alt Hacker News塔 can be pronounced as tou, too, or somewhere between the two. It depends on the speaker, speaking style, and possibly dialect. Either way, Japanese speakers rely more on context and pitch accent than actual pronunciation, so it communicates fine.
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Lightkey • last Wednesday at 9:09 AM
> as tou, too, or somewhere between the two.
I see what you did there.
> 塔 can be pronounced as tou
No it can't, unless someone is spelling it out, or singing it in a song where it is given two notes, or just hyper-correcting their speech based on their knowledge of writing.
Annoyed speech and such can break words into their morae for empahsis, which breaks up dipthongs.
E.g. angry Japanese five-year-old:
ga kkō ni i ki ta ku nā i!!! (I don't wanna go to school!!!)
"nā i" is not the regular way of saying "nai". The idea that "nai" has that as an alternative pronunciation is a strawman.