@Elie: There are even more than that... I forgot the word but the meaning in Japanese is good but in Chinese, it is bad... How contrasting! XD

I've already signed up for japanese lessons and I was wondering, my teacher said the 'shi' letter is spoken as 'si' or 'c' because Japanese people 'don't know how to roll their tongue', is it correct? Because I've heard Japanese pronounced it as 'shi' when watching videos O_O And why bother writing it as 'fu' when it's pronounced as 'hu'? o_O

@Ivana: Whut? "Shi" is pronounced "shi" unless the person has an accent. Where did the teacher learn his/her stuff from? And far as I know, "Fu" is pronounced as "fu" Just because it's in the "ha" row doesn't make it pronounced as "hu". Same with "shi". Just because it's in the "sa" row doesn't mean it's pronounced as "si".
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Took up French. It's totally a tongue-twister >.< On the plus side, I can now understand little bits and pieces of the text from that French site I sometimes take resources from (can't remember the name for now).

I know right? -_- I was like, "whaa??" when I heard it from him. About the 'fu' part, really? o_O Because sometimes I hear Japanese pronounce it both ways so it's really been confusing me. But that Japanese club teacher from my elementary school said it's 'fu' though. :/ Bah I'll just ask my Japanese online friend when I see him on msn -_-

I've tried learning French myself before. Definitely agree about it being a tongue-twister. >< English-speakers said that French is the easiest to learn if it's about languages, mostly because the grammar isn't as complicated (and many?) like in English.

@ivana: I thought spanish was suppose to be the easiest to learn. Less tongue rolling.

@Ivana: As d_a said: fu is fu and shi is shi. Not sure where you heard it pronounced as hu o.O Maybe it was the pronunciation of gairaigo(=foreign words)?

@KTC
I think people who learnt French meant it being easy is because of the grammar. Pronunciation is the basic thing to learn in a language so they'll eventually master it when having enough practice, the difficult part of a language is if the grammar has many rules (like in English e.g.)

@Slim
Nope, definitely not foreign words. I've even heard it pronounced as hu in a song.

I was wondering, Osaka accent is the main one used in Japan and not Tokyo right? I've heard Kansai accent sounds rude compared to Osaka.

I've done some research about shi & fu--->
Shi:
Some speakers of Tohoku-ben (the dialect where I stayed) do pronounce it as "si" instead of "shi", but that is very rare. The rest of the population pronounces it as "shi". But don't fall into the trap of pronouncing it as the English "she". That's incorrect. The "sh" part of it is made with light smiling lips, not with funnel-lips that English speakers use for their "sh". The result is lighter and quieter and slightly more hissing.

Fu:
Some people do still romanize the middle syllable as "hu", but that is misleading, as is "fu" (but I think "fu" is closer to the sound than "hu", so I romanize it as "fu". Ha, hi, he, and ho are easy, but for "fu", pretend you're blowing out a candle and then attach a voiced "u" to the end. That's close to what you want. Just use much less air as you would to normally blow out a candle, and you've pretty much got it.


Well THAT explained a lot in the fu part. >< They really do seem like they're making blowing sounds when speaking fu.

I see.. I was also a bit confused with the "fu" because in video I watch, it sometimes sounds like "hu", though.
And song's lyrics in romaji using "hu" is very misleading, indeed.

@Ivana: Standard Japanese is Tokyoben, not Kansaiben. (Btw, Osaka lays in Kansai, Tokyo in Kanto.)
Here in class we only learn standard Japanese, so that's why we always pronounce shi as shi and fu as fu.
Thinking more carefully about it, both jdrama and anime are full of dialects, so it's not that strange you picked up those differents soundings.

Slimm is right. The Tokyoben is the "default" Japanese and it's usually the one being taught in classes. Osakaben may not be as coarse as Kansaiben, but it's still sometimes considered an "odd way of speaking".

The Japanese way of pronounciation is not much different from Malay and Indonesian so pronounciation is easy as pie for me. The hard pard would be memorizing the kanji and the words. Being that I've learned Chinese for much longer before attempting to study Japanese, I remember the Chinese pronounciation of the kanji more than the Japanese

Oh I see o.o

Learning kanji isn't a problem for me since I know Cantonese and the Chinese sounds of the kanjis are similar to Cantonese. Does knowing Bisaya helps with Japanese? Lol cuz some words are in Japanese, like "pan" (means bread in Bisaya and also Japanese)

@Ivana: The word 'pan' is actually from Portugal. The Japanese picked it up from the Portugese travellers. ^^

Mm, Kanji is hate (for me), but without kanji everything is soo hard to read, once you're used to seeing those words in Kanji. (I hope this makes sense, lol)

I don't know much about Chinese, we have to study the grammar of Classic Chinese though. Which is awesome as the meaning of the characters are most of the time still the same in Japanese (while in Chinese they have sometimes changed ^^).

The only thing I hate about kanji is when to speak which sounds. I mean, you see two kanjis and you wonder if you're supposed to speak the chinese or the japanese one.


Do you mean Chinese literature? o_O I HATE chinese literature! It's the reason why I always fail my chinese tests lol x)

When it's two kanji, you most of the time read it in the on-yomi way (Chinese way). Although there are exceptions as always T.T

Umm, I think so. Not really sure what the correct term is in English for the course, but yes I guess it's that. ^^

The exceptions are a pain. 3 kanjis are even worse. The only 3 kanji 'chinese' one I remember is "Hokkaido" Most of the 3 kanjis are probably japanese ones, which you'll also need to choose which one to use (since the japanese ones have more than one sound).

But three kanji is (I think) always on-yomi (='Chinese' way). They might not resemble the real Chinese pronounciation, but they are most definitely taken from it.
For example: 大学生 (daigakusei). The kun-yomi (=original Japanese) way would be: oo/mana/nama, but that's not a word at all

I've looked more japanese videos and 'fu' definitely sounds more like 'hu' than 'fu'. I'm sure the person saying (or singing) it doesn't have an accent. I don't care if people say it's 'supposed' to be 'fu' (saying it's 'fu' isn't even entirely correct), I'm not deaf, so I'll just say it as 'hu'.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a5ZWY3Ab1wY

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=87uXH100EGo

There. Doesn't sound like 'fu' at all.

And I just hear fu. You're Chinese, right? Maybe, it's because you're used to hearing small differences and all, you hear hu instead of fu?
But all I can hear is fu, fu, fu.

I definitely hear it more as "hu" than "fu", but it is a very strong h sound, so it does almost sound like an f sound.
It's like fogging up a window with your breath and then adding an "ooo" to it.

Anyway, Japanese pronounciation is not such a big deal as it is in other languages. It's fu, but maybe not a clear fu? It's kind like the ra/ri/ru/re/ro, which in many ears sound like la/li/lu/le/lo. It's just something you will have to get over
Just pronounce it as you hear it or as Argoyle says if you're unsure.