[地下鉄]{ちかてつ}
How does one know the "hiragana spelling", i.e. the hiragana representation of the word is
ちかてつ
but not other forms involving misspelling one or more of the following
- か vs. が
- て vs. で
- つ vs. づ or ず
, especially when the pronunciation of か, て, つ in the word in reality is affected by a tendency to 濁音. I'm told that the unvoiced k-row sounds and t-row sounds are often pronounced as voiced g- and d- sounds when they are not appearing as the first sound of words.
Please enlighten me!
Answer
I don't agree with what you were told about it.
Of course in rapid speaking consonants tend to be pronounced rather roughly, and it may be prominent especially in non-initial consonants, but still voiceless consonants (k, t, ts, etc.) have to be distingushed from voiced ones (g, d, z, etc.) in Japanese.
For example in this conversation:
A: じゃあ明日には完成するんだな？
B: [誓]{ちか}うよ。
the word 誓う must not be pronounced ちがう, because ちがう means another word 違う, and, 誓う and 違う are totally different two words which are to be distinguished only by the voiced-ness of the second consonant, /k/ vs /g/.
In short (and linguistically), /k/ and /g/ are a pair of different phonemes which can constitute a "minimal pair".
Theoretically this kind of pair can happen with any word containing relevant consonants (like [香水]{こうすい} vs [洪水]{こうずい}, [囮]{おとり} vs [踊り]{おどり}, [文系]{ぶんけい} vs [文芸]{ぶんげい}..., etc.), so, I recommend you to always try to pronounce them distinctively; I mean, voiceless consonants voicelessly, and voiced voicedly, at least until you get very fluent in Japanese.
And all this situation also applies to any native speaker. They have to differentiate words in those pairs too. か/て/つ in ちかてつ is never pronounced fully voiced to appear as が/で/ず, so as to avoid confusing with words like ちがてつ, ちかでつ, ちがでず..., etc, though in this case they are all non-existent words.
[EDIT] In reply to qazwsx's comment
As for your final question, my answer is clear; Just forget this "g-ng contrasting" (which you are trying to perform) and simply stick to the "k-g contrasting" (read words as their ローマ字 are spelled). Have you ever seen a textbook that explains about this "g-ng contrasting" whatever? I bet you haven't (because there is no such one), and you should not take in such a rule which is not mentioned in any one of existing textbooks.
http://www.bunka.go.jp/kokugo_nihongo/joho/kakuki/20/tosin03/10.html
Here is a short report by 国語審議会 (National Language Council), stating that people incapable of pronouncing 鼻濁音 are increasing among young generation, in addition to the already existing people who use dialects without 鼻濁音. Your theory is WRONG in the first place.
To be very precise, yes, a kind of this "g-ng contrasting" does exist in Tohoku dialects, mainly among aged people. But when your are new to a language, no doubt you should learn the standardized one first, not a dialect.
So I strongly recommend you to quit this "g-ng" practice immediately, and get back to the standard "k-g" pronunciation.
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