To an unaccustomed English ear, "ai" will sound like it should rhyme with "pie". However, the two values are indeed pronounced separately, each constituting a full mora. In rapid speach, this may be difficult to hear, but the longer you immerse yourself in the sounds of the language, the more you'll be able to hear this as not one vowel sound, but two.
Answer from A.Ellett on Stack ExchangeTo an unaccustomed English ear, "ai" will sound like it should rhyme with "pie". However, the two values are indeed pronounced separately, each constituting a full mora. In rapid speach, this may be difficult to hear, but the longer you immerse yourself in the sounds of the language, the more you'll be able to hear this as not one vowel sound, but two.
Those examples only sound like "pie" if you say "pie" in a very brief manner, such as "pah-ye." You can say "pieeeeeeeee" or "piiiiiiieeeee" like a southerner, and it still means pie. Nobody would misunderstand you. If you tried stretching Japanese mora like that, you would not be pronouncing correctly and you would create confusion. On the other hand, when I cannot understand someone due to background noise (I am old) or unfamiliarity with a word that sounds like a known word, the person will often repeat himself by emphasizing each mora: "ku-da-sa-i," which is like spelling for a similar situation in English.
Videos
I've been noticing this habit whenever I am immersing in any type of Japanese content. The "ai" at the end of a Japanese word is somtimes pronounced "ee".
For example, when watching Naruto, I realised that one character was saying "mendokusee" instead of "mendokusai", another example is when I was watching Ange Katrina (a Nijisanji vtuber), she would say "warukunee" instead of "warukunai". This was never covered in any learning content like books, articles, etc. I've only seen it while immersing, is it just a dialect? This only happens in spoken Japanese, and never in writing. Absolutely no learning material goes over this. I might just be mishearing things though, since I am only N4 in Japanese
Hey guys,
what's the current pronounciation of ใใใ or ใใ? I figured since sha/za and i are separate hiragana it would be another syllable, but in a lot of videos i see online, it sounds more like a mix, like the a and i become one. for example, sha-i sounded more like the word shy in english. like it was one syllable, like a diphthong, but i thought there are no diphthongs (looked on google).
I just wanted to know, what's everyone's take on this?