掲示板 Forums - Why does は sound like わ sometimes?

Good question

I had to search again because I forgot the reason but basically, it was because Japanese was not pronounced the same way in the past. And when Japaneses decided to modernize the writing system to account for those change, they couldn't change completely how some words were written.

In practice わ was the original pronouncition of は. Like they wrote は but they pronounced it わ.
With time the pronounciation change except for 1 case: the particle は.

And that's also why こんにちは and こんばんは are pronounced こんにちわ and こんばんわ. Written with kanji, it's just 今日は and 今晩は :D

So, only the particle は is pronounced like that in the end. And わ was the original pronounciation of は.
I tried to search for other example just in case but I think, that's all? Although, someone who like phonetics more than me may give more fun facts about that (phonetics is not my strong suit...).

Oh and there is a fun (?) trap. てにをは is an actual word but the final は is pronounced like a normal は, not a わ

(Don't need to remember that one btw... x) )

​Uchiha, not Uchiwa :)

So in that case it's actually pronounced は, not わ. Although it does come from the word 団扇 (うちわ), which used to be written うちは (historical pronunciation/reading being something like "utifa").

That's certainly an interesting choice on the French side... It's very clearly うちは (u-chi-ha) in Japanese :D

Is うちわ easier to pronounce in French? I'm a bit confused as to why they'd do that.

Edit: I couldn't really find any useful information. I guess the original French manga translation had "Uchiwa", so the anime dub went with that? And the "H" is harder to pronounce for French speakers?

I've only ever watched the Japanese original, so this is really weird to me :D

That's because we don't pronounce our h in french. So the closest sound to avoid more problem is wa. If you were to write Uchiha, french would pronounce it uchia (and that would probably become an u-chia not even an u-chi-a).
In english, something similar happen with 先生. French speaker can "accidentaly" pronounce it a bit more correctly while english speaker will struggle a bit more. I forgot the exact explanation tho. Or was it maybe 繊維? I think it was that one

Anyway, that's why I don't like phonetics x)
Too many details to remember, you have to keep in mind the sounds of both language, it force you to get into the details of every sounds range (ん is technically pronounced in 5 different ways... or 9? I forgot that too :v), dialect/regional variation also exist, etc. I hate phonetics

Not because it's not interesting, it's even the opposite, but just... no, too much details you have to be careful of :v. Just let's me try to repeat each sounds 10 000 times until I get them right rather than studying the combinations and variations of two languages

(but if you like that, well, have fun xD)

To sum up, you're not wrong. When thinking in french. And ギョルギ九十三 is not wrong too. In english. Probably. Never check if the english ha match exactly the japanese は. But probably. Maybe if a phonetic specialist come here, they could answer. Maybe

(But if someone does appear, I will run away from that thread, phonetics is my kryptonite xD)

Edit: @ギョルギ九十三 think of it as R and L sounds problem for Japanese. It's not that it's "harder", it's that those sounds don't exist to begin with. And it's incredibly annoying to correct that kind of things. As for translation, well they don't bother with that kind of things. Too much trouble and it won't work anyway (or it will make it worse). So they use tricks (loanwords work the same way usually).

Thanks guys

As far as i know, は sounds likw "wa" when used as a topic marker to refer to "AisB", so it's like "AはB desu". Got it? There might also be other sittuations, but this is the only one i know.