Pronoucing 2 vowels together

[corblimey]

Is there any hard and fast rule for how to pronounce words where 2 or more vowels (as we know them) come together. Like 'hai' is pronounced more like 'hi' than 'ha i', the 2 vowels are sort of run together. But 'iie' seems to be more like 'ii eh'. Does it depend on the vowels themselves, or is a matter of practice (like knowing that cough and bough do not rhyme in English). What about words like 'toei oedo', 'sensui' and 'sensei'?

[FruitLover]

Yes, there is a (reasonably) consistent system. The smallest subdivisions of sound in Japanese is the mora (sometimes incorrectly referred to as syllables). If you can read hiragana/katakana, this might be easier to understand.

If you look at 'hai' - this is made of two morae: ha-i (はーい)
On the other hand, 'iie' is made of three morae: i-i-e (いーいーえ), so the 'いい' part of 'いいえ' is quite rightly pronounced for longer than the 'い' of 'はい'.

Generally speaking, each mora is of equal 'length', so when two morae come together (e.g. two vowels), they are pronounced for twice as long as one instance of either. When an 'い' comes after an 'え'-column sound, or a 'う' comes after an 'お'-column sound (e.g. せんせい, とうきょう), it usually elongates the sound rather than changing it, which gives the pronunciations of 'sense-' and 'to-kyo-' (which are commonly mispronounced by foreigners as 'sen-say' or 'towkyow' (or even worse, 'tow-kee-ow')).

Bear in mind though that, as with any language, casual/colloquial Japanese is often curtailed to facilitate quicker speech (e.g. 'いいえ' is usually contracted to 'いえ' or 'いや', and 'ええ' or 'うん' are used more commonly than 'はい') It's my opinion that while Japanese tends to be quite systematic in comparison with the likes of English, logical analysis of a language is a poor substitute for hearing the actual sounds as spoken by a native speaker with your own ears. I'd recommend watching plenty of Japanese TV and movies (even internet news broadcasts) to really absorb authentic Japanese pronunciation. This is also the best way to learn pitch accent IMO.

[corblimey]

FruitLover, thanks. I have plenty of mp3's, podcasts, video, etc etc to help with my pronunciation, but of course, none of them are specific to the words I'm finding online as I research my holiday (3 months to go wooh!). So I was sorta hoping that I could take a phrase like say 'toei oedo' and knowing that it's to-e-i o-e-do know whether that's pronounced to-ehh whe-do (or some approximation of such) or more like 'to-eh-ee-oh-eh-doh', as it's spelled.

If there was some hard and fast rule for running morae then I can make reasonable jumps in my conversational habits, rather than waiting and hoping that some particular word or phrase will eventually pop up in japanesepod101.

Do you get what I'm trying to get at here? Apologies for all the romaji, I really should sort that out sometime.

[FruitLover]

Don't worry too much about specifically trying to make your Japanese 'sound' correct; this will happen automatically over time (assuming you get enough authentic input, i.e. regular exposure to Japanese spoken by native speakers). As long as you're pronouncing words halfway correctly, people will know what you mean given the context.

[corblimey]

Really? That's been my one big concern throughout this endeavour. Because there are words that are pronounced the same but mean entirely different things depending on context, I would have thought that pronouncing (again going back to my example) toei as to-eh-ee might mean something completely different again. I guess it also comes down to context?

[FruitLover]

Originally Posted by corblimey

I guess it also comes down to context?

Yes, like any language.

If you hear someone say "I reft my coat on that cheah ovah theah", you know that it's not how an Irish person would say that sentence, but you still know what it means.