It almost seems Japanese pronounce certain syllables ending to "-い" the way
Chinese do. To my ear じ, し and some others sound like they are just consonants
with the vowel at the end left out.

In Chinese when it comes to saying syllables like shi, ri, zhi, the position
of the tongue is of course different than that for the Japanese syllables in
question. The question I am asking is about whether the ending "-い" in じ, し
differs from the "-い" in say き, に, み (in which you can tell the beginning
consonant from the following vowel quite naturally)

Do Japanese tend in real life to pronounce some syllables ending to "-い"
radically shorter than the others, by just voicing and dragging out the
consonant sound (and not saying the vowel)?

ありがとうございます！
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2018-03-13T19:42:51.150
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2018-07-11T09:55:45.407
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pronunciation
Do Japanese tend to pronounce some syllables ending to "-い" radically shorter than the others, by just voicing and dragging out the consonant sound?
I tried to pronounce various words as much as possible and found that the key
is the consonant of the ending letter, not the ending vowel sound. If the
consonant of the ending letter is either k, s, and t (か行、さ行、た行）, then people
tend to omit the vowel. For example, あざやか、ありがとうございます、ありがとうございました.

I also found there's another rule. If the intonation of the ending word is up,
we never omit the vowel. For example, the intonation of the word
はし(chopsticks) is down, people tend to say like 'hush'. But for the word
はし(bridge) which intonation is up, we never say 'hush', but like 'ha-shi'.

I'm not 100% sure but I think it is applicable to the most of cases. I will
update here if I find something new.

(Btw this is really an interesting question. I'm a native Japanese speaker but
I haven't noticed that until I read this question :)
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2018-05-12T08:04:18.743
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2018-05-12T08:04:18.743
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