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Why is ジ a soft "ji" in Asia (アジア), but in John (ジョン) - ジ is a hard "ji"?

Is it just pronunciation or is there an actual discernable/readable difference?

naruto
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Dane Brouwer
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  • That's interesting. Please note though that ジ is treated differently from ジョ. – rebuuilt Jun 05 '20 at 12:12
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    This is just me, but I think they have the same "hardness" – rebuuilt Jun 05 '20 at 12:13
  • I'm surprised that this already has a best answer. There is indeed a difference for many speakers, especially of Tokyo dialect or standard Japanese, between j-sounds at the beginning of a word or after a consonant and those between vowels. Likewise, there is a difference between the other z-sounds depending on the phenomic environment. I can't remember no where I first came across this, but it is worth researching in a japanese resource, by which I mean written in Japanese. – James Edwards Jun 05 '20 at 15:06
  • @James Edwards Can you be more specific on how the positioning of ĵ affects the pronunciation of it? – kandyman Jun 05 '20 at 15:59
  • For what it's worth, I remember my Japanese teacher correcting me that the じょ in 以上 has to be pronounced somewhere between j of just and j of bonjour. I didn't get that correction when I pronounced じ in 時間. – rebuuilt Jun 05 '20 at 23:26
  • Well, my understanding, which has been confirmed by my own ears, is that word-initial j or j following a consonant is a hard /dʑ/. In other cases, inbetween vowels, it is palatalised into /ʑ/. Indeed this is corroborated by the Wikipedia Japanese phonetics resource. The same pattern is seen for z-sounds: /dz/ at word-initial position or following a consonant, and /z/ between vowels. It is perhaps not all that surprising given that other japanese consonants are different depending on their environment, including ん and the r-sounds (for example after ん). – James Edwards Jun 06 '20 at 00:26
  • Palatalised is not the right word really, but too late now. – James Edwards Jun 06 '20 at 00:28
  • @JamesEdwards It's not really too late, what kandyman said seemed to make sense and was backed by references and seeing as though it was the only answer, I marked it as correct. Obviously you're still welcome to post an answer, and I will read it. If kandyman is still interested he may even comment whether he agrees or not. – Dane Brouwer Jun 06 '20 at 10:11
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    @Dane Brouwer I found an interesting thread which seems to explain your question, so I have removed my own answer as it might be misleading. Check here: https://japanese.stackexchange.com/questions/18094/is-z-pronounced-as-z-or-dz-or-both – kandyman Jun 06 '20 at 10:58
  • Sorry, when I said too late now, I was referring to my own comment and the inaccuracy of using palatalisation to describe the sound change. I can't edit my comment so it's too late in that regard. – James Edwards Jun 06 '20 at 14:52

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