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Please watch this [video](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Z2KgfmfkAU) first,
and carefully hear what the teacher said.

Why does the aikido teacher spell 一 as "yetch"? Or I have to clean my ears?
CC BY-SA 3.0
2017-07-05T15:35:42.263
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2017-07-05T16:20:53.833
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question
pronunciation
Why does the aikido teacher spell 一 as "yetch"?
Spell? Where does the teacher spell anything?

Perhaps that's how you hear the pronunciation, but that's definitely not what
he's saying. He's emphasizing saying いち (one), but stretching out the first
syllable (mora) quite a bit. The second syllable is a voiceless "i". If you're
a native English speaker, I can see why you think he's saying "yiitch", but
that's just your English ear interpreting his exaggerated voicing of "ichi".

His pronunciation is well within acceptable range for the context in which
he's speaking. However, if you tried to pronounce it as you seem to be hearing
it and spoke it that way in regular discourse--that is, if you said "yich"
instead of "ichi"--a native speaker would hear the difference because
invariably you'll overdo the production of "y" to a point a native Japanese
would most likely not duplicate.
CC BY-SA 3.0
2017-07-05T16:06:57.890
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