desu pronounciation

[appleraja]

is desu pronounced
dess?
de-su?
des-u?

[WacKostRacKo]

i think its dess but with a silent u after it. like 'dess-u' the 'ss' is more dropped at the end rather than a 'u' is pronounced. that make any sense? someone correct me if i am wrong...

[rebecca147]

I think that is right I have only ever heard it said with a silent ending. Hope that helps

Rebecca

[Uwabami]

Pronounced "dess" in conversation, but you can often hear the usually silent /u/ in songs.

[Diggity]

Yes my Genki Cd has native japanese speakers and all the verbs have a silent u in the -masu form, and desu has a silent u as well. So tabemasu sounds like tabemass... and so on.

In songs it would make sense from a rhyming standpoint so they would sound as a rhyme with other words that end in a u. I am only taking an educate guess as to why this is done so please don't take it as the reason why.

[skrhgh3b]

oh, wow. someone else from kansas city. anyway, there's always some musical reason (melodic, rhythmic, etc.) for why a pronunciation would change from its conversational counterpart in a song.... also, some things are just more musical - n da vs. no sa, for example, which pops up a lot in imawano kiyoshiro's lyrics, i notice.

[Kates]

I've watched a few shows (I remember a "Meitantei Conan" episode in particular) where foreigners speaking Japanese often say "deSU" or "deeeess"--it seems that the Japaense kind of poke fun at our pronunciation of 'desu'. :o

I suppose I usually speak my 'u' in 'desu' very very softly, and it's heard a bit more when another sound follows 'desu' (as in "blah blah desu ke do...").