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I was looking at the list of kana, and I realized something. Say, you wanted
to write the syllable “ni”, you would write “ニ”, right? Is it possible to
write “n” syllables using “ン” and vowels? For example, is it grammatically
correct to write “ni” as “ンイ” or “んい”?
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2021-09-11T01:27:05.210
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2021-09-11T02:29:53.047
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question
katakana hiragana kana spelling
is it grammatically correct to write ニ as ンイ
The short answer is no. ンイ would still be two mora in Japanese. To an English
ear, it would be more like two separate syllables

ng. ee.

Not sure how else to try to get that sound across.
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2021-09-11T02:22:24.070
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2021-09-11T02:22:24.070
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answer
んい and に are pronounced differently. 真意{しんい} is markedly different in
pronunciation from 死に{しに} beyond just the accent.

しんい is pronounced for roughly 1.5x the time of しに, and while in しに there's a
clear consonantal [n], in しんい the previous [i] is lengthened and nasalized.
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2021-09-11T02:22:53.140
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answer