Singularity on the Plane

In Japanese, the kana ん (n) is considered a sound that can stand by itself. It sounds somewhat like “uhm”.

In normal speaking the ん sticks to the preceding kana. For example, りんご (ringo, apple) is pronounced “rin-go”, not “ri-n-go” (ri-”uhm”-go). Note that because ん is considered one mora (beat), “rin” (composed of 2 mora, “ri” and “n”) should sound longer than “go” (only 1 mora). The elongation is done by holding the “n” sound for a while.

However, in songs ん is oftenly detached and voiced by itself! This is very funny considering that the same thing doesn’t happen in Bahasa Indonesia and English. Consider Indonesian words like “jantan”, “makan”, and “jalan”. In songs (and conversation), they are always pronounced as “jan-tan”, “ma-kan”, and “ja-lan”. The same thing holds in English (e.g., “wo-man”, “ten”, “a-gain”, “A-me-ri-can”). ‘n’ never gets its own note.

An Indonesian or English song where the ‘n’ is forcibly separated would sound wacko. Try to imagine it… However enter the Japanese music world and a lone ‘n’ doesn’t seem weird at all… Two examples:

Anshinkan (Berryz Koubou): Nee itsu datte anshin shitai no yo (a-n-shi-n)
Aozora ga Itsumade mo Tsuzuku You na Mirai de Are! (Morning Musume): So donna toki mo jibun jishin shinjite GO (do-n-na, ji-bu-n, ji-shi-n, shi-n-ji-te)

Of course ん can also stick to the preceding sound like in normal speaking, so it all depends on the songwriter. In these following examples the ん isn’t separated:

Sakura Mankai (Morning Musume Sakura Gumi): aa sakura mankai, nee sakura mankai mune no naka (man-ka-i)
Lemon Iro to Milk Tea (Morning Musume): onnaji kuukan kuukan eiga no naka kansei kansei (on-na-ji, kuu-kan, kan-sei)

I’ve said that in speaking (conversation, speech, anything other than songs) the ん is normally attached. That is almost always the case. However, I’ve actually encountered the isolated case several times! Here’s one example from a casual talk:

Sugaya Risako: ma… zenbu… kawaiin desu kedo, atashi ga ichiban… (i-chi-ba-n)

Of course, you can deliberately separate the ん if you want to give a slow motion effect. However I don’t consider that normal speaking. Nevertheless, this is what Sayumi does on her radio show:

Michishige Sayumi: Mooningu Musume Michishige Sayumi no “Konya mo Usa-chan peace…” (ko-n-ya)

To finish, I offer the audio file that contains all the above examples:

n-sound.ogg (duration 1:01, 515 KB): MediaFire mirror; 3000mb mirror; Indonesian mirror

(Audio made using the open source audio editor Audacity. To play the audio file in Windows you might need to install the codecs from Illiminable.)