Re: uh?

Bart Mathias wrote:
It depends how you define "sound." If you mean it as what distinguishes one word from another, then "standard" Japanese has exactly five vowels. (Some dialects might have fewer; at least one I know has more.)

Okinawan has 3 short, 5 long. Yonaguni has 3 in total. (And if you add the laryngealised consonants, it looks more and more like Arabophones speaking Japanese!)

The zu-zu-ben have 4 in certain (all?) environments.

And there's the famous Nagoya-ben with 8... (a bit like German, methinks, with [a ä e i ö ü o u])

If you mean allophones, it's somewhere between, but I think I generally made it about a dozen or so (distinguishing the four-way distinction of /u/ in /kuki/, /muki/, /suki/ and /sumu/, for example) in presentations to students, only five of which are really necessary to distinguish unless you want to pass as Japanese for the CIA or something.
Hmm, /kuki/ and /suki/ ought to have devoiced /u/; additionally, /suki/ might have a centralised /u/... /sumu/ might have a nasalised and centralised /u/. (And possibly a nasalised devoiced /u/ at the end.) /muki/ might have a nasalised /u/.

Hmm. Let me think a moment...

How's this:

Short:
[a E e i ï O o u ü]
[ja jO jo ju jü]

Devoiced:
[i ï u ü]
[ju jü]

Nasal:
[a e i ï O o u ü]
[ja jO jo ju jü]
(Especially if we accept the pronunciation of /sensei/ as something like [see~se:])

Long:
[a: E: e: i: ï: O: o: u: ü:]
[ja: jo: ju: jü:]

Nearly 4 dozen... though the case for classing long and palatalised separately is debatable. (Though, as you pointed out, the /a/ in /ja/ is almost always fronted, compared to /a/ alone.)
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