Pronounce Otoko no Hito

My cousin and I are both using Rosetta Stone to learn Japanese. For the Word Otoko no Hito (Man), is it pronounced Otoko no He-Toe or Otoko no Sh-Toe? The male voice sounds like he is saying Sh-Toe.

well, we, japanese are really good at not pronouncing clearly or properly:)

He-Toe is the correct pronunciation, but you still might hear as sh-toe, because we just don't pronounce clearly unless we work for TV or Radio company:)

Thank you so much :)

I just had to be sure :P

It should actually be more like HII (as in the word "heat"). That is probably what you meant by "he", but when using vowels for Japanese, Japanese language consists of:

a (as the "o makes" in "hot")
i (as the "e" makes in "eat")
u (as the "u" makes in "you")
e (as the "e" makes in "bet")
o (as the vowel sound in "goat")

This makes it easier to figure out how to pronounce a word in Japanese, since Japanese sounds the way it looks.

"hito" sounds like "heetoh", just like the vowels above.

Japanese consonants are a little different, but stick to the main vowel sound.

Sha/Kya
Shi/Kyi
Shu/Kyu
She/Kye
Sho/Kyo

Consonants are all pronounced with a single sound, though to us, we want to pronounce with a double sound. This makes the consonants a little harder to pronounce.

We usually say, "ree-yuu" for dragon, though "ree-yuu" would be written as "riyu" instead of "ryu", which should only have one sound.

Another example is "Tokyo", which should be "Toh-Kyo" rather than "To-ki-yo". Kyoto should be "Kyo-to" rather than "Ki-yo-do" or "ki-yo-to".

Also, be sure to pronounce the letters appropriately! D: "T" is NEVER "D". Sometimes in the English language, we use "d" for our "t" sounds. Such as in "later", sometimes we say "lader" instead. Be sure to pronounce exactly as you see written, or it could completely change what you are trying to say. :)

There are also long and short vowels. aa, ii, uu, ee, ou.

I am so sorry I rambled so much! D: I know you most likely did not need all of that, but I figured I would go the extra mile since we were on the subject of pronunciation. ^_^ I thought this might help later on down the line too.

I am so sorry if this is too much. T_T

I really appreciated it Mimiru :)

I wasn't expecting anybody to do that much work for me. You can ramble on as much as you want ^_^ the more I learn, the better.

And yeah, when I wrote the He-toe, I meant the "English" He :P

Thank you for your work :D

Tokyo dialect voices "hi" close to "shi" like Asahi Shinbun is pronounced Asashi Shinbun.

A vowel connected with a consonant in a syllable in Japanese may be skipped in certain situations.
A mouth is formed to pronounce the syllable, but after the consonant we move on to the next syllable.
That is a generally-accepted rule which is followed, for example, by announcers of Tokyo-based TV stations. But it is said people from western Japan tend not to skip the vowel in the same situation.

e.g.
: In saying "otoko no hito" the vowel in "hi" may be skipped, which might make "hito" sound like "sh to."
: " �‘�Û kokusai" (as in " �‘�ÛŠÖŒW kokusai kankei") may be pronounced like "cock sigh" with the vowel in "ku" skipped.

Thanks, OP, for starting this thread because I wondered the same thing when I started to use Rosetta Stone Japanese--"hi to" sounded like "sh to". Thanks to the other people that replied too, especially those that mentioned it might be a more Eastern Japan thing. I knew that it sounded like vowels were skipped sometimes--like saying "Yos-ke" for Yosuke--but didn't think it might be a regional thing.

Japan had hundreds, if not thousands, of regional dialects and sometimes just across a river people could not communicate well until the nationwide NHK radio broadcasting standardized the words/pronunciations/accents to Kanto/Tokyo-ben.
In warmer Kyushu the people formed their mouths more openly where the people in northern snow country regions opened a little & mumbled with frozen mouth due to long severe cold winter climate, IMO. Hokkaido is a new settlement area and they tend to have close to Tokyo accents.
Even today people communicate in their traditional home tongue locally so as to fit in & not to be considered a suspicious outsider, i.e. mainly Kyushu-ben, Osaka-ben, Kyoto-ben, Kanto(Tokyo)-ben, Tohoku-ben, etc. Even Kyushu-ben(where I come from) has different variations depending on the area & sometimes hard to understand each other.

It's worth noting that the "h" sounds in Japanese are not quite the same as they are in English, and therefore they can sound a bit different depending on the speaker, and the word.
It's just that when the sounds were translated into English letters "h" was the closest match. This is the same for the "r" sounds too, which can sound like an "l" or even a "d". In fact to my knowledge there are other versions of the Romajii which try to get the sounds closer to the true Japanese pronunciations, but you don't see them much.

My best story on this subject is the letter "fu", which looks a bit odd to an English speaker in the middle of the "h" column of the kana, which isn't it just "hu"? So I asked my Japanese tutor, who just looked blankly at me and said, "but there's no difference, they're the same sound". I made many protestations at this, saying that clearly they weren't the same sound, but then she showed me that "fu" in Japanese is more like an exhalation than a hard "f" sound. When I tried to say it the same way it becomes sort of clear that a miniscule movement of the lips can make it more "fu" or "hu".
Anyway, hope this helps a bit, I'm still working on "ga" which frequently becomes "gna" and gets quite hard to hear!

MimiruRiley wrote:-
It should actually be more like HII (as in the word "heat"). That is probably what you meant by "he", but when using vowels for Japanese, Japanese language consists of:

a (as the "o makes" in "hot")
i (as the "e" makes in "eat")
u (as the "u" makes in "you")
e (as the "e" makes in "bet")
o (as the vowel sound in "goat")

I think you have to be careful about using examples as the pronunciation of the above words in your example probably vary greatly amongst different English speaking countries and accents. As an example, your first suggestion of "Hot" is significantly closer to the Japanese "o" for me as an Australian, rather than "a".

Of course, discussing pronunciation via words on a forum is difficult and I think it can only really be learnt by talking with a native speaker and listening to native speakers. Although having said that some people cannot hear differences in accent/pronunciation very well at all anyway!

Good luck with your studies!

The teeth are a little more closed for Japanese "hi" than for English "he" and there is slightly more aspiration.

Some of the other issues raised here are simply about Romanization. One could write "the tsunami affected Fukushima and Ohtsuchi" or "the tunami affected Hukusima and Oututi" and then assume that these must be pronounced quite differently. But they're pronounced identically. It's just a matter of which Romanization protocol you prefer.

Japanese 'h' is actually different.

Well for the sound like /ha/ it's the same or almost the same in English and Japanese.

But for for /hi/ the Japanese version sounds different. /hi/ sounds different than the English word "he."

Take two other sounds like /ha/ and /ho/. Say the Japanese vowels, a i u e o (properly) a few times and pay attention to the placement of your tongue and teeth and the shape of your mouth. Now say /a/ then without moving your mouth say /ha/. Do the same for /o/ and /ho/. Notice the change in your mouth required to make the sounds. The shape of your mouth should barely change.

Now do the same with /hu/ (sounds more like fu to an English speaker) and with /hi/.