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皆さん、こんばんは！

Just a quick question. Is かぐや姫's name pronounced "Kaguya" or "Kag'ya"? aka. Is
the う dropped or not?

Just curious as I haven't found a definitive answer for this yet.
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2017-01-19T07:25:13.887
42664
2017-01-19T13:46:59.047
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question
pronunciation
Is かぐや姫 pronounced "Ka-gu-ya" or "Kag'-ya"?
My Japanese teacher taught me a trick which now I use as a rule of thumb
(there may be exceptions but it works most of the time). Just say it both ways
and look at the phonics of the following consonant.

_Kag-ya_ , or _Ka-gya_ (when dropping the vowel, is more like かっぎゃ/カッギャ)

has a very different pronunciation to

_ka-gu-ya_

Specifically, _-ya_ leads from a _e_ (the shape you mouth makes when it starts
to say _e_ ). Therefore it shouldn't (cannot) be dropped.

In my experience, one never has to drop the vowel in proper nouns (e.g. names)
unless it's a nuance of the name. Japanese names, in particular, tend to
favour enunciation of each syllable.

One last thing to remember is that, in a particular dialect, contraction may
happen but more often than not, there is nothing wrong with enunciating each
syllable.
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2017-01-19T13:46:59.047
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2017-01-19T13:46:59.047
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