Quote:
Originally Posted by flunacy
Hello everyone! 
I hope you are all having a good day
I've just started learning the hiragana alphabet and I try to read the sillabes as they appear on the internet, magazines etc...
I have found for the word "umai" this two written words:
うまい and うまそう.
Is the last a correct writing for "umai"?
And how do you transcribe it in romanj? Is it umasō? And do you pronounce it the same way as umai? I would like to understand...
Sorry for troubling you and thank you for your help.
A big CIAO from Italy 
flunacy |
Hiragana is
always read exactly the same way it is written. It is like Italian like that, rather than English (which is
not like that!).
So if you write one うまい and the other うまそう, they are written differently, so they are pronounced differently.
The two exceptions are that, in the most populated areas of Japan, ぢ＝じ and づ＝ず in sound but not writing. I guess, technically, sometimes おう＝おお and ええ＝えい in sound.
But there is no way うまい＝うまそう.
うまそう means "it seems/looks うまい." If you take an い-adjective, drop the い, and add そう, it translates as "it seems/looks ADJECTIVE."
おいしいー＞おいしそう = "it looks delicious"
たのしいー＞たのしそう = "it looks fun"
etc.