# wo/o



## Whodunit

こんにちは, 

I know this is a very subtle difference, but I've been told that the particle を is usually pronounced like "o," although the original sound is "wo." However, I have been listening to several Japanese recordings and they often say "wo" instead of "o," especially when it precedes another word that starts with "o." Let me give you an example, and I beg for corrections: 

私達と一緒にを躍ってましょう。
Watashitachi to issyo ni (w)o odottemashou.
_(Let's dance together.)_

Do you think people pronounce the "wo" with a "w", in order not to be misunderstood?


----------



## Cereth

It sounds like "wo" but of course the sound of the "w" is very sutile..maybe that is why sometimes you just hear the "o" sound.

mmm.. and just a doubt, I would say : "let´s dance together" as : "Ishoo ni odorimashou"
I wonder which would be the difference between your sentence construction and mine...

Saludos/greetings!


----------



## s_a_n_t_i

Let me correct you a little bit

私達と一緒にを躍ってましょう
私達と踊って（ください）ね。
一緒に躍りましょう。

I think that 私達と一緒に踊りましょう (what you initially wrote) or "Let's dance with us" (what it means) sounds a little strange.
The correct translation for what you said "Let's dance together" would be the two I wrote above. The particle を does not enter in this sentence, and be careful with 躍る・踊る because...
躍る (what you wrote) ... To jump, leap.
 踊る ... To dance

And about the を pronunciation I think that most of japanese people pronounce O, because it's the natural way to say it. And you know, when you talk fast, a lots of sounds get lost.

Correct me if I'm wrong.
Best regards,
Santi


----------



## karuna

I was asking the same question in the following thread http://forum.wordreference.com/showthread.php?t=187076 and I understood that the pronunciation varies. Some pronounce it clearly *wo* especially in songs but others say simpy *o*.


----------



## Flaminius

Santi, it is the other way round.

躍る (what you wrote) ... To jump, leap.  E.g., 活躍、勇躍
踊る ... To dance  E.g., 舞踊


----------



## s_a_n_t_i

Haha exactly flam. I got lost when I was typing the meanings .
I'll edit it.


----------



## Captain Haddock

を is never pronounced with a w-sound in normal spoken Japanese. As an affectation, Japanese who are pronouncing it by itself and know it historically had an initial /w/ might try to pronounce it, but it sounds forced. This sound doesn't come naturally to Japanese people. (Reminds me of a Japanese friend who came to Canada and tried ordering "uohtah" (ウォーター) at a restaurant. She was given iced tea.)


----------



## Whodunit

s_a_n_t_i said:


> Let me correct you a little bit
> 
> 私達と一緒にを躍ってましょう
> 私達と踊って（ください）ね。
> 一緒に躍りましょう。
> 
> I think that 私達と一緒に踊りましょう (what you initially wrote) or "Let's dance with us" (what it means) sounds a little strange.


 
I just realized that I made a big mistake. I forgot to add the object, for which "(w)o" would have been necessary. What I wanted to write was:

私達と一緒に*タンゴ*を躍ってましょう。
watashitachi to isshyo ni *tango* (w)o odottemashou.

Sorry about the confusion. 



> The correct translation for what you said "Let's dance together" would be the two I wrote above. The particle を does not enter in this sentence, and be careful with 躍る・踊る because...
> 躍る (what you wrote) ... To jump, leap.
> 踊る ... To dance


 
Are they both pronounced like "おどる?"



> And about the を pronunciation I think that most of japanese people pronounce WO, because it's the natural way to say it. And you know, when you talk fast, a lots of sounds get lost.


 
I've been told that the correct pronunciation be "o," but it is often transliterated (and even pronounced) "wo." For instance, after a vowel, it is mostly pronounced like "o," but if the following word begins with "o" (as in my example), it might be easier to distinguish between the two words in "wo odatte" than in "o odatte."

Just some thoughts ...


----------



## s_a_n_t_i

Sorry, I didn't mean to write WO. Funny... It's like I made my point and then I said the opposite. I meant that most of japanese people pronounce O, but the real sound is WO, and a lot of sounds get lost on a daily basis conversation, when you talk fast.

Yes, both are 踊る・躍る （おどる）.

Greets,
Santi


----------



## etudian

The correct pronunciation of を, as I learned in school, is o. But we are also taught that it used to be wo. So some people say wo instead.

The issue is a bit like whether to pronounce the t in "often." But I think pronouncing the t in often is much more common than pronouncing を as wo. I think the majority of Japanese say o, but now that we have to type wo for　を all the time, this might change. In addition, there may be regional variations, and many singers always say wo when singing.

