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A comment on Japanese Words and Names Sound African. Why?. Parent comment

Re:Japanese Words and Names Sound African. Why? by kagevf on Sunday June 16, 2024 @05:55PM (#40700444)
Japanese e would only ever be [ɛ]. The constructs to produce an [e] sound would be transliterated as "ei" (the quoted are just letters, not meant to be IPA).

So, while I disagree that they sound "exactly the same", I do agree that in most cases the differences between [e] and [ɛ] wouldn't be enough to cause confusion between speakers of either language.

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Re:Japanese Words and Names Sound African. Why? by fjdjshsh on Sunday June 16, 2024 @10:57PM (#40701958)
>Japanese e would only ever be [ɛ]

What's your source for this? Wikipedia says "/e, o/ are mid [e̞, o̞]" [1]

>The mid front unrounded vowel is a type of vowel sound that is used in some spoken languages. There is no dedicated symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents the exact mid front unrounded vowel between close-mid [e] and open-mid [ɛ], but it is normally written ⟨e⟩.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_phonology?wprov=sfla1

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Re:Japanese Words and Names Sound African. Why? by Anotheroneagain on Monday June 17, 2024 @06:38AM (#40704176)
Japanese vowels not only don't seem to be consistent across diferent mora, they actually seem to be some sort of combination of vowel + pitch.
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