<div class="quoteheader"><div class="topslice_quote"><a href="https://elliquiy.com/forums/index.php?topic=22322.msg914799#msg914799">Quote from: goalt on 03-11-2008, 03:55:48</a></div></div><blockquote class="bbc_standard_quote">The "u" in desu is indeed silent. Usually. I've noted native speakers sometimes including it. I don't know why.<br/></blockquote><div class="quotefooter"><div class="botslice_quote"></div></div>*grins* that's because those people not pronouncing it are being lazy since they<em>should</em>: it's actually not a silent syllable ;)<br/><br/>The 'u' is pronounced<em>officially</em>as a<em>very</em>slight inflexion after the 'des' although it's done so lightly and faintly that during normal everyday speech most non-Japanese won't even hear it, but it is there - or should be if the Japanese speaker is speaking correctly. If you listen carefully while watching anime you should pick<em>something</em>up. It might sound like 'des-h'; the 'h' being merely the briefest and softest breathed-out sound cut short. Once the question 'ne' goes on the end though, the sound becomes difficult to say so 'desu ne' will come out something like 'desnay', almost always sounding like all one word.<br/><br/>There's very little inflexion in spoken Japanese anyway. Almost no syllables are stressed and sounds smooth together making learning to speak it well by foreigners hard.<br/><br/>But the native speakers of many languages mangle their own language as they speak, English has many words garbled when it's spoken fast, e.g. 'little' is often spewed out as 'lil'. The 't' in many English words just gets lost in the laziness of common speech.<br/><br/>The books I've bought on learning Japanese stress that there are in truth<em>no</em>silent syllables in true Japanese, its just that in practice they often end up so - or nearly so. The 'i' on the end of words ending in 'ai' being a case I think (though I'm no expert): it should be pronounced separately. One of the more interesting things to watch is the theme songs of some anime series like Air and Kanon, as the singer sings the lyrics, the Romaji text on the screen is highlighted (that old Karaoke fad you know!) Now of course in sung Japanese stresses and syllable length come out different again, like they do in many languages songs but even so, its educational to listen to the sound and see the actual syllables being highlighted.<br/><br/>And yeah, we hijacked the thread, but it's still interesting and vaguely relevant.