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I'm aware that the so-called 'f' in ふ isn't pronounced with the English
labiodental fricative [f], but rather the bilabial fricative [ɸ]. I'd like to
know if Japanese speakers also use the bilabial fricative to pronounce は, ひ, へ
and ほ. The reason I ask is because in romaji, I see these written as 'ha',
'hi', 'fu', 'he', 'ho', and wondered if ふ was a special exception in terms of
how it is pronounced.
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2014-07-14T21:46:48.460
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2014-07-15T21:23:45.907
2014-07-14T21:48:24.447
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question
pronunciation kana phonetics
Is the 'h' in Japanese pronounced the same as the 'f'?
It is most definitely an exception. The actual phonetic realisation of that
series goes like this:

は [ha]

ひ [çi]

ふ [ɸɯ~hɯ]

へ [he]

ほ [ho]

In Middle Japanese they all were pronounced with [ɸ], which you can see in
European transcriptions of names from the 1500s and 1600s - the Portuguese
wrote e.g. `<Faxecura>` for a name that in Modern Japanese would be
transcribed `<Hasekura>`. In Old Japanese and earlier this sound was [p], and
it still is [p] in most of the Ryuukyuus, e.g. in Miyako /pztu/ 'person'
(cognate with Modern Japanese /hito/).

The ɸ>h sound change hasn't quite finished for many speakers, and so /h/ for
them remains [ɸ] before /ɯ/. This probably has to do with the particular
details of how Japanese /ɯ/ is articulated - it's ultimately neither rounded
nor unrounded, but 'compressed': unlike a canonical [ɯ] your lips are pulled
together, but they're not pushed out like with [u]. (I'm writing the Japanese
version as <ɯ> anyway because there's no good transcription of the
'compressed' version.) [ɸ] is retained because your lips are doing mostly the
same thing that they're doing with the 'compressed' [ɯ].

For other speakers, the ɸ>h sound change is complete, and ふ is [hɯ].
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2014-07-15T09:51:33.050
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2014-07-15T21:23:45.907
2014-07-15T21:23:45.907
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answer