赤坂　浅草　赤坂　浅草　赤坂　浅草

あかさか　あさくさ　あかさか　あさくさ　あかさか　あさくさ

playadom Wrote:Tricky pronunciation? Try pronouncing these:

??????? ?? ?

Are those even kanji? What the hell....

There's the code2000 series:
http://www.code2000.net/

And some SimSun-ExtB

http://www.microsoft.com/typography/font...?FMID=1221

There's a load of others -- and a bunch of handwritten fonts, if you look around.

nac_est Wrote:

Nuriko Wrote:Stuff like　千円 The way I hear it, it's not straight 「せんえん」　but more 「せええん」

Have you noticed that sometimes they actually pronounce it 「せんいえん」(but いえ are a single sound)?

Have you ever heard a Go player talk about 本因坊「ほんいんぼう」秀策「しゅさく」?

Or maybe 三千円「さんぜんえん」

nest0r Wrote:Ah, so it was my lack of Ext. B that was giving me trouble. I'm so obsolete.

You have now been brought to the age where they have a character with 8 木 in it.

範囲（はんい） is a bitch. Originally I was saying "honey" but it's more like "hai" wtih a wisp of "n". Kind of like 雰囲気.

Another tough one I have made a point of practicing is 暖かかった（あたたかかった）. Try saying that fast

食べられる took me quite a while to get too.

Babyrat Wrote:

QuackingShoe Wrote:Part of the problem might be that they're actually taberaremasen and sumimasen...

passive/potential (一段) can be kindof annoying to say though... well, actually, not in general, but 虐げられる has always given me a headache.

Ah.. well that shows i have a bad ear for Japanese as I have only heard them but not seen them written down. I think you have just made taberaremasen even harder for me now! though sumimasen is much easier.

Ahh, don't worry, when I first started with Pimsleur lessons, I thought 食べます was actually ぱべます for the longest time!

kfmfe04 Wrote:赤坂　浅草　赤坂　浅草　赤坂　浅草
あかさか　あさくさ　あかさか　あさくさ　あかさか　あさくさ

OK you got me. I can't say it.

I find 食べられます pretty easy, but that's because I practiced it a ton at first - it seemed like it encompassed a lot important sounds. Now I get confused, though, because when I try to switch to a slightly more casual 食べれる instead of 食べられる - I stutter and lose track of the sounds.

I used to find 料理 pretty difficult, too.

nest0r Wrote:

haplology Wrote:I used to find 料理 pretty difficult, too.

This one still gets me if I try too hard to pronounce it, if that makes sense.

I pronounce it kind of like "dyōri"; dunno if that's "right", but whenever I hear Japanese speakers say りゅ or りょ it always sounds to me like "dyu" and "dyo".

The difference is very subtle. With Japanese /d/ you push your tongue against your teeth, but with /r/ you flap your tongue against your alveolar ridge.

For English /d/ you push your tongue against your alveolar ridge, so English /d/ is in between Japanese /d/ and /r/. That's why りゅ sounds like "dyu" to you.

Repeat 10 times:
動労　労働　道路　料理　通り　

Pronunciations (but read the Kanji 10 times):
どうろう　ろうどう　どうろ　りょうり　どおり　

I have the following sentence in my srs:
お金に煩わされたくない​

Quite simple, but many months after having entered it I still struggle with the pronunciation of the verb, わずらわされたくない. That's negative+passive+desiderative. Wow!

How about 王を追おう? ou wo oou (Let's) chase the king!