Tzadeck Wrote:

worthy7 Wrote:I said the CLOSEST is L, the problem with D is that there is already a D (だぢづでど） sound in Japanese.
Start with L and you'll just need to tweek it a tiny bit to get a perfect らりるれろ sound

D is a different sound in Japanese. For an English D you put your tongue right about where a Japanese R is. That is, just a little bit back from your teeth on the roof of your mouth. For a Japanese d (and t, which is the same shape but with no vocal chords), you put your tongue farther forward. That's why the Japanese t and d sounds softer--your tongue doesn't push out as much air when it's closer to the teeth.

I trust that this is true for north americans (eg pronunciation of water). But I don't think it's true for the rest of the eigoken. I think brits in particular and also australians pronounce d/t much more "dentally".

For non americans i'd say L is closest. If you can't hear it correctly yet, just pronounce it as an L and your tongue will be roughly in the right spot. English R also involves the the lips so I don't think you want to think of ragyou as a mix of L and R at all.

Actually just trying to speak japanese while pronouncing ragyou as L, I find it naturally slurring into ragyou.

I've practiced japanese pronunciation every single day since November, and now I'm much more confident with the sounds (but still slow).

The r sound is definitely the worst one, and while I'm nailing some of the simplest combinations (ならない, それ, あたらしい, する...) some other ones are still a mess.

I find particularly difficult the following sounds:
- ra gyou sound after ち or し (こちら)
- ra and da gyou sounds in sequence (こちらです, very difficult), also na and ta are tough
- multiple ra gyou sounds. This worries me a lot, partly because it occurs many times (いられる comes to mind). I'm very slow and make a lot of errors
- all of the above (きんじられるだるう, されるだろう...)

For now I'm just hoping that 毎日特訓 will bear its fruits, but I'll be happy if someone that encountered my same difficulties would share his success story.

Just keep at it. I took a Spanish linguistics class, and after I revealed my inability to roll "R's", the professor admitted it took him a decade to learn how to do it. So learning how to pronounce "foreign" sounds can be quite a challenge.

Looking back at this topic... I just settled for a softly rolled R nowadays. It's still not half way between L and R like the Japanese do it, but close enough I think. I can see how English native speakers could have trouble though.

(aaand right now I have a hard time perfecting the う, it's like a messed up German ü, but not quite... ughh)

You're right, う is difficult, too.

It's also crucial, 'cause as said in this recent article http://www.tofugu.com/2014/05/13/how-to-...mi-uemura/ , pronouncing vowels the right way (with the right shape of the mouth) is necessary condition to pronounce correct Japanese.

You are paying to much attention where it is not needed actually.
In Japanese clear pronunciation of vowels is way more important than clear pronunciation of consonant sounds. The vowel, its length and pitch, is what have more meaning to the Japanese ear.
In European languages this is usually exactly opposite. In many ancient alphabets there were no vowels at all, because they were not important for the meaning.
R or L sounds change the meaning of the word in European languages, while in Japanese they are allophones - variants of the same sound. Sometimes you can hear more of an L, sometimes more of an R, it doesn't matter really. Japanese can also roll R, especially when angry.

LazyNomad Wrote:You are paying to much attention where it is not needed actually.
In Japanese clear pronunciation of vowels is way more important than clear pronunciation of consonant sounds. The vowel, its length and pitch, is what have more meaning to the Japanese ear.

That's like saying that you only need to pay attention to half the hiragana because the other ones aren't used as often.

Quote:In European languages this is usually exactly opposite. In many ancient alphabets there were no vowels at all, because they were not important for the meaning.

This is not the reason abjads only show the consonants. Writing systems are almost never completely efficient or well-suited to the languages they are representing, especially in the ancient world when the technology was new and they didn't have much in the way of comparison.

Quote:R or L sounds change the meaning of the word in European languages, while in Japanese they are allophones - variants of the same sound. Sometimes you can hear more of an L, sometimes more of an R, it doesn't matter really. Japanese can also roll R, especially when angry.

Allophones are realizations of the same phoneme by native speakers; mispronunciations by non-native speakers are not allophones. The Japanese language has no "r" or "l" sounds; the sound is an alveolar tap/flap, represented by the IPA symbol [ɾ].

yudantaiteki, I believe you know why gojuon ordering of kana starts with the vowels, and then continues in the particlular order of ka, sa, ta, na, ha, ma, do you?
I also believe, that you know that vowels (not consonants) are called "mother sounds" in Japanese, which kind of displays priorities.
In Japanese consonant sounds are not strictly fixed. The technique and the requirements for pronunciation of consonants are much more simpler than in European languages, while the requirements to clear pronunciation of vowels, their length and pitch are much more demanding. Usually students of Japanese do not realize that specific trait of the language and train their consonant pronunciation to death, while they still sound very foreign due to not tackling the vowels.

