ですね and ですよ regarding the silent u (silent vowels)


So, I'm not sure how to word it, but I hear majority of people say des-ne and
des-yo. But following this: [What are the rules regarding "mute vowels" ("u"
after "s" and "i" after
"sh")?](https://japanese.stackexchange.com/questions/1095/what-are-the-rules-
regarding-mute-vowels-u-after-s-and-i-after-sh)

It seems that you aren't actually supposed to drop pronunce the u. So my
question is, is this some type of special case, or do people just like to make
the u silent. If I said desU-ne or desU-yo, would that be ok? Would that sound
feminie/mascuine/strange/cute/serious?




> Would that sound feminine/masculine/strange/cute/serious?

It would sound... accented, to some.

In **very** rough terms, [Japanese has two major dialects/dialect
groups](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_dialects), termed "eastern" and
"western".

Eastern Japanese is largely characterized by the standard Japanese spoken in
Tokyo1. Among other things, this normally features the devoiced u-vowels
you're describing (not necessarily silent), the "compressed" sound for the
u-vowel when it _is_ voiced. Inflection-wise, it features everything you (most
likely) see in your Japanese textbook.

Western Japanese is typified by what's commonly just thought of as Kansai-ben.
There exist finer distinctions (between Osaka and Kyoto dialects), and broader
generalizations (the Kansai region vs. everywhere west of that); but that's
the archetype.

Kansai-ben is marked by differences [in pitch-accent, rendering of sounds, and
the actual inflections](https://japanese.stackexchange.com/questions/6966).
Historically, there was a period when Kansai-ben was the prestige dialect; in
more recent history, the Tokyo dialect has been treated as "standard".

(That's about the end of what I can cite. The rest of this is based on my
subjective interpretation of an inherently biased and personal listening
input.)

In particular, it's common for u-vowels that would be devoiced in Eastern
Japanese to be fully voiced. and for the voiced u to be uncompressed - i.e.,
the Kansai-ben vowel chart is _even more_ like the Spanish vowel chart, with
five simple, ordinary, "pure" vowel sounds. The top answer at the other
question says that おう commonly gets rendered as お rather than おお, but what I
hear more often is that it actually becomes おう, and then the う is subject to
un-compression and even significant rounding. It gets to the point where a
-ましょう ending on a verb sounds a lot like a southern American saying "my show",
and the u-vowel in です gets prominent emphasis.

In the modern era, the question of "prestige" is not so straightforward.
Kansai-ben seems to be gaining popularity and "coolness" nowadays from what I
can see, especially in the entertainment industry.2 On the other hand, I
understand that it's still used in anime to signal that a character is
supposed to be, shall we say, on the less sophisticated side.

1 To my understanding, pretty much everywhere north of Tokyo is fairly similar
accent-wise. It does drift further from the standard - [northern Touhoku
dialects](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/T%C5%8Dhoku_dialect) has some major
phonetic shifts, and things are different again on the island of Hokkaido -
but speech patterns here are certainly more similar to each other than they
are to Western dialects.

2 I commonly hear these features used by MCs, Vtubers and other タレント - and [I
guess it's not just me](https://japanese.stackexchange.com/questions/654). The
sound shifts seem to be more common than the inflection changes; やばい->やべぇ is
common, 分からない->分からん less so, although I think I've heard わかんない. I am pretty
confident that all of these features reflect a consistent "Western Japanese"
dialect, although it might be a different/more specific one.

