91115
This is a question I had for some time: can 部屋 be pronounced as "hea", or it's
always pronounced as "heya", with an audible YA sound?

I'm asking this because more often than not I hear it without the Y sound
(like [here](https://forvo.com/word/%E9%83%A8%E5%B1%8B/#ja) in the
pronunciation by akitomo, while that from molio clearly has that sound):
usually I can hear it in other words, but I know some sound can be hard to
hear if the listener isn't used to it (like nasalized vowels), so I'm not sure
if it's an irregular (or imprecise) pronunciation, or if it's just I can't
hear that specific sound in that specific word.
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2021-11-05T12:24:11.153
91082
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2021-11-05T16:20:33.743
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question
pronunciation
Pronunciation of 部屋
Though it is true that //eja// and //ea// tend to be neutralized in fast
speech (e.g. 部屋タイプ vs ヘアタイプ), the sound clips on that forvo page all sound
appropriate to me.

It is a conjecture, but since you said you are Italian, the standard Italian
language has a 4-level vowel height distinction; that means you have an open
//ɛ// (in _vento_ "wind") and a closed //e// (in _venti_ "twenty") between
//i// and //a//. Japanese, in contrary, only has 3-level height, with only
//e// that stands in the very middle ([[e̞]]) between //i// and //a//. It
means the Japanese language tolerates a bit more open //i// than the Italian
counterpart. In the sound clips I hear two distinct Japanese sounds //e// and
//j// (which is nothing but //i//) after //h// and before //a//, but if you
only hear monotonic //e//, you are perhaps recognizing both the starting and
ending articluations within the range of Italian //e//.

(By the way strawberrybrown's pronunciation sounds most standard to me among
those clips, and molio's one sounds overly exaggerated.)
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2021-11-08T16:30:02.793
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answer