How do you say this in English (US)? 母音止め

For example, you can see vowel sounds like *a, *i and *u at the each end of the words when you say "I get on a car" (車に乗る, kurum*a-n*i-nor*u).

Answers

b33fc0de

27 Nov 2022

English (US)

You might call this a "vowel-stop".

But, we do not have this concept in English. English is fundamentally different than Japanese in this way. Japanese is "vowel stopped": every sound in Japanese ends with a vowel. English is a consonant-based language: some sounds do not have a vowel.

This is why something like the 'T'-sound is difficult for Japanese and other Asian language speakers to always say correctly, especially when 'T' ends a word. It is also why many 借用語 loan words from English sound like English with more vowels. You are used to having a vowel on the end! :)

Highly-rated answerer

nomadatlatl

27 Nov 2022

Japanese

@b33fc0de Thanks a lot for the help.
Yes, you're right. Vowel stop is common when speaking Japanese. That being said, in the case of です or ます, for example, it actually sounds like mas or des, not masu or desu. I saw some questions from non-native Japanese speakers asking the reason for that on this app. I don't know why, but the S sound in this case seems to be a bit different from the same sound of English. In other words, it sounds less sharp and strong than in English to me.
Am I making sense?