I'm having trouble in distinguishing some sounds Hi everyone! I just watched a video which explains the hiragana. I cannot hear any difference between the pairs ず and づ. The same goes for じ and ぢ. Wh

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I'm having trouble in distinguishing some sounds Hi everyone! I just watched a video which explains the hiragana. I cannot hear any difference between the pairs ず and づ. The same goes for じ and ぢ. What's the difference between those sounds? What should I do with my mouth to differenciate them? On forvo, I found this: http://forvo.com/word/%E3%81%9A/#ja For me, those are two difference pronunciations for the symbol ず. Does this pronunciation depend on the accent? Thanks! :) [feel free to correct my English mistakes]

Jul 12, 2016 2:52 PM

Answers · 20

You can consider rhat there are no difference between them. In Japanese elementaly school, we're taught that they have same sounds. About 4~500years ago, there were significant difference. But now, No Japanese care about it. When you write down, you should use じandず. ぢandづ have unnatural overtone.

July 12, 2016

The feeling that I have is that when you are learning the syllabic systems, people pronounce it differently, like ず = zu and づ = dzu but using it in real words, there is no difference at all. So I guess you just have to memorize the differences when it comes to the writting, like the English word "Example" is not written as "Esample" or "Ezample". I hope this helps.

July 12, 2016

ず is pronounced like zu/zoo with the tongue lightly pressing the roof of the mouth, and づ is pronounced dzu/dzoo with the tongue pressing against the roof of the mouth a bit more at the start (hence the 'd' sound at the start). I haven't heard too many words with づ　or ぎ though, so maybe an actually japanese person can explain a bit better haha.

July 12, 2016