Japanese phonology

The phonology of Japanese features a phonemic inventory of five vowels (/a, e, i, o, u/) and 15 or more consonants (depending on how certain sounds are analyzed). The phonotactics are relatively simple, allowing for few consonant clusters. Japanese phonology has been affected by the presence of several layers of vocabulary in the language: in addition to native Japanese vocabulary, Japanese has a large amount of Chinese-based vocabulary and loanwords from other languages.

Standard Japanese is a pitch-accent language, wherein the position or absence of a pitch drop may determine the meaning of a word: /haꜜsiɡa/ (箸が, 'chopsticks'), /hasiꜜɡa/ (橋が, 'bridge'), /hasiɡa/ (端が, 'edge').

Unless otherwise noted, the following describes the standard variety of Japanese based on the Tokyo dialect.