LazyNomad Wrote:yudantaiteki, I believe you know why gojuon ordering of kana starts with the vowels, and then continues in the particlular order of ka, sa, ta, na, ha, ma, do you?

Yes, because of influence from Sanskrit. But it's not that hard to imagine an ordering that begins with the V only syllables and then does the CV syllables.

Quote:In Japanese consonant sounds are not strictly fixed. The technique and the requirements for pronunciation of consonants are much more simpler than in European languages, while the requirements to clear pronunciation of vowels, their length and pitch are much more demanding. Usually students of Japanese do not realize that specific trait of the language and train their consonant pronunciation to death, while they still sound very foreign due to not tackling the vowels.

I haven't seen any learners ignoring the vowels, but you seem to be taking the opposite approach of ignoring the consonants. I don't know what you mean by consonant sounds not being "strictly fixed." If you mean that a row of the 五十音表 does not correspond to a single consonant, that's an issue of the 五十音表 and has to do with realization of phonemes (allophones). But the pronunciation of each consonant is fixed (as far as any sound in any language is fixed, of course there is always contextual and individual variation).

Just because the OP asked about the "r" sound doesn't mean he's "not tackling the vowels." If you are trying to say that as long as you pronounce the vowels right it doesn't really matter what you do with the consonants, I think that's totally wrong. If anything I think that learners ignore the consonants too much, and assume that if they know the hiragana they know how to pronounce everything.

In a sense it's true that the vowels are more important because every syllable contains one of the vowels, but again I feel like that's saying that the most used hiragana are more important than the less used ones. Technically true but not all that important since you need to know them all.

yudantaiteki Wrote:

LazyNomad Wrote:yudantaiteki, I believe you know why gojuon ordering of kana starts with the vowels, and then continues in the particlular order of ka, sa, ta, na, ha, ma, do you?

Yes, because of influence from Sanskrit. But it's not that hard to imagine an ordering that begins with the V only syllables and then does the CV syllables.

Yes, the idea was borrowed from Sanskrit, but what important is a phonetic logic behind such exact ordering that appealed to Japanese. Why sa goes after ka, and ta after sa and not the other way around?

I never thought about the order of 五十音 before. I found the passage below interesting :/

この配列になった理由付けとして有力なのは、悉曇学（サンスクリットの音韻学）による影響である。母音をラテン文字で表すと、a, ā, i, ī, u, ū, ṛ, ṝ, ḷ, ḹ, e, ai, o, au, (a)ṃ, (a)ḥ となる。太字は日本語で対応する母音であるが、実際「あいうえお」の順に並んでいる。また子音の配列も (母音), k, kh, g, gh, ṅ, c, ch, j, jh, ñ, ṭ, ṭh, ḍ, ḍh, ṇ, t, th, d, dh, n, p, ph, b, bh, m, y, r, l, v, ś, ṣ, s, hとなっており、「あかさたなはまやらわ」と一致している。悉曇学を学んだ明覚などから五十音図があらわされたことと合わせても、悉曇学の影響があることは間違いないと考えられる。
http://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E4%BA%94%E...7.E6.BA.90

LazyNomad Wrote:The technique and the requirements for pronunciation of consonants are much more simpler than in European languages, while the requirements to clear pronunciation of vowels, their length and pitch are much more demanding.

That's quite a generalization. I don't really know for other Slavic languages, but as a Slovene native speaker the pitch and length of Japanese vowels seems rather straightforward.

LazyNomad Wrote:

yudantaiteki Wrote:

LazyNomad Wrote:yudantaiteki, I believe you know why gojuon ordering of kana starts with the vowels, and then continues in the particlular order of ka, sa, ta, na, ha, ma, do you?

Yes, because of influence from Sanskrit. But it's not that hard to imagine an ordering that begins with the V only syllables and then does the CV syllables.

Yes, the idea was borrowed from Sanskrit, but what important is a phonetic logic behind such exact ordering that appealed to Japanese. Why sa goes after ka, and ta after sa and not the other way around?

It's because of the ordering of Sanskrit. The Indian linguists were particularly perceptive in their phonological studies and ordered the sounds based on where in the mouth the sound was made. Japanese just copied that.

But the 五十音順 was never as popular as the いろは順 until after World War II, so it must not have been that special to Japanese.

yudantaiteki Wrote:It's because of the ordering of Sanskrit. The Indian linguists were particularly perceptive in their phonological studies and ordered the sounds based on where in the mouth the sound was made. Japanese just copied that.
But the 五十音順 was never as popular as the いろは順 until after World War II, so it must not have been that special to Japanese.

