Why doesn't Japanese have a special Katakana form for "hu"?


They have created many new Katakana words such as ファ フィ ヴァ ヴィ ティ テゥ to write
foreign sounds. But why didn't they create a new combination for "hu" such as
ハゥ or ホゥ? Instead they use the same kana for "hu" and "fu" and make the
situation sometimes more confuse.

It's not because most of them can't pronounce it since they can't pronounce
"V" either, replaced with ヴイ for differentiation, and in most cases it's still
being pronounced as "B". Even if to Japanese it's /hu/ as they have /ha hi hu
he ho/ then why don't create a special case for /fu/ when they had created /fa
fi fe fo/. In other words why don't they write /fu/ and /hu/ differently like
in the case of /va/ and /ba/




## Phonemes and Allophones

In English, we have two different /p/ sounds. When you say _pin_ , you use an
aspirated [pʰ] sound, and when you say _spin_ you use an unaspirated [p˭]
sound.

This may come as a surprise! English speakers generally think of them as being
the exact same sound. That's because English doesn't have any pair of words
which are distinguished with [pʰ] and [p˭]. When we're small children learning
the sounds of English, we don't have any reason to train our ears to hear the
difference, so we never learn to tell them apart.

To a Thai speaker, however, the situation is very different! Their language
demands that they be able to tell the difference, and so to Thai ears, /pʰ/
and /p˭/ are obviously different sounds. They learn to tell them apart as
small children, so to them words like ปา /p˭ā/ and พา /pʰā/ are as different
as night and day. **They can hear a difference English speakers cannot.**

Here are a couple terms we can use to talk about this kind of language
difference:

  * The set of **phonemes** in a language is the set of sounds a native speaker needs to recognize to tell apart different words. Every language has a different set of phonemes.

  * Phonemes can be pronounced different ways in different contexts. Each individual pronunciation of a phoneme is called an **allophone** , and these too vary from language to language.

So in Thai, /pʰ/ and /p˭/ are **two different phonemes**. But in English,
there is only **phoneme** /p/ with two different **allophones** [pʰ] and
[p˭]--two different ways of pronouncing /p/ in different contexts.

* * *

## The "F" sound in Japanese

English distinguishes /f/ and /h/ sounds. We can tell apart _hat_ and _fat_ ,
for example. For this reason, we say that English has both /f/ and /h/ as
phonemes.

Japanese, however, **doesn't have a true [f] sound**. What it does have is a
[**voiceless bilabial fricative**](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C9%B8),
represented in IPA with the symbol ⟨ɸ⟩, a sound Wikipedia describes this way:

> For English-speakers, it is easiest to think of the sound as **an f-sound
> made only with the lips, instead of the upper teeth and lower lip**.

And because English speakers are used to telling the difference between /f/
and /h/, a lot of us think of this [ɸ] as being a separate /f/ phoneme.
Unfortunately, that's not how most native speakers think of it!

The problem is that Japanese doesn't distinguish any two words like _hat_ and
_fat_ , so Japanese ears aren't trained to listen for the difference. And what
difference _is_ audible is small, and subject to variation; sometimes the [ɸ]
sound is blended with an [h] sound, and sometimes [h] is used where [ɸ] is
expected. (See [_An acoustic study of the Japanese voiceless bilabial
fricative_](http://www.askalinguist.org/uploads/2/3/8/5/23859882/an_acoustic_study_of_the_japanese_voiceless_bilabial_fricative-1.pdf)
for details.)

Instead, what we find is that we have a single phoneme /h/, which can be
pronounced three different ways in different phonetic contexts:

[code]

      は     /ha/     [ha]
      ひ     /hi/     [[ç](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voiceless_palatal_fricative)i]
      ふ     /hu/     [[ɸ](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C9%B8)ɯ]　　　←　The "F" sound is an **allophone**!
      へ     /he/     [he]
      ほ     /ho/     [ho]
[/code]

In column one, we have kana; in column two, a phonemic representation (notice
that all five use the same phoneme /h/); and in column three, a phonetic
representation showing the allophonic differences between the /h/ sounds in
different contexts.

Since Japanese speakers aren't trained to listen to the difference, all three
allophones [h], [ç], and [ɸ] sound very similar. When most native speakers
hear ふ, they hear the same /h/ sound as in は or ひ. And loanwords like フープ from
English _hoop_ naturally fall into the same bucket. Since there's no /f/
phoneme and no contrast between [hɯ] and [ɸɯ], there's no reason for Japanese
speakers to transcribe the former with ⟨ホゥ⟩. And if they did write the
difference, few speakers would observe it in pronunciation.

It's true that English is influencing Japanese, and that these phonemic
categories may be changing over time, or may change in the future. For
example, younger speakers may be acquiring a ティ sound that didn't exist a
hundred years ago, a contrast that exists only in loanwords.

