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David Iannucci wrote:
Of course, this is not the kind of rule you learn in school (most if not all of which are antithetical to the scientific study of language), but the kind you learn by listening.
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Hrm. I was explicitly taught this rule in the first term of my Japanese language classes. /u/ and /i/ were referred to as "weak vowels", rather than "high vowels," but it was still explicitly taught
In my experience, the amount of devoicing is region and gender dependent, with more devoicing being characteristic of masculine speech.