alyks Wrote:Being a singer, I actually had to learn how to pronounce the 'ga', 'ka', 'ta', 'na', 'la', 'ra', and 'da' without moving the jaw. We're all capable of pronouncing a wide variety of sounds all within the same area with a little bit of practice, it's simply a matter of learning how it normally sounds, which I think is needed from exposure and imitation.

Could you explain this a little bit more? The not moving the jaw part...

kazelee Wrote:

alyks Wrote:Being a singer, I actually had to learn how to pronounce the 'ga', 'ka', 'ta', 'na', 'la', 'ra', and 'da' without moving the jaw....

Could you explain this a little bit more? The not moving the jaw part...

You have to use the tongue entirely to pronounce the consonants. The way I was taught to pronounce the 'l' ends up with it very similar to how the Japanese pronounce.

Ever try speaking japanese without opening your jaw, closed teeth? sounds eerily...good

Erubey Wrote:Ever try speaking japanese without opening your jaw, closed teeth? sounds eerily...good

I was actually told by my barber (barbers are excellent at detecting oddities in speaking) that I do this, speaking with my teeth almost shut, in English. She wondered whether my parents had dentures (they don't), because apparently a lot of people with denture-parents do it.

I wonder whether studying Japanese made me speak English with my teeth shut.

Erubey Wrote:Ever try speaking japanese without opening your jaw, closed teeth? sounds eerily...good

Hmm, makes me sound like a Japanese bus driver... o_O

bucko Wrote:kfmfe04 is spot on with the sounds. The ら り る れ ろ sounds are closer to 'd' and 'l' than 'r' in many cases. It's just stupid standardisation that has rendered it into the romaji ra ri ru re ro. I was in the class not long ago and there was this guy who was using the 'r' sound for all ら り る れ ろ and it sounded terrible. I actually started getting annoyed and I wanted the tell him "it's not 'dakaRA', it's 'dakaLA'! And it's not 'waRUi' it's 'waDUi'!" (with a flick of the tongue for 'du')

One of my teachers from way back held me up on this during a spoken prac test. I was saying 'reitou shokuin' (refridgerated goods), when it should have been 'leitou shokuin'. I also know of a Japanese woman called りり that spells her name 'Lili', probably because she was sick of people calling her 'riri'.

This depends on what Rs you're talking about. From a Swedish perspective, warui is a lot more R than it is a D. Wadui sounds horrible in my ears. Then again, it's neither. It's not an R, it's not a D, it's not an L. It's so much in the middle that with the right examples, you could make the case that it's anything. "It's a b without the harsh closing of the mouth". The point is that it's る, not ru, du or lu. Trying to put latin characters to it just confuses it. Romaji is really kinda useless.

Tobberoth Wrote:This depends on what Rs you're talking about. From a Swedish perspective, warui is a lot more R than it is a D. Wadui sounds horrible in my ears. Then again, it's neither. It's not an R, it's not a D, it's not an L. It's so much in the middle that with the right examples, you could make the case that it's anything. "It's a b without the harsh closing of the mouth". The point is that it's る, not ru, du or lu. Trying to put latin characters to it just confuses it. Romaji is really kinda useless.

Agreed. Trying to said 'It's like X in Language B' is just a starting point, not a definite. People tend to forget the 'like' part of that sentence and think it's an absolute.

Honestly, the best way to learn to say words is to hear a native speak them. Second best would be to listen to TV or Radio and get the pronunciation from there. You'll also hear it in context, which can sometimes reshape the sound even more.

Tobberoth Wrote:The point is that it's る, not ru, du or lu. Trying to put latin characters to it just confuses it. Romaji is really kinda useless.

Not only is it useless, but it is often very HARMFUL. Imagine a Japanese native trying to pronounce "real" without Romaji - probably comes out as リアル, which you or I may be able to guess correctly, but a non-Japanese speaking English native would say, what?!?!

That's why I don't even like the name of this thread - 'R' or 'L' - we can't even agree on what a 'R' is, how can we agree to how it maps to Japanese?!?!

You hit the nail on the head when you say it is not a ru, du or lu - it's る. You can try to use 'R' or 'L' or other approximations as you like, but just make sure you are using the right one - please check with a native if you are unsure - it's hard to break bad pronunciation habits.

Most of all, if you are just starting out - avoid Romaji like the plague (until you are sure you aren't infected by its mispronunciation cues).

kfmfe04 Wrote:Most of all, if you are just starting out - avoid Romaji like the plague (until you are sure you aren't infected by its mispronunciation cues).

And not only that, romaji makes learning grammar MUCH harder as well. I mean something as simple as basic verb conjugation:

matsu
machimasu

WHAT? Where did the c come from!? Why an h in the middle of it all? Where did the t and s go?

From someone who learned it based on kana, it's simple as crap, the tsu (think kana) simply became the i "version" of "t", chi (again, think kana).

I know nihon-shiki romaji is a lot more logical when it comes to grammar (matu, matimasu) but still, it's a definite addition to the confusion.