But in many cases there's still no contrast. Even with your example of V,
where the ヴ kana is in fairly widespread use, few speakers have a phonemic
/v/, a contrast between [v] and [b] sounds. Instead, we find that バイオリン and
ヴァイオリン are both very common spellings, and there's no real contrast to be
observed.

In short, there's no need to distinguish フ from ホゥ in writing because the
distinction isn't relevant to speaking Japanese.




## Phonemes and Allophones

In English, we have two different /p/ sounds. When you say _pin_ , you use an
aspirated [pʰ] sound, and when you say _spin_ you use an unaspirated [p˭]
sound.

This may come as a surprise! English speakers generally think of them as being
the exact same sound. That's because English doesn't have any pair of words
which are distinguished with [pʰ] and [p˭]. When we're small children learning
the sounds of English, we don't have any reason to train our ears to hear the
difference, so we never learn to tell them apart.

To a Thai speaker, however, the situation is very different! Their language
demands that they be able to tell the difference, and so to Thai ears, /pʰ/
and /p˭/ are obviously different sounds. They learn to tell them apart as
small children, so to them words like ปา /p˭ā/ and พา /pʰā/ are as different
as night and day. **They can hear a difference English speakers cannot.**

Here are a couple terms we can use to talk about this kind of language
difference:

  * The set of **phonemes** in a language is the set of sounds a native speaker needs to recognize to tell apart different words. Every language has a different set of phonemes.

  * Phonemes can be pronounced different ways in different contexts. Each individual pronunciation of a phoneme is called an **allophone** , and these too vary from language to language.

So in Thai, /pʰ/ and /p˭/ are **two different phonemes**. But in English,
there is only **phoneme** /p/ with two different **allophones** [pʰ] and
[p˭]--two different ways of pronouncing /p/ in different contexts.

* * *

## The "F" sound in Japanese

English distinguishes /f/ and /h/ sounds. We can tell apart _hat_ and _fat_ ,
for example. For this reason, we say that English has both /f/ and /h/ as
phonemes.

Japanese, however, **doesn't have a true [f] sound**. What it does have is a
[**voiceless bilabial fricative**](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C9%B8),
represented in IPA with the symbol ⟨ɸ⟩, a sound Wikipedia describes this way:

> For English-speakers, it is easiest to think of the sound as **an f-sound
> made only with the lips, instead of the upper teeth and lower lip**.

And because English speakers are used to telling the difference between /f/
and /h/, a lot of us think of this [ɸ] as being a separate /f/ phoneme.
Unfortunately, that's not how most native speakers think of it!

The problem is that Japanese doesn't distinguish any two words like _hat_ and
_fat_ , so Japanese ears aren't trained to listen for the difference. And what
difference _is_ audible is small, and subject to variation; sometimes the [ɸ]
sound is blended with an [h] sound, and sometimes [h] is used where [ɸ] is
expected. (See [_An acoustic study of the Japanese voiceless bilabial
fricative_](http://www.askalinguist.org/uploads/2/3/8/5/23859882/an_acoustic_study_of_the_japanese_voiceless_bilabial_fricative-1.pdf)
for details.)

Instead, what we find is that we have a single phoneme /h/, which can be
pronounced three different ways in different phonetic contexts:

[code]

      は     /ha/     [ha]
      ひ     /hi/     [[ç](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voiceless_palatal_fricative)i]
      ふ     /hu/     [[ɸ](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C9%B8)ɯ]　　　←　The "F" sound is an **allophone**!
      へ     /he/     [he]
      ほ     /ho/     [ho]
[/code]

In column one, we have kana; in column two, a phonemic representation (notice
that all five use the same phoneme /h/); and in column three, a phonetic
representation showing the allophonic differences between the /h/ sounds in
different contexts.

Since Japanese speakers aren't trained to listen to the difference, all three
allophones [h], [ç], and [ɸ] sound very similar. When most native speakers
hear ふ, they hear the same /h/ sound as in は or ひ. And loanwords like フープ from
English _hoop_ naturally fall into the same bucket. Since there's no /f/
phoneme and no contrast between [hɯ] and [ɸɯ], there's no reason for Japanese
speakers to transcribe the former with ⟨ホゥ⟩. And if they did write the
difference, few speakers would observe it in pronunciation.

It's true that English is influencing Japanese, and that these phonemic
categories may be changing over time, or may change in the future. For
example, younger speakers may be acquiring a ティ sound that didn't exist a
hundred years ago, a contrast that exists only in loanwords.

But in many cases there's still no contrast. Even with your example of V,
where the ヴ kana is in fairly widespread use, few speakers have a phonemic
/v/, a contrast between [v] and [b] sounds. Instead, we find that バイオリン and
ヴァイオリン are both very common spellings, and there's no real contrast to be
observed.

In short, there's no need to distinguish フ from ホゥ in writing because the
distinction isn't relevant to speaking Japanese.

