structural:reformatting, quality:correction
Consonants

Some Japanese consonants have several allophones, which may give the impression of a larger inventory of sounds. However, some of these allophones have since become phonemic. For example, in the Japanese language up to and including the first half of the 20th century, the phonemic sequence /ti/ was palatalized and realized phonetically as, approximately chi (); however, now and are distinct, as evidenced by words like tī "Western-style tea" and chii "social status".

The "r" of the Japanese language is of particular interest, ranging between an apical central tap and a lateral approximant. The "g" is also notable; unless it starts a sentence, it may be pronounced, in the Kanto prestige dialect and in other eastern dialects.

The phonotactics of Japanese are relatively simple. The syllable structure is (C)(G)V(C), that is, a core vowel surrounded by an optional onset consonant, a glide /j/ and either the first part of a geminate consonant (っ / ッ, represented as Q) or a moraic nasal in the coda (ん / ン, represented as N).

The nasal is sensitive to its phonetic environment and assimilates to the following phoneme, with pronunciations including. Onset-glide clusters only occur at the start of syllables but clusters across syllables are allowed as long as the two consonants are the moraic nasal followed by a homorganic consonant.

Japanese also includes a pitch accent, which is not represented in moraic writing; for example ("chopsticks") and ("bridge") are both spelled はし (hashi), and are only differentiated by the tone contour.