PS: It sucks to not have Japanese support on the computer... but this is a fresh install of Ubuntu Intrepid, it will have to wait a while.

I have a question, any able to get the naselly pronunciations of the 'ga' sounds down? Know what I'm talking about? That part is the hardest for me when pronouncing things. It just feels so forced and unnatural its hard.

Tobberoth Wrote:And not only that, romaji makes learning grammar MUCH harder as well. I mean something as simple as basic verb conjugation:

matsu
machimasu

WHAT? Where did the c come from!? Why an h in the middle of it all? Where did the t and s go?

From someone who learned it based on kana, it's simple as crap, the tsu (think kana) simply became the i "version" of "t", chi (again, think kana).

That's so freaking true. The conjugations clicked almost instantly once I got a good hold on the kana.

@Tobberoth: If you need emergency kana input there are sites which translate romaji to かな.

@Tobberoth: also, on this forum, if you enclose romaji in [ kana ] [ /kana ] tags, it will be rendered as hiragana. Use all caps for katakana.

kazelee Wrote:

Tobberoth Wrote:And not only that, romaji makes learning grammar MUCH harder as well. I mean something as simple as basic verb conjugation:

matsu
machimasu

WHAT? Where did the c come from!? Why an h in the middle of it all? Where did the t and s go?

From someone who learned it based on kana, it's simple as crap, the tsu (think kana) simply became the i "version" of "t", chi (again, think kana).

That's so freaking true. The conjugations clicked almost instantly once I got a good hold on the kana.

Thus the version of romaji that a lot of Japanese people use:

待つ - matu
待ちます- matimasu
the same as
書く - kaku
書きます - kakimasu
also fixes
探す -sagasu
探します -sagasimasu

This would probably just introduce more pronunciation problems if Americans did it.

kfmfe04 Wrote:ら LA (tongue hits front of mouth)
り DI-light (tongue hits top of mouth)
る DU-light (tongue hits top of mouth)
れ DE/RE - no tongue-roll (tongue hits back of mouth), で is DE-harder
ろ DO/RO - no tongue-roll (tongue hits back of mouth), ど is DO-harder

NICE! Your advice helps a lot when pronouncing these kana in Japanese .

playadom Wrote:Thus the version of romaji that a lot of Japanese people use:

待つ - matu
待ちます- matimasu
the same as
書く - kaku
書きます - kakimasu
also fixes
探す -sagasu
探します -sagasimasu

This would probably just introduce more pronunciation problems if Americans did it.

Yeah, I mentioned nihon-shiki in my post, don't know why kazlee cut that part out XD

Quick reply to several posts...



I don't know why people complain about Romaji... I learned verb inflections from a book that used Romaji exclusively and I found it dead easy.

I can't see how it's a big deal. If it's explained properly, it doesn't matter whether you use Romaji or hiragana since they're pretty much equivalent.



Japanese on Ubuntu... I installed Kubuntu and it took me ages to get Japanese support working properly. I don't even know which tweak finally got it going.



Japanese "r" is a single flap on the alveolar ridge, not the top of the mouth. English bends the tongue back to the top of the mouth, Japanese does not. Somewhat similar to a Scottish/Greek/Italian rolled r but with a single flap, not a continuous roll.



The soft "g" sound is the same as the "ng" in "hanger", "singer". If you can say those correctly in English (i.e., with a real /ng/, not like "hanner", "sinner"), then you should have no trouble transferring it to Japanese.

Mind you many Japanese don't use it anyway, so if you want to use hard "g" everywhere that's fine.

Soft "g" is only for "g" inside a word and for the が particle: "gakusei" is always hard "g", "hagaki" can be soft or hard depending on the speaker. I'm not sure about compounds like こうとうがっこう. I guess it's always hard, but don't quote me on that.

Raichu Wrote:Japanese "r" is a single flap on the alveolar ridge, not the top of the mouth. English bends the tongue back to the top of the mouth, Japanese does not. Somewhat similar to a Scottish/Greek/Italian rolled r but with a single flap, not a continuous roll.

Alveolar flap (American English): better, latter.

Raichu Wrote:Japanese on Ubuntu... I installed Kubuntu and it took me ages to get Japanese support working properly. I don't even know which tweak finally got it going.

Don't know about Kubuntu, but on Ubuntu in Intrepid, it's actually very easy, at least if you follow the community guide. Basically, you enable the japanese ubuntu repository, update apt-get, install ubuntu-ja-keyring so you don't have to deal with warnings. Then you simply go to Language support under Administration and enable Japanese. It automatically installs Scim, anthy etc. Then comes the only hard part: Restart your system and go into scim folder where the translation thing is hidden and copy it to include your locale.. then enable your locale in the scim conf file.

That's pretty much it, works perfectly after that. The guide also tells you how to install the windows japanese fonts since the ones you get with ubuntu kinda suck.

Hey can you point me to how to install those better fonts? I'm still stuck with the default ones.