Some Random Trivia

ず, づ, and the magic D

No. Unfortunately, both ず and づ can be pronounced as both ZU and DZU depending on… in most cases literally nothing but the speaker’s preference (potentially dialect, but unlikely). Are there words that HAVE to be pronounced with either ZU or DZU, and can NEVER use the other? Honestly? No idea. This is not a grammar book! Of the top of my head — completely interchangeable. If you have to output early tho, just stick to ZU. Maybe unless you are, say, shadowing a teacher who is clearly pronouncing DZU. Of course you can apply everything I stated in this paragraph to ZA and DZA, ZE and DZE, etc. Some people just like saying 全然 as DZEN–DZEN. Others say ZEN–ZEN. Why? Well… ——>

Much like how monolingual native Japanese speakers don’t notice when they shift between R-ish and L-ish way of pronouncing らりるれろ, I suspect they may not be noticing any difference at all between Z and DZ. Obviously there is also a pretty big confusion about じ and ぢ being identical or not, but that one is much easier to answer concretely: they are.

SH is not a letter

When typing in Japanese, don’t actually type things like chi, tsu, sho, cha, etc. Your computer will of course still understand you when converting to kana and kanji, but that romanization is technically incorrect, i.e. it is not how the Japanese people write in romaji. Which is probably something you should know, don’t you think?

The romanization you are familiar with is useful when teaching Japanese phonetics to English-speaking foreigners, but that’s not how the Japanese people think nor how they use their keyboards. For them chi is not some kind of special sound that goes after ta: it is literally just the proper way of saying t + い. Same goes for tsu — that’s just how t + う is supposed to sound to a Japanese speaker. And of course the Japanese don’t see anything special about し: it’s just a totally natural s + い sound to them. Adopt the Japanese way. It will help. A little bit. First of all, you will definitely be seeing romaji used the correct way all the time, so you might as well accept it and convert now. But also, if you even have to output romaji (which could happen, right?) using the correct way will make you look much cooler than the incorrect one (big shocker!).

つ　＝　tu tsu
ち　＝　ti chi
し　＝　si shi
ちゃ　＝　tya cha
ちょ　＝　tyo cho
ちゅ　＝　tyu chu
しゃ　＝　sya sha
しょ　＝　syo sho
しゅ　＝　syu shu
etc

Say せい again?

Yet another thing that no book or teacher will tell you, which wouldn’t hurt to know from as early on as possible, is that い coming after せ (as in せい) pretty much always just prolongs the e sound of せ rather than reads as i. For example せんせい isn’t actually pronounced as sensei: it’s more like sense— (せんせー), with prolonged e of the second せ. You can on occasion sorta hear there being a reeeally short and timid い at the end… and in reality that’s probably the case, even though half the time I attribute that to my imagination. Check out for yourself and tell me if there is い in this word:
https://jisho.org/search/%E5%85%88%E7%94%9F

How い even further turns into え in colloquial use you can discover on your own: there is little need for a master class on いい becoming ええ, すごい turning into すげえ, etc. Although the phenomenas are clearly related, so I felt like I had to mention that.