5 replies to this topic

[hiddenmaniac]

黒黄色祭
Kuro-ki-iro-matsuri
Black-yellow-color-festival (if I'm reading them correctly)

I'm curious about pronouncing the "kiiro" part. Apparently this word for yellow has the kanji for "color" appended to it, and the second i is part of the second kanji. Usually, I hear people say both i's as one long "ii" sound. But I'm tempted to put a glottal stop between "ki" and "iro" as if they were two different words, because in a sense, they are. Which is correct?

OT: How do you get "black" out of a hometown with a claw underneath?

[Kit]

From what i've sense even though the kanji for Kiiro has two different characters it's still pronounced Kee-Ro. That's just with my very basic Japanese knowledge though...

[newtypezaku]

My best guess would be that, in theory, they're separate syllables and should be pronounced separately... but in practice, that doesn't happen.  Kind of like how "a-i" is usually rolled into a single sound.

[doodler]

Powergal can correct me on this if I'm misunderstanding the Japanese language, but there's actually a symbol in Japanese that can represent the glottal stop (a small 'tsu' in either hiragana or katakana). So "kur-oh-kee-roh" is accurate, since the word for 'yellow' is actually 'kiiro' by itself, without the aforementioned 'tsu' involved.

As for how we pronounce it, here's a good video example:

[darkwhitewolf]

The only difference between a double "ii" and a single "i" is that the "ee" sound is held out for a moment longer. ^^

[ludus]

The small "tsu" indicates a glottal stop with consonants only. From my own basic Japanese knowledge, double vowels are simply held longer, as darkwhitewolf said.