The Rhythm of the Japanese Language - Japanese Pronunciation

In this Japanese pronunciation video, you will learn about the rhythm of the Japanese language, one of the most important keys to speaking like a native Japanese speaker, along with the pronunciation of Japanese vowels and consonants and the Japanese pitch-accent.
In the Japanese language, each Kana (Hiragana and Katakana) takes the same amount of time to pronounce. For example, the word “にほんご” takes 4 beats to pronounce: |に|ほ|ん|ご|. This unit, with the equal duration of a sound (a Kana), is called a “mora.” The Japanese language is known as a mora-timed language, with a mora being at the core of its sound system. So, understanding a mora is an important step to sounding like a native Japanese speaker.
ん, a small Tsu, and long vowels are called “special morae” because these special moras never come at the beginning of a word, and these are pronounced in different ways depending on a sound preceding or succeeding them. Also, a mora and a syllable differ when a Japanese word contains special moras. Because these special moras also take 1 beat to pronounce like other Kanas, Japanese learners often struggle to pronounce them correctly. In this video, there are many pronunciation exercises for special morae.
This video also covers the bimoraic foot, the basic rhythmic unit in the Japanese language. When it comes to natural spoken Japanese, Japanese people tend to pronounce 2 moras as a pair. For example, the word “しゅくだい” is divided into 2 parts: |しゅく|だい| and this unit with 2 moras is called a “foot.” Each foot also takes 1 beat to pronounce. For example, the word “しゅくだい” takes 2 beats to pronounce. How to divide a Japanese word into feet is a little complicated. The following moras are prioritized to be put into feet:
1. a kana + a long vowel
2. a Kana + a small Tsu
3. a Kana + ん
4. a Kana + a vowel
5. です or ます
For example, the word “にほんご” is not divided into |にほ|んご|. Since ほ is followed by ん, these moras are put into a foot first like |に|ほん|ご|. In this word, ほん takes 1 beat to pronounce, and に and ご take half a beat to pronounce.
In this video, there are also many exercises for dividing a word into feet and understanding the bimoraic foot, that is, the rhythm of the Japanese language.
0:00 3 keys to speaking Japanese like a native
1:50 Mora
3:20 Special moras
4:09 Common Japanese pronunciation mistakes
6:35 Quiz 1: How many moras?
7:47 Pronunciation exercise for words with ん, a small Tsu, or long vowels
9:15 Bimoraic foot
11:29 Quiz 2: Divide a word into feet
13:49 Japanese rhythm exercise
15:11 Amenbo no uta to improve your rhythm in the Japanese language
15:24 Outro
How to pronounce ん (part 1): • How to pronounce N - J...
How to pronounce ん (part 2): • How to pronounce N - N...
How to Pronounce the Small Tsu: • How to Pronounce the S...
Japanese Long Vowels: • Japanese Long Vowels -...
Amenbo no uta: • Amenbo no uta
Japanese Pronunciation Playlist: • Japanese Pronunciation
Check out my Patreon page: / campanasdejapanese
#japaneselanguage #japanesepronunciation #japaneseforbeginners

[@jessswann5879]

After watching a few videos, I realized that he has clearly used all of this information to sound more natural in English. It's something I didn't even think about at first, but he IS very easy for me to understand, and it's probably because of all the effort he's put into the rhythm of English, the accents/stress of English words, and the pronunciation of English words. So we have proof that his methods work. He isn't just preaching-he's talking the talk AND walking the walk.

[@gregoriobonini7343]

I mean... how could someone even think to dislike such high quality videos?

[@campanasdejapanese]

Grazie mille for saying that:) I appreciate it!!!

[@hydraulichydra8363]

Probably accident. Or they were searching for something else, this came up, they clicked and are salty they "wasted" their time.

[@AndyWitmyer]

I'm an American who just started his journey down the road of learning to speak and write in Japanese and I just wanted to say that this video has some really good and useful tips and information - especially for a beginner. And as a musician, that your points can also be conveyed in the universal language of music made it even easier for to grasp the mora cadence of the syllables. I also really enjoy your speaking voice and way of conveying things. Just really great stuff, and I hope that you keep doing what you're doing 😀

[@KuroShiiiro]

using notes helped me a ton too. i have a musical background so using it really made it all make sense

[@jessswann5879]

Yes! I have a background in piano, trombone, and singing. I think a musical background definitely helps with detecting the small changes in cadence and rhythm, as you suggested. :D

[@sqronce]

You're the first person I've seen explain feet, and I had been struggling to get my head around moras without this extra explanation because it felt like moras was never actually applied when I was hearing any word being spoken. This makes so much more sense!

[@jamc666]

the only problem is that native japanese dont speak in notes, but in 32nd notes 😅

[@dick-diddling-bandit]

I’m Hispanic and I feel like both languages (Spanish and Japanese) have similarities in pronunciations.

[@campanasdejapanese]

I feel that too!

[@semro]

I feel like I need to learn music theory before learning Japanese. Great video, thank you!

[@needadoseofdumbvaccine88]

The music note analogy is brilliant.

[@zeropoints5040]

Love how you injected quite a bit of metrical phonology into this. 本当にすごい！

[@chris092283]

The more im seeing how complicated the japaneese language is to me the more excited I am to really learn it. Thank you

[@sufianstevens]

This is the first time in 9 years studying Japanese that I've ever heard about the concept of feet. Thanks for the explanation, it was really helpful

[@pazu2222]

先生、 本当にありがとうございます！

[@banditsc2174]

Japanese made simple... love this guy!!

[@localnyraccoon]

these videos are underrated, they are so helpful.

[@Chibi1986]

Glad I used to take music classes. Putting this into notations like a music sheet helps it click much easier.

