They’re not the same. おう is discernible from おお, and the difference can be important.

That said, this is far from the most important problem in Japanese pronunciation for westerners, and at speed the distinction between them can become very subtle.

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kazinator 5 days ago | parent | next [-]

Yes, for instance こうり（小売）is completely different from こおり（氷）.

If you're trying to say that when those two denote /o:/ it is a different /o:/, you are laughably wrong.

It is not reliably discernible as a statistical fact you can gather from a population sample of native speakers over many words, if they are asked to speak normally (not using spelling as emphasis, or using the words in a song).

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timr 5 days ago | parent [-]

> If you're trying to say that when those two denote /o:/ it is a different /o:/, you are laughably wrong.

There's literally a different sound, which is why the difference in kana exists. Disagree if you like -- as I said, it's subtle -- but I don't know why you feel the need to be insulting about it. Writing an inaccurate non-kana symbol for the two sounds is no more an argument than saying that the sounds are identical because they share a common romanization.

There are some words where you can more clearly hear the difference than others. Consider, for example, the pronunciation of 紅茶, vs your example of 氷. It's not wrong to pronounce the former as a long o, but you can hear the difference when natives say it. Similarly, こういう is not said as こおいう, and 公園 is not こおえん.

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kazinator 5 days ago | parent [-]

The difference in kana was not recently selected in order to represent a feature of the contemporary language. It is historic!!!

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z500 5 days ago | parent [-]

I think the confusion here is in the placement of the vowels. おお and おう do sound identical when pronounced as a single unit, but the おう in 小売 (こ.うり) isn't a single unit, it's just a お that happens to be next to a う

	▲	timr 4 days ago \| parent [-]
		This might be true. I’ve never thought about it deeply enough!

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jhanschoo 5 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Do you have an academic source that describes this difference in pronunciation in native speakers in normal usage?

	▲	5 days ago \| parent [-]
		[deleted]

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rokob 5 days ago | parent | prev [-]

I’m new to the language and thought these would be the same. But I just listened to some words with the two and the おお definitely has like a bigger o sound. That’s quite subtle.

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timr 5 days ago | parent [-]

You’ll hear it more easily with time. It’s hard to completely separate stuff like this from context (i.e. it’s far more rare to have a collision in sound that makes sense if you know the rest of the sentence), but it does matter for discriminating between words when you’re trying to look words up, for example.

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kazinator 5 days ago | parent [-]

I've never heard of the /o:/ of おう and おお being different. I've never seen a small child, or foreign speaker, being corrected in this matter; i.e that they are using the wrong /o:/ for the word and should make it sound like this instead.

This is literally not a thing that exists outside of some foreigners' imaginations. You will sooner hear a difference from $1000 speaker cables before you hear this, and it will only be if you are the one who paid.

You may be letting by pitch accent deceive you. In words that contain /o:/ it's possible for that to be a pitch boundary so that pitch rises during the /o:/ and that can contrast against another /o:/ word where that doesn't happen.

The 頬 word in Japanese is "kinda funny" in that it has a ほお variant and a ほほ variant. It has always stood out in my mind as peculiar. I'd swear I've heard an in-between "ほ・お" that sound somewhat reminiscent of "uh oh", with a bit of a volume dip or little stop that makes it sound like two /o/ vowels. It could be that the speaker intends ほほ, but the second /h/ sound is not articulated clearly. It may even be that the ほほ spelling was invented to try to represent this situation (which is a wild guess, based on zero research). In any case, the situation with that cheeky little word doesn't establish anything general about おお/こお/そお/とお...

I've been fooled by my imagination. For instance, many years ago I thought I would swear that I heard the object marker を sound like "WO" in some songs; i.e. exactly how it typed in romaji-based input methods, because it belongs to the わ group. Like "kimi-o" sounding like "kimi-wo". Today I'm convinced it is just a kind of 空耳 (soramimi). Or the artifact of /i/ followed by /o/ without interruption, becoming a dipthong that passes through /u/: it may be real, but unintentional. It's one of those things that if you convince yourself is real, you will tend to interpret what you are hearing in favor of that.

E.g. in Moriama Naotarō's "Kisetsu no mado de" (季節の窓で), right in the first verse. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8FjvNqg3034

That's actually a good example because there are so many covers of that, you can see whether you hear the "whoopy wo" from differnt speakers.

There is a similar situation in the pronunication o 千円. There is a ghost "ye" that appears to the foreign ear. To the point that we have developed the exonym "yen" for the Japanese currency!!! The reality is more like that the /n/ is nasalized, similarly to what happens when it is followed by /g/. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5ONt6a1o-hg

OK, finally, let's crack open the a 1998 edition of the the NHK日本語撥音辞典. On pages 832-833, we have all the /ho:/ words, with their pronunications including pitch accents:

ホー with falling accent after ホ: 方、砲、鵬、朴

And, our cheeky word 頬 gets a separate entry here due to its pronunications ホー and ほほ。Both have a falling pitch after the leading ほ, like 方. No difference is noted.

ホー with pitch rising at the "o": 法、報

So of course if you compare someone saying 法律 vs 頬, there will be a difference. But a lot of longer ほお words have the same rising pitch like 法. 法律 (ほうりつ） vs 放り出す（ほおりだす）is the same.

Fairly intuitively, 頬張る（ほおばる）has rising pitch at the お、in spite of 頬 by itself exhibiting falling pitch.

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timr 4 days ago | parent [-]

> This is literally not a thing that exists outside of some foreigners' imaginations.

I think you're a little obsessed with this. It's not pitch accent and I'm not "being fooled", but if you want to insist that you know better...fine? You do you!

> OK, finally, let's crack open the a 1998 edition of the the NHK日本語撥音辞典. On pages 832-833, we have all the /ho:/ words, with their pronunications including pitch accents: ホー with falling accent after ホ: 方、砲、鵬、朴

I've already given you examples where you can often hear the difference if you try. These "ho-words" are completely unrelated, and non-responsive. You seem to be arguing about something else (or just trying to name-drop the NHK pronunciation guide).

Anyway, there are two distinct sounds in the kana table for う and お. They're individually pronounced differently, so why you're so resistant to the idea that combinations of the two might also have a difference in pronunciation, I don't really know. I've personally had native teachers tell me this, and I hear it all the time. Go ask a native to slowly sound out the individual mora for a word like 紅茶 vs. say, 大阪 -- that's how I first heard it.

Anyway, I'm not really interested in debating this further. It's a very, very minor point. Good luck with your study.

	▲	kazinator 4 days ago \| parent [-]
		> there are two distinct sounds in the kana table for う and お. Oh no, that totally escaped my feeble attention. Boy, do I feel sheepishly stupid now. > Go ask a native to slowly sound out the individual mora In fact, now that you point it out, even if I do that myself, it's obvious they are different: ko-u-cha, o-o-sa-ka! Well, I've just been going about this all wrong, barking up the wrong tree. In hindsight it now makes total sense that they wouldn't just use う as a marker to indicate that the previous お is long. Thats what ー is for; whereas う has a sound! Ohohsaka, coacha: gonna practice that.