” is unaspirated. This difference is going to be represented in the IPA pronunciation guides, but if you can tell the difference without putting your hand over your mouth, you probably speak a language that distinguishes those two sounds for meaning in words (Thai? Or something like that, IIRC).

Standard Japanese does not distinguish じ and ぢ for meaning, so if you say them with no distinction it will probably be as unnoticeable to Japanese speakers as saying “pit” with an unaspirated “p” would be to English speakers.

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Wow, that was very useful to read. Thank you so much.

I’m very happy to know I don’t need to learn how to pronounce ‘dz’ :stuck_out_tongue:

Your pit and spit example is really great. I definitely do pronounce them slightly differently, but never would have noticed if someone else did. That makes me feel a lot better about not needing to learn the small difference, especially after reading that it’s standard for them to be the same or basically the same anyway.

Glad you found it useful.

There are lots of interesting things to discover in the rabbit hole of Japanese pronunciation.

Another interesting one is that there are actually two forms of the がぎぐげご characters. They can have nasal pronunciation, and standard Japanese does properly distinguish those. For instance, the particle が is always nasal. No one will misunderstand you if you do it wrong, they’ll just notice it’s wrong.

Hope that’s not too discouraging, just thought it was interesting haha.

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Oh my, well I can’t even begin to imagine how to do that. I tried looking it up, and the recordings I’m finding don’t sound any different to me, but maybe I just am having a hard time hearing a difference. Anyway, I think I’ll just say it with a non-nasal G and I can always try to learn the proper way later if I feel the need to.

Thanks again! You’ve helped a bunch.

Is that like the ぎ in 右 (みぎ) ?

I noticed when listening to the pronunciation guide that it sounded kind of nasal and was a bit like :woman_shrugging: but interesting to know if it’s common for がぎぐげご to sound like that