14 PRONUNCIATION AND LETTER-CHANGES.
and hito, " person," as shto. Careful Japanese speakers attempt (not always successfully) to avoid this error. 11 17. Initial u is silent, and the following- m doubled in the pronunciation of the four words
uina, "ahorse," pronounced mma.
umai, " nice [to eat] ," ,, mniai.
uttiareru, " to be born," ,, mmareni.
ume, " a plum-tree," ,, mme.
H 18. The quiescent vowels are distinguished in this work by the sign of short quantity, as tak&san, shita, uma. But it should be noted that the Japanese themselves are not conscious of failing to pronounce the z's and ?/'s in question, and that these letters often recover their proper power for the sake of clearness or emphasis. That is why they are allowed to remain in the transliteration. 1;" 19. The vowel u, when following sh orj, is often mis- pronounced as i by the Tokyo people ; thus :
teishi, for teishu, " a husband." They also mispronounce yu as i, thus :
iki for yuki, " snow."
IT 20. Be very careful to discriminate final e from final i. Englishmen are often unintelligible owing to their con- founding such words as
sake, " rice-beer ;" and saki, "front," "before." take, " a bamboo ;" ,, taki, " a waterfall." yume, " a dream ;" ,, yumi, " a bow." IT 21. The diphthongs ae, ai, ao, an, ei, ol, ni, call for no remark, each vowel retaining its own proper sound, as in Italian. Thus the second syllable of kirei, " pretty," sounds nearly like the English word "ray ;" kau, " to buy," sounds nearly like the English " cow." In the case of verbs
