Pronunciation Help

[DustyShinigami]

Hey everyone!

I wonder if someone could help me with the correct pronunciation of a couple of Japanese words/names? They're specifically from Higurashi When They Cry. I've checked around on the net but I can't find anything of help.

The words are:

Oryou
Yoshirou

The letters in bold are what I seem to struggle with. It's the same with ai, uo, ie and ao, too.

Any help would be appreciated.

[Garyuu]

In the names Oryou and Yoshirou the u is used to make the o sound longer (just slightly). You don't pronounce the letter u. Alternate spellings can be Oryō and Yoshirō, Oryoo and Yoshiroo, Oryoh and Yoshiroh.

Ai is pronounced like eye. Uo is just like how it looks.U and O

ie - The I sounds like eat and the e sounds like the a in ate.

Ao basically sounds like what you might say when you get hurt "ow". aaa-ooh

[DustyShinigami]

Thanks a lot that's really helpful!

Oops... I've come across one more - Ae in the name Kaere

[eaper]

TL;DR Version:

Gary got it, but just some more explanation. Japanese is a syllabic language. In kaere（かえれ）, for example, ka is a letter and e is a letter, so you do pronouce "ae" persay. In everyday speech, the two sounds well get slurred together, but you need to remember that "ka"か is its own letter, not "k" and "a" as in English. So, ka-eh-re would be how you pronounce it (I think? it's easier to say than to type>.>) or just saying ka with an elongated a that goes up in pitch. But the "e" would be the same sound as eh, if you are making fun of a Canadian by saying "eh". And, yes, that is the only example I can think of.
For Oryou（おりょう）, ryo is a single letter (ish)>りょ. If there is a u (う）after an o (お）sound, it just serves to elongate it.
If you care, this is the linguistic history that lead to this type of stuff>

Japanese tried to imitate the different "tones" of Chinese [for more on Chinese pitches>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese...ranscriptions] that they used in their written language, which was adopted as the Japanese written language as kanji. Since Japanese was not a tonal language, they elongated sounds with extra vowels and small y- sounds [seen in りょ]. And that is Japanese linguistics in a few sentences.

In short, don't think of pronouncing ae in kaeru, think of pronouncing ka then e.
Hope that wasn't too convoluted or imprecise. It may had been.

Easier answer=>>>http://translate.google.com/ Type in the Japanese and click listen. Not perfect, but it's pretty good.

[DustyShinigami]

Thanks! I'm usually not too bad with Japanese pronunciations, but I do come across the odd letter that stumps me. I mean, letters like Ae are pronounced like they are two separate letters - 'ah' and 'eh' - but some of them like ai are just pronounced as one letter - 'eye' - as opposed to 'ah' and 'ee'. That's where I can get confused - sometimes I'm unsure if I have to pronounce and treat a letter like it's one sounding word or two etc. If that makes any sense...?

I'm not too fond of Google Translate to help with correct pronunciations. The American bots usually pronounce the words as they look and sound.

Thanks a lot for the help, guys!

[Marceus]

This has all been pretty useful. Thanks guys.

[mussolini]

Originally Posted by DustyShinigami

I'm not too fond of Google Translate to help with correct pronunciations. The American bots usually pronounce the words as they look and sound.

Actually, Google Translate is good with Japanese pronunciation.