24506
How to pronounce 繁栄 han'ei? Is there a glottal stop between the two syllables?
Is it //haɴʔeː//, //haɴeː//, //haŋʔeː// or //haŋeː//?
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2015-05-24T12:15:56.230
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2015-05-25T23:00:09.247
2015-05-24T15:14:34.043
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question
pronunciation phonetics
How to pronounce 繁栄 han'ei?
繁栄 and 反映, 半影, ... are pronounced //haɴeː// without glottal stop and ん as
//ɴ//.

The combination //ɴ// + vowel is difficult to pronounce, so in some cases,
such as 反応【はんのう】, orthography has been adapted to allow for easier
pronunciation (although はんおう might still be considered a valid pronunciation).
Usually though a word has only a single valid spelling, which sometimes may
help to distinguish homophones, e.g. 漢音【かんおん】 and 観音【かんのん】.

This phenomenon is called
[連声【れんじょう】](http://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E9%80%A3%E5%A3%B0) and usually
occurs with //ɴ// + //aou//, although the Wikipedia page also gives examples
for んゑ > ね.

I guess one should also mention that in the case of //ɴ// + //i//, [there is
雰囲気【ふんいき】](https://japanese.stackexchange.com/a/3293/1628), which is more
often than not pronounced ふいんき...

In any case, //ɴ// + //aiueo// sometimes calls for attention to detail, but
putting exceptions aside, ん + あいうえお is pronounced //ɴ// + //aiueo//. In the
case of //ɴe// the phonetic realization usually exhibits some palatalization
as in [[haɴʲe:]] or nasalization as in [[hãːeː]] (see comments below).
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2015-05-24T15:03:48.290
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2015-05-25T23:00:09.247
2017-04-13T12:43:44.863
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answer