Japanese to English Equivalency Chart

Which Hiragana make which sound? How can I make my UTAU English without recording an English bank? How can I make Defoko sing English?

Japanese to English Equivalency Chart

This is an appendix to my Japanese CV English in UTAU videos in which I show exactly what you use to get the sound you want.

Note: Shortly after writing this, I realized that it was impossible for me to create the video without any monetary input from my viewers. If you want the video series I was intending to make happen, please donate to my Patreon. 

It is important to remember that when using a Japanese bank, you will only have access to five vowels. However, there are workarounds. For example, cross-fading "い" and "え" will give you something that resembles the English phoneme "I" / "ih". 

Because of this, a less ambitious user will simply have to deal with the vowels being quite different from English. However, many languages also only have five vowels. Many people who speak English as a second language will generally only use those five vowels. English is a beautiful and dynamic language, so using only "e" or "i" for "ih" as opposed to cross-fading them will generally be understood within the context of the song.

The bigger problem is consonants, as Japanese is also limited in this regard. Again, English has consonants that are difficult to pronounce. I, myself, had to take speech therapy to pronounce the "th" sound in "this". If you can understand someone who speaks English as a second language and swaps out the difficult to pronounce consonants with easier pronounce consonants, then this won't be an issue for you.

With that said, this chart will be broken up into equivalencies all banks should have, equivalencies most modern banks should have, and then equivalencies that almost certainly will not exist in any bank recorded by a Japanese user.

I will save showing how to correct when there is no equivalent in my videos. I will link those here once they are uploaded. As opposed to listing every equivalent in its own cell, I will separate the entire row into another chart, even if only one sample is missing.

I won't include "ん" anywhere in the chart as it is a pretty special case, and there is no one standard way to record it. When done properly, it would be the "ng" sound in "ring", but it could also be the "m" sound in timber, or the "n" sound in "ran".

I won't include "special" palatalized consonants, but be aware that "beautiful" starts with "びゅ" and "cute" starts with "きゅ"

*Important note - "key" and "き" are not the same. Almost all consonants preceding an "i" are palatalized. However, I wager that very few English speakers can hear the difference. For that reason, I will treat them as being equivalents unless you can easily hear the difference. If the difference bothers you... Sadly, there are no alternatives.

Equivalents Every Banks Should Have

English Phoneme	あ	い	う	え	お
b as in "bat"	ば	び	ぶ	べ	ぼ
g as in "good"	が	ぎ	ぐ	げ	ご
k as in "cat"	か	き	く	け	こ
m as in "me"	ま	み	む	め	も
n as in "new"	な	に	ぬ	ね	の
p as in "pop"	ぱ	ぴ	ぷ	ぺ	ぽ

Equivalents Most Banks Should Have

*Note: It's not a guarantee a bank will have palatalized consonants followed by ”ぇ”, but I'll include them in this section as all three banks I've tested had them to some extent.

English Phoneme	あ	い	う	え	お
d as in "dog"	だ	でぃ	どぅ	で	ど
f as in "fast"	ふぁ	ふぃ	ふ	ふぇ	ふぉ
s as in "so"	さ	すぃ	す	せ	そ
S as in "shoot"	しゃ	し	しゅ	しぇ	しょ
t as in "top"	た	てぃ	とぅ	て	と
tS as in "chew"	ちゃ	ち	ちゅ	ちぇ	ちょ
dZ as in "jaw"	じゃ	じ	じゅ	じぇ	じょ
z as in "zoo"	ざ	ずぃ	ず	ぜ	ぞ
v as in "vet"	ヴぁ	ヴぃ	ヴ	ヴぇ	ヴぉ

Combinations that Rarely (if ever) Exist

English Phoneme	あ	い	う	え	お
j as in "Yes"	や	X	ゆ	いぇ	よ
Possibly r / l	ラ	リ	ル	レ	ロ
Possibly r/l	るぁ	るぃ	X	るぇ	るぉ
w as in "we"	わ	うぃ	X	うぇ	うぉ
h as in "he"	は	X	X	へ	ほ

Combinations That Don't Exist and What To Do

To start, "Z" as in "Pleasure", "T" as in "Thatch", and "D" as in "This" do not exist in Japanese, and there is no way to write them out. Replacing "Z" with "dZ", "T" with "f", and "D" with "z" may work. However, those replacements may not work well at all with the accent of the bank.

While the English "r" does not exist, you can replace it easily with the Japanese "r", and most people should understand it. (As said earlier, plenty of English speakers from around the world would do the same in their own speech.)

"l" not existing, however, is an issue. Depending on the accent of the bank, you may be able to edit the OTO files to make the "r" sound like an "l". (The difference between Japanese "r" and English "l" is that Japanese "r" is not a liquid. Removing the silence before the "r" may make it sound like an "l".)

Then there is "w" and "j" (or "w" and "y"). There's no way (that ends up in recording lists) to write "wu" and "yi" in Japanese. There are two ways to fix this: either get really creative and choose something like "yu" for "wu" or "ni" for "yi", or use crossfading to get the correct sound from two separate files.

Finally, we have 'h' as in 'horse.' This one is tricky. If an American who hasn't studied Japanese much records the bank, "ひ" will sound like "he". However, if someone who knows Japanese phonology well records it, it will sound closer to "she". This is very tricky to figure out, with my first suggestion being to use "ふぃ", but crossfading is another option. Sadly, I have no way of knowing how to write "hu" and it be recognized as something other than "ふ". Depending on the accent of the bank, however, fu may sound close enough to hu to leave it alone.

I will update this sections with links to the videos

For now, I cannot make the videos as I don't have the time to put in that much effort without any compensation. If you really want the video series to be made, please donate to my Patreon. If enough people donate and ask for the videos, there will be four videos in the series. The first will be for absolute beginners and focus simply on putting the hiragana into the UST. The second will be for intermediate users and will focus on envelopes and consonant velocity to further tune the UST to sound closer to English. The third video will focus on editing OTO files so that the CV bank can be used in a way that is somewhat similar to CVVC to make the English even more understandable. The fourth will be a video dedicated to using UtaLis and utawaview to tune the UST even further for more realism.

I do hope I can eventually make the videos.