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Comment by microcolonel | Hacker News Reader

Aside: I always hated the romanization "tempura". The nasal is clearly an n in this word, and I have no idea how they got to an m.

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'n' is moraic nasal, which requires the same length of time as all other moraic sounds. How it is pronounced depends on what sound follows it.

It is pronounced with 'm' like in てんぷら (tenpura) when followed by a 'p', 'b', or 'm.'

edit: more fun facts

'n' is pronounced with 'ng' like in てんき (tenki) when followed by 'k' or 'g'

It is pronounced as a nasalized sound of the proceeding vowel when followed by 's', 'h', 'y', w', or a vowel. こんばんは (konbanwa) is pronounced kombaáwa (nasalized á).

This general response is something that people say a lot with regards to Japanese pronunciation. For whatever it's worth, my (native) Japanese professors all pronounced ん like "n," not "m," in words like tenpura, konbanwa, senpai, and enpitsu.

You ears are likely deceiving you. The traditional explanation of the pronunciation rules, which widely appears in textbooks and Japanese pronunciation manuals, is absolutely correct, and also in line with what is normal for human language (e.g. how do you pronounce "input" in normal speech?).

But if you still doubt, I grabbed the first three audio recordings of "tempura" I could find in videos. All are very clearly bilabial nasals (i.e. "m"): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4b6glqZKVBY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RUslqCQd4W4 https://youtu.be/56PHtLWJh-0?t=159

I mean, it's conceivable that this was a pedagogical technique or a strange dialect of my teachers, but when they modeled pronunciation, it was clearly with an "n" sound. Or perhaps when they spoke each mora distinctly and somewhat separately, they unconsciously reverted to the "normal" pronunciation of ん instead of a modified pronunciation.

Now, maybe having modeled that, when they spoke at normal speed it was an "m" sound and, not listening for it, I never heard it.

(Also: They never corrected my pronunciation of ん, which was consciously an "n" sound. They did correct my pronunciation of other things, like failing to subvocalize vowels between unvoiced consonants (I remember a long and arduous exchange in which my professor pronounced "hito" (人), and I tried to mirror it back, imagining that my problem was in not emphasizing the second syllable enough rather than failing to subvocalize the "i"). And I think that I say "input" with an "n" sound. But maybe I'm incapable of saying "input" the way I normally do in speech when I'm actually thinking about it. :P )

I just did a survey, showing people the kanji. The said tempura but not the way a native English speaker would say, which is more like "Tem pura".

I've heard that in most circumstances you can safely use an 'm' rather than the moraic nasal 'm' such that most people may not even recognise it, though I don't have enough experience to confirm that myself.

the word ‘tempura’ comes from the Latin word tempora

Maybe it's not a romanization?

Sorta, English got it from Japanese, which got it from Portuguese, which got it from Latin. There are other words with similar trajectory.

In this case it is a romanization of an old Chinese-style Japanese transliteration (pre-katakana, so it reads as nonsense) of a Portuguese transliteration of a Latin word.

It's not even a round trip like anime (Latin -> ???->->->??? -> English -> Japanese -> English); but even anime got a proper romanization, it just turned out closer.

My favorite are days of the week, which came to Japan via China and Rome.

/n/ to /m/ transition before a bilabial consonant (in this case, /p/) is fairly common phenomenon in a variety of languages.

Note that this happens in Japanese when /n/ (ん) occurs before syllables starting with /b/ (shimbun 新聞), /p/ (sampo 散歩), and /m/ (sammai 三枚).

Also note that there are regional, socioeconomic, and register differences regarding whether/when this /n/ to /m/ transition occurs in a speaker's actual pronunciation.

even in English.

'impossible' and 'improper' is 'in-' modified by the 'p'.

Rendering ん as "m" before b/p/m is standard per Traditional Hepburn romanization, one of the most popular such systems.

C.f. "Shimbashi", "kampai", etc. It's not an ad-hoc thing being done for "tempura".

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hepburn_romanization

If that's true, it wouldn't be surprising due to the phenomenon known as place assimilation. Because 'p' happens with lips pursed, closer to the front of the mouth, the 'n' sound adapts to that place of articulation, creating an 'm' sound.

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