Japanese phonology

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Japanese phonology is the system of sounds used in the pronunciation of the Japanese language. Unless otherwise noted, this article describes the standard variety of Japanese based on the Tokyo dialect. There is no overall consensus on the number of contrastive individual sounds (phonemes). Common approaches recognize at least 12 distinct consonants (as many as 21 in some analyses) and 5 distinct vowels, /a, e, i, o, u/. Phonetic length is contrastive for both vowels and consonants, and the total length of Japanese words can be measured in a unit of timing called the mora (from Latin mora "delay"). Only limited types of consonant clusters are permitted. Japanese speech also has a pitch accent system in which the position or absence of a pitch drop may determine the meaning of a word: /hásiɡa/ (箸が, 'chopsticks'), /hasíɡa/ (橋が, 'bridge'), /hasiɡa/ (端が, 'edge'). Japanese phonology has been affected by the presence of several layers of vocabulary in the language. In addition to native Japanese...

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