66 Comments
Random comment - I guessed this correctly the first time only because of the "Ginkgo" biloba leaf - a bright green which makes me think of money and therefore a bank. No idea why. Now it's how I recall it!
I also think of ginko biloba but I automatically equate to the bank. I didnt know it was a green leaf. Good to know that is what it is. Now that will reinforce the word for me
Yes, and their leaves turn a pretty yellow color in autumn. Fun fact: the gin in ginko and the gin in gingko are the same morpheme (銀)
Trying to guess the first time I see a unknown word helps me a lot to remember the word in the future.
I just want to compare with Chinese, a word 'bank' in Chinese is 银行(simplified) 銀行(traditional) (yín háng)
Orthography difference. Simplified characters generally have less strokes, but many characters are still the same.
I thought ぎ is pronounced with a hard 'g' sound, like how the start of 'get' is. But in the recording provided I can't hear that at all.
Remember, the little dashes on ぎ that change it from きare called dakuten otherwise known as softening marks.「ぎ」(gi) is a soft version of「 き」(ki) and should be pronounced soft like the other G sounds in Japanese. Try using a G sound like the g in guppie and i as the ee in bee. I suppose "foggy" is good English combo of those sounds. "g ee nh kh ou" is the closest I can describe with English sounds. Some sounds are impossible to describe perfectly. I've been learning Japanese for so long that it comes easy because Japanese is VERY consistent compared to English. Listen to native speakers and try to practice. Be aware of your lips and tongue. Experiment and see what works to replicate a sound. Human Japanese is a great app that explains well how to make these sounds. I used it years ago and it's info holds true.
MahApplez, thank you for the explanation. Know I can understand it better.
Duolingo sometimes does that, it cuts off the very beginning of the audio. I've heard it a couple of times in French, but in Japanese course it's everywhere, I hope they'll fix it before PC/web release.
This is a great point to bring up! This is one instance where I think the romanization can be misleading...we romanize "ぎ" as "gi", but it's not exactly the same sound, it's more that this romanization was chosen because "g" is the closest match to the consonant, not that it's an exact match.
There is a broader range of sounds in Japanese that are perceived as "g" than in English. Some Japanese pronounce it closer to a hard "g" sound like in English (rarely as hard) but others pronounced it more like a "ng", a consonant that is not used to begin words in English, but is common as an initial consonant in Vietnamese and several other languages. The "ng" sound can sound very soft. There are also a range of subtle variations kind of intermediate between these two sounds. The way the sound is pronounced also depends on context, like the surrounding syllables, and the person's mood or speed of speech, so one person might pronounce syllables we romanize as "g" harder in some words or settings than others.
The way the computer voice pronounces this particular syllable, actually sounds pretty typical to me relative to how I have heard native speakers pronounce it.
In order to understand spoken Japanese, you will need to start perceiving all this range of sounds as corresponding to the sounds we romanize as "g". You will definintely hear numerous native speakers who pronounce it even more softly than in this recording, so this is something you need to address if you want to have good listening comprehension.
Speaking the other way, it's less of an issue because if you use a harder "g", Japanese people will usually understand you just fine...but being aware of this difference and softening this consonant can help you sound more natural or like you have less of a foreign accent.
Some Japanese dialects pronounce g with a nasal sound, like the ng at the end of "sing". That's whats going on here.
If you have a Mac, go to System Preferences > Dictation & Speech > System Voice > Customize... > then choose a Japanese voice and just highlight the text you want to hear pronounced, right click it, go down to Speech > Start Speaking and voila, instant pronunciation guide. (Though from the looks of it, Japanese isn't all too hard to pronounce, but whatever.) You can obviously do this with whatever language you want if Apple has the TTS for it.
Nah its silver, its like a joke they played in gintama, since historically his character is name kintoki instead of gintoki
His name is Gintoki. Kintoki was that evil copy. The joke was if that evil copy replaced him the show would be called kintama which is slang for...uh...testicles. Not sure if I can put that here but it's true. Gintama is soul I believe. Silver ball.
銀/银 means silver in Chinese (pronounced "yin"), not sure if it's the same in Japanese though.
Because here the う doubles the お sound in こ. In romaji this would be written koo or ko̅. Another common example is To̅kyo̅ とうきょう. い has the same function for え ending syllables.
It reminds me of the ginko tree, with leaves that turn gold, like a bank vault on a branch.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but I heard that たち is only ever used for people. And since a bank is an institution and not a person...
Actually the sound your looking for is more like "ginkoouh".
Those little marks in the upper right corner of ぎ means that consonant should be voiced instead of unvoiced; in other words turn that 'k' into a 'g'.
As for こう, that is an example of a japanese long vowel: the 'uh' in う is not supposed to be pronounced by itself; it is combined with 'koh' in こ to make an extra long sound 'koouh'
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Japanese is being very difficult, it requires a lot of memory to assimilate almost all the same letters, and the sounds are non-existent in my native language. I understood your explanation, it will help me a lot in the studies, thank you!
Exactly, I'm in the same situation. PrismVelocity, Thank you for the explanation.
Ginko kind of sounds like Gecko; which reminds me of the gecko who wants you save money on car insurance :)
It's not really silent, it's there to make the 'o' sound longer. It may be hard to hear in すき, but it's there too (definitely distinct from e.g. そき or しき). And there are no 'u' sounds in な ("na").
Is this bank, as in financial institution, or bank, as in the side of a river?
The institution as far as im aware. From what I've gathered so far. 銀(ぎん) is silver and 行(こう) as a prefix or suffix is bank. Or to be more Japanese it makes the thing is prefixing or suffixing bank related and I guess silver just happened to be the think that makes it bank as an institution.
I hope someone will help me with that understanding.
"行" means (commercial) institution.
In middle age, shops of the same trade would gather into a block of the city. which is called a "行". This word is rarely directly used in modern times.
guys just remember that Bankū its most common than ginkū, actually in google is.more typed than this one
I remember it like Gotta Go like you just robbed a bank or Gink Go like your telling your partner named Gink to go