There were quite a few attempts to create sound tables for kana, based on phonetic logic that were so obvious for the monks - ardent students of sutras written Sanskrit.
Many words in those sutras were left without translation from Sanskrit, because monks felt that sometimes the sound and rhythm of original phrases in Sanskrit was of such importance, that they are better left untranslated. If the phonetics of words in sutras are important, then what is the best way to read them out loud for a non-Sanskrit speaker? The monks than started to devise sound tables to reach best possible approximation to the original.
In fact, the word "Sanskrit studies" (悉曇学)　practically changed its meaning to "study of phonology" in Japanese. The phonetic ordering in Sanskrit reflected two principles: (1)the place of articulation and (2)the manner of articulation.
Place of articulation is simple. Vowels first, than consonants (from the back of the the mouth (soft palate) to the roof of the mouth (hard palate) to the back of front teeth to the sounds that are produced with lips). R-sound in Sanskrit was not a consonant, but a vowel. Though in Japanese it is a consonant sound, for some reasons in gojuon it was placed not among true consonants, but among half-vowel consonants (y,r,w).
There were other systems as well, such as Meigaku`s 反音作法, that were not copying the ordering prescribed by Sanskrit where the consonants were ordered strictly by place of articulation true to Japanese: k, y, s, t, n, r, p, m, w.
Anyway, through centuries there were quite a few attempts to create most appropriate ordering of kana syllables in sound tables. Because of this different attempts through Japanese history to create sound tables, modern day linguists can research how pronunciation of sounds in Japanese evolved and changed over times. What is obvious, is that there were significant shifts in pronunciation of consonants throughout history of Japanese language (that continues even today), although vowels are much more stable. Japanese linguists say that the modern day "sa" sound was probably "cha", the "ta" sound was probably "tsa". "Ha" sound was "fa" and still earlier - "pa" sound. That is why "ha" was placed between "na" and "ma" sounds. The h and w consonants were reducted altogether in many cases ("wo" became "o", "he" became "e" ans so on), though they existed in the pronunciation in earlier times.

Now compare this to European languages, the Great shift of vowels in English, the reduction or change of unaccented vowels in most European languages (yes, Helltrixz, and in Slovenian too).

As for Iroha, it is certainly a nice poem, but it lacked phonetic analysis in its base. After Meiji, when the country was united, Japan felt the great need to eradicate dialects and standardize pronunciation across the country, and gojuon system was quite instrumental in it. Gojuon prescribes how to pronounce consonants in Japanese, but in a very approximate way. That is why Japanese generally are not good in catching a difference between R,L or even D in foreign languages. Same goes for V and B. Native Japanese speaker would sometimes ask a foreigner "how do you pronounce all that little consonants? You tongue and mouth should be very tired."
By the way, in Japanese phonology book that I have, it is written that pronunciation of R is very close to that of D in English (like in dad, dog), that's why English word "pudding" became プリン in Japanese. That is the best possible approximation for Japanese ear. Also, Japanese children often confuse r and d sounds even in their native language and pronounce 「どうして?」 as 「ろうちて?」.

dtcamero Wrote:I studied spanish in high school, and could never roll my Rs until 20 years later studying Japanese.
It's generally not the objective in Japanese (although guys sometimes do it to sound manly), but I think if you prepare yourself to roll your R, but stop just short of the roll, then you're making the right sound.

This is EXACTLY what I do. It definitely produces the best sound. The fact that Japanese people roll their r's sometimes proves that this is pretty close to how they pronounce it. No-one rolls their r's in English because our tongue does not reach the roof of our mouths when we say r's.

If you have an american accent, you can think of it like the tt in butter or the dd in ladder, or the t in fighter, except rather than rising you tongue tends to fall forward.

Well can you at least roll them ?
I can do the r sounds but I can't roll hem and I struggle when they're continouous like
-rareru which comes up frequently. Does practice fix that ?


Try out the tofugu video/ entry on the r sound

http://www.tofugu.com/2009/12/30/how-to-...e-r-sound/

Debating whether the Japanese らりるれろ sound is closer to the English R or L sound (or D sound) is pretty pointless, but because all English speakers pronounce these sounds slightly differently.

In particular, although there are hundreds or English accents that are all slightly different, there is a broad separation into rhotic and non-rhotic accents which mainly hinges or how you pronounce your R's.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rhotic_and_...ic_accents

In my case, the Japanese R sound is almost exactly like my English L sound, but that would not be appropriate for all people. Americans in particular pronounce their Rs (and Ds) very differently from mine.

It may also depend on what region of Japan you are attempting to mimic the pronunciation of, although I can't say I have noticed any special difference personally in that particular sound I'm sure there must be some variation.