[@socialistsolidarity]

これは良かった！ ありがとう先生🙏🏽

[@user-gi4ez5ni3p]

Thank you for this information! I

[@user-pc5kg3le7l]

Releasing a few videos of just word drills could be useful. 5 mins of just word shadowing would be efficient.

[@hooligans7618]

This is fantastic! You're literally the best teacher for this!!!!

[@campanasdejapanese]

Thank you, I appreciate your kind words!!

[@ddd231]

Thank you for taking the time to make and share this video. As a musician, this is right up my alley. You've earned a subscriber!

[@nv_truong]

Thanks a million!

[@campanasdejapanese]

My pleasure!!! Glad you liked it:)

[@sadauiufan3159]

This lesson is so entertaining. I can say

[@menorrhee5618]

GREAT ! 😀

[@DEVILJINNNN]

Whouahou very well explain

[@MarcelPolman]

The literal meaning of - congratulations, thank you and good morning contain a form of - “GO- ZAI MAS”. ~ I am curious what it LITERALLY says. The need for simple and literal translations always leave me wondering about the true intention and meaning behind the word. What does “GO ZAI MASu” literally mean? Different cultures have very specific language concepts. Grammatically and semantically it leaves me with questions about the way kanji describes these common phrases. Thank you for your clear lessons. The rhythmic explanation is insightful!

[@Goku17yen]

Wow, the musical analogy is great because I know how to read music! Language is really like music, the universal language :)

[@GokuAnimePiano]

Man your videos are really high level quality everytime. That's so impressive.. I can't wait for the day when you make a video about pitch accent ! Especially about pitch accent in sentence level ( I never found any video about that except a very bad one) Keep up the good work :)

[@campanasdejapanese]

Thank you for watching:) I appreciate your kind words!!! I’m planning to make videos on pitch-accent, so I’ll keep that in mind. Thanks for the info!!!

[@norebangfra]

Very interesting!!! And I like that you put the mysic for understanding.keep working hard I will support you! Subscribed!

[@WerIstWieJesus]

Best video on rhythm! If you attach the single moras to the preceeding foots you get a 2-3 rhythm, like in classical gregorian chant, I love.

[@LunarControl]

Fantastic!

[@campanasdejapanese]

Thank you for watching! Glad you liked it:)

[@TokyoXtreme]

I enabled KZbin notifications just so I could be notified about this channel's videos. I'm amazed at how well-presented these videos are, and how much attention you pay to detail - marking the video regions with timestamps, writing robust video descriptions, and of course all of the aspects within the video itself. I've never heard about the foot measurements in Japanese before, but after hearing you discuss it in depth, it now seems so obvious. I'm sure I'll start hearing it everywhere I go now (Baader-Meinhof phenomenon AKA "frequency illusion").

[@campanasdejapanese]

Wow, glad you checked out the description and noticed all the details like timestamps and stuff:) Thank you!!

[@TokyoXtreme]

@@campanasdejapanese have you considered promoting your videos on Reddit? There is a community on there called /r/learnjapanese that would likely appreciate your content very much, and you’d see your subscription count jump for sure. I’ll say it again that your videos are at the top of Japanese-learning content on KZbin - especially as far as pronunciation is concerned. Also I hope you are well and have a happy new year. 良いお年を！

[@campanasdejapanese]

I didn't even know I could post ads on Reddit. I'll look into it!! Thanks:) Same to you! 良いお年を㊗️🎍

[@TokyoXtreme]

@@campanasdejapanese I think you can just make a normal post that tells the community that you have a channel that they might be interested in, as you’re not really “selling” a product directly. I had been thinking of posting there myself to let them know about your videos. Pronunciation is somewhat neglected in the Japanese-learning community, and your videos really help set clear fundamentals. I’ve been getting heavily into linguistics and phonetics this year, so naturally I’d be attracted to your channel 😎

[@campanasdejapanese]

@@TokyoXtreme Yeah, that I've been thinking about! Since I don't wanna make an obvious effort to lead people to my KZbin channel, I've been trying to start by answering some questions posted on Reddit (and other social media) But I just couldn't find the time do to it😩 I'll try though! Thank you for trying to get the word out!! I really appreciate it:) 来年もよろしくお願いします！🎍

[@sebimoe]

Thank you for the video. I really like the use of IPA instead of romaji, although it may be confusing to some learners. (I encourage everyone to learn the subset of IPA used for the languages you are learning). I just found this channel, but I would encourage you to keep including IPA if you still make videos. Also it may be easier if you include broad transcription instead - and if you also use narrow, then pitch accent markers would make it complete. Thank you.

[@eyeperture]

Subscribed! ❤ As an English speaker, perhaps Romanization (using Romanized phonetic symbols) would be easier for me to accept. In addition, your teaching approach is very applicable to me, particularly with the emphasis on rhythm, which is especially helpful for those who have studied music theory. 大変感謝します。

[@rwqwww]

Thank you so much for your pronunciation videos, they've helped me a lot with pronouncing Ji and Shi, they were truly bothering me when pronouncing certain words like 食事.

[@campanasdejapanese]

Thank you for watching!!! Glad to hear that:)

[@gyattrizzV]

can you explain how is the feet any different, the feet with two kana take up twice as long but they have twice as many kana in them so of course they take twice as long? is that not the same as saying them all for the same length

[@user-pz3fj7lj9g]

I learned music today

[@anzulove7457]

I started wits English rhythm to understand Japanese rhythm.

[@Zaimulwaie]

at 6:22 why is 'he' pronounced as 'e'? shouldn't it be written as え instead of ヘ? also in konnichiwa, why is ni and chi grouped as a foot? is it because it isn't in any of the prioritized groups for footing but 2 moras are grouped anyways starting from left to right?

[@thedanimal4608]

Bit late but へ when used as a particle is pronounced 'e'