There may also be phonetic phenomena that are not widely known. The "correct" pronunciation of タンゴを踊る is tango o odoru. There are three o's in a row here. (But I don't think the last one is so relevant.) Some people may unsconciously emphasize the middle o by saying wo. I don't know. I can't even tell my natural pronunciation of the middle o is o or wo! We have to ask a phonetician on this.


----------



## Captain Haddock

etudian said:


> The issue is a bit like whether to pronounce the t in "often."



Not quite. "T" is a standard sound in English. "Wo" is not a sound in modern standard Japanese, and not all Japanese people can even make the sound. "Ye" (ヱ) is another obsolete sound pronounced え these days. (See Yebisu beer.)

A better comparison would be how English speakers pronounce "Bach". The German "ch" is no longer an English sound (though it was many centuries ago), and most English speakers can't pronounce it without training.


----------



## Whodunit

etudian said:


> I think the majority of Japanese say o, but now that we have to type wo for　を all the time, this might change.


 
Wait, this I don't undrstand. What were you referring to when you said "now that we have to type wo?" Does that mean that you always type wo in ローマジ?



> In addition, there may be regional variations, and many singers always say wo when singing.


 
This is what I thought, too. Is it common particularly for a certain dialect?



> There may also be phonetic phenomena that are not widely known. The "correct" pronunciation of タンゴを踊る is tango o odoru. There are three o's in a row here. (But I don't think the last one is so relevant.) Some people may unsconciously emphasize the middle o by saying wo. I don't know. I can't even tell my natural pronunciation of the middle o is o or wo! We have to ask a phonetician on this.


 
The phenomon you're talking about matches exactly what I have experienced. It is hard to pronounce three O's in a row, much harder and more difficult to understand than "o wo o."



Captain Haddock said:


> "Wo" is not a sound in modern standard Japanese, and not all Japanese people can even make the sound. "Ye" (ヱ) is another obsolete sound pronounced え these days. (See Yebisu beer.)


Well, does that mean that there's no Japanese word that contains the letter を? And could we compare this to wi (ゐ) and we (ゑ)?

EDIT: I just realized that you meant we by the katakana ヱ. As far as I know, ye would be represented by いえ.



> A better comparison would be how English speakers pronounce "Bach". The German "ch" is no longer an English sound (though it was many centuries ago), and most English speakers can't pronounce it without training.


 
The problem is different: Japanese people pronounce を as wo instead of correctly o. So, they do know very well how to pronounce wo. English speaking people or students usually don't know what the correct pronunciation of the German "ch" is. In addition, there are even two different pronunciations depending on the preceding letter.

Anyway, thank you very much.


----------



## Flaminius

The most general pronunciation that I hear for タンゴを, 味噌を or 倉庫を is not [owo] but [oɔ].  It is true that two /o/'s in /ta.n.go.o/ take different shades as the second /o/ is uttered with more openness of the mouth. There is, however,  no lip-rounding element between the two, which characterises the consonant [w].  The mouth getting more open during the articulation provides semblance to a /w/ in this language where lip-rounding seldom occurs.

Mouth opening is what characterises Japanese long vowels, which I consider to be diphthongs in spite of Wiki articles on Japanese phonetics.  The shift of the mouth position is not open-to-close like English "g*oa*t" but open-to-more-open (as seen in [oɔ]).  Captain Haddock has observed in this thread "water" tends to be pronounced by a Japanese as /uōtā/, which seems to be [ɯoɔtaɑ].  Here, open-to-more-open shift of the mouth position is used to imitate the English /w/ followed by an open vowel.  Yet, lip-rounding being a very relevant distinctive feature in English, the make-shift pronunciation is hardly understood by English speakers.

By the way, ゑ and ヱ was originally /we/ but seem to have been used as /ye/ in Edo period.  When _kana_ was made in the 10th or 11th century, the original /ye/ had already died out.


----------



## etudian

> Wait, this I don't undrstand. What were you referring to when you said "now that we have to type wo?" Does that mean that you always type wo in ローマジ?


 
I believe most of you use Romaji input when you write Japanese. You normally type wo when you write を, right? When we Japanese write email in Japanese, for example, we have to type wo to write を all the time. (I think it's common, but this might depend on the input system.) So now we're always reminded of a connection between を and the wo sound. I don't know about other people, but I mgiht be saying wo instead of o in my mind when I type in を. Hope this helps.


----------



## Captain Haddock

And are you going to start pronouncing the は and へ particles 'ha' and 'he'? I doubt it. Japanese is at the end (more or less) of a slow pronunciation shift which has lost the 'w' in 'wo' and the 'h' from 'ha' and 'he' (the particles). If how you wrote affected how you spoke, English speakers would still be saying the 'gh' in night and sigh.


