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Is the word separated out at all (as in ふう + う)? Or is that extra う simply
drawn out longer?
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2017-08-29T23:23:48.947
52826
2017-08-30T03:10:18.823
10014
question
pronunciation
How is a word like 風雨 (ふうう) distinguished in pronunciation from ふう?
Although it's hard to understand what "ふう+う" means, I guess that your idea is
correct.

You have: 風雨{ふうう} = 風｛ふう｝+雨｛う｝

So, pronunciation-wise, the double う is not a "very long, continuous う" but
rather you pronounce two distinct うs as in ふう-う (where the dash indicates a
sort of pause. In practice, there isn't really a pause but that might help to
get an idea). What actually helps here is the listening to the accent.

You can hear it [here](https://www.japanesepod101.com/japanese-dictionary/) (I
cannot paste the link of the search directly, so you will have to insert the
word 風雨 and hit search by yourself). If you listen to the recording, you can
clearly hear that the うs are pronounced distinctively.

Let me add a graphical interpretation for people with a basic musical
education:

[![enter image description
here](https://i.stack.imgur.com/gov1m.png)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/gov1m.png)

Anyway, in general, this isn't the only example of words ending with two
vowels in Japanese. For example, 推移｛すいい｝ is pretty much the same thing and it
isn't such an uncommon word either (for me this one is even harder by the
way).

**EDIT:** According to the comments, the い in 推 is not a vowel hence, if this
is true, what I said above may be imprecise. However, my only point here was
to provide an example of a word with a difficult pronunciation for similar
reasons. Anyway you can completely forget about it and ignore the huge mental
masturbation in the comments. The answer really ends with the link to the
audio file that should solve any doubt you had.
CC BY-SA 3.0
2017-08-30T00:23:37.270
52828
2017-08-30T03:10:18.823
2017-08-30T03:10:18.823
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answer