DIPHTHONGS AND CONSONANTS. 15
ending in an, such as kan, " to buy;" morau, "to receive;" shitdgau, " to follow," it is indeed optional to pronounce the letters an like a longo. But this is more characteris- tic of Western Japanese than of the Tokyo dialect.
1i 22. The vulgar in Tokyo say ai for ae, and oi for oe, as mni instead of mac, "before;" koi (which means "love") instead of koe, " voice." They also often contract ai into a long , as narane for naranai, " it won't do." But this is as bad as the dropping of the letter h by cockneys.
1i 23. In is pronounced like y ft, e.g. in, "to say." On ,, ,, ,, o, ,, onion, " to think."
N. B. It is customary to substitute ou for <1 in writing the present tense of certain verbs, in order to make them conform to the general rule whereby the present tense of all verbs ends in u.
IT 24. The Consonants are pronounced approximately as in English, subject to the following remarks :
F is a true labial, not the English labio-dental ; that is to say, it is formed by means of the lips alone, not, as our / is, by placing the upper teeth on the lower lips.
G never has the sound of j. At the beginning of a word it is pronounced hard, like the g in "give." In the middle of a word it has the sound of English ng in " longing." Thus Kiga, the name of a place, rhymes al- most exactly with " singer," (not with " finger," where the ng does double duty, first to render the sound of ng and then the sound of g alone ; this double sound is re- presented in Japanese by the combination ng, as kin-gin, " gold and silver," pronounced king-gin). Foreigners often err in pronouncing such words as Kiga like King- ga, and kago, "a palanquin," like kang-go.
N final is pronounced half-way between a true // and the French nasal n.