----------



## etudian

That's a good point. But the issue about wo/o is different because the war between wo and o is not over in Japan. There are many Japanese who pronounce を as wo (though the majority pronounce it as o). There's an interesting discussion on this in Japanese at the link below. (You can also see there that there are other people who think that the way we tpye in を has affected the pronunciation of を for some people.)

http://www.ytv.co.jp/announce/kotoba/back/1101-1200/1196.html


----------



## Flaminius

*etudian* has provided a link to a collection of essays on Japanese language in order to show how を is pronounced by some as [wo], as well as し as [si].  I suspect the examples suggest this is a hyper-correction induced by norm-awareness (however false it may be) in such careful speeches as announcers' school and interview survey.

Generally, /w/ is dying out in Japanese.  Both /wi/ and /we/ are not present in Post-War Japanese even as _kana_.  The decline of /wo/ has been discussed in this thread already.

I observe /wa/ is, too, compromised by /a/.  In casual speech, topic marker _-wa_ is often realised as [a].  E.g., [kʲoɔa] for 今日は (kyō-wa).  I have seen a pupil writing うつあ (<utua>) in place of うつわ (<utuwa>, vessel) almost 10 or a bit more years ago.  I shall not deny there is hyper-correction of uttering [wo] in place of [o] nor would I refute that word processing practise has some part in its making.  However, this seems to me a minor trend.

Flaminius


----------



## timpeac

Excuse my ignorance for what will probably be a very silly question, but is it only when these sounds are used as particles that wo>o he>e and ha>a but they stay with the wo, he and ha pronunciations as sounds within other words? (ignoring the issue that some people pronounce "wo" etc even as a particle).


----------



## s_a_n_t_i

Let's see if I got you right.

Excepting the case of some partcles, the syllables are pronounced normally.
I.e.:
平和（へいわ）HEIWA, not EIWA.
春（はる）HARU, not WARU.


Is that what you were asking?


Santi


----------



## Whodunit

timpeac said:


> Excuse my ignorance for what will probably be a very silly question, but is it only when these sounds are used as particles that wo>o he>e and ha>a but they stay with the wo, he and ha pronunciations as sounds within other words? (ignoring the issue that some people pronounce "wo" etc even as a particle).


 
"he" (へ) and "ha" (は) can occur within words and be normally pronounced. However, I can't think of many words that contain the sound "wo" (を), except in the word を通して (= wotoashite, through). By the way, is this the reason why I can't find a を on the Japanese keyboard?


----------



## timpeac

s_a_n_t_i said:


> Let's see if I got you right.
> 
> Excepting the case of some partcles, the syllables are pronounced normally.
> I.e.:
> 平和（へいわ）HEIWA, not EIWA.
> 春（はる）HARU, not WARU.
> 
> 
> Is that what you were asking?
> 
> 
> Santi


 
Yes, thanks. I should have written ha>wa above.

Edit - thanks Who.


----------



## Flaminius

Whodunit said:


> I can't think of many words that contain the sound "wo" (を), except in the word を通して (= wotoashite, through).


Post-War _kana_ reform has abolished all occurrences of を, <wo>, except for the direct object marker を.  Your example を通して contains this を.  The verb 通す is the causative form of 通る, meaning "cause to pass."  The verb claims the noun it governs to assume _-o_ particle.

Words that were fomerly spelt with を include おどり (< をどり, dance ) and おとめ (< をとめ, young girl).  I have never heard them uttered with [w].  I am making a somewhat wild guess but [wo] seems to have fallen out of use at least 150 years ago.


----------



## Whodunit

Flaminius said:


> Post-War _kana_ reform has abolished all occurrences of を, <wo>, except for the direct object marker を. Your example を通して contains this を. The verb 通す is the causative form of 通る, meaning "cause to pass." The verb claims the noun it governs to assume _-o_ particle.


 
Oh, interesting. I hasn't recognized it as a particle.



> Words that were fomerly spelt with を include おどり (< をどり, dance ) and おとめ (< をとめ, young girl). I have never heard them uttered with [w]. I am making a somewhat wild guess but [wo] seems to have fallen out of use at least 150 years ago.


 
Could one say that the use of "wo" comes back (maybe because of the reasons Etudian mentioned)?


----------



## gaer

Whodunit said:


> Oh, interesting. I hasn't recognized it as a particle.


These particles (は＝wa), （を=o) are part of what makes Japanese readable for me. They often appear right after a short "block" of kanji, and they divide the text up to the eye. In my opinion, that is.


----------



## cheshire

顔を洗いましょう　kao wo arai masho.

I think more than half would pronounce it "kao*W*o" rather than "kao*O*." This can be an example of dissimilation


----------



## Whodunit

In case you are interested, I've found yet another example with "wo" instead of "o." Could it be true that singers often use "wo" in their songs, because "o" wouldn't be understandable among the other syllables? Just a guess ...


----------

