I have always had trouble with りょ. It's like a weird mix of り、ろ and よ.

I don't think I have any trouble with the ん sound like in 店員 or 千円. I've always said it like tehye-in or sehye-en. It's really hard to write the actually sound in romaji.

I once read (and saw a video) on how Japanese vowels should be produced compared to English vowel sounds. In Japanese the mouth should be pulled back and somewhat tight and there isn't much variation in lip/mouth position between the vowels. Compare this to English where 'a' (car) is quite open, 'e' (egg) is relaxed, 'i' (key) similar to Japanese positioning, 'o' (omlette) is with loose lips and kind of coming forward over the teeth and 'u' (blue) is bringing the lips together to form a circle.

Sorry, as much as I am interested in linguistics, that's about as technical as my explaination can be :/

SendaiDan Wrote:I have always had trouble with りょ. It's like a weird mix of り、ろ and よ.

me too

While I feel that its interesting and useful to practice pronounciation as part of Japanese study, unless you are a native or bi-lingual, it's always going to be a stumbling block. From my experience (as a British English Learner) it seems that its nigh on impossible to completely eradicate or 'forget' almost subconcious enunciatory habits from your own language - with the result that there will be from time to time intonation misses that will mark you out as a foreigner.

I am thinking here in my case of the English (British English) habit of making a descending or dropping intonation at the end of a phrase or sentence. This is changing over time as there is a generational shift to more American accent styles - many of which have a rising intonation at the end of each phrase (but then that may be equally problematic in terms of Japanese - which is often intonation neutral, the change taking place within words rather than over a sentence as a whole - in short, the non native learner will probabaly always have an accent however proficient they become. Bad news for wapanese I guess.

I work in a Japanese speaking environment and have been using Japanese for over 10 years and still the experience you can have as a non-native speaker of Japanese (especially on the telephone where you cannot rely on facial cues or other non verbal data) can vary wildly depending on what kind of native Japanese counterpart you are dealing with (age, education, background, attitude to NJ etc) and the subject matter.

Something one speaker found fantastically well said and totally comprehensible and expressed surprise when they are given your non J surname - with another speaker can be for them incomprehensible and imediately lead them to conclude that your are a foreigner and that they wish to speak to a native only. Wherever you are and whatever level you are at - this experience will happen to you, and not just in Japanese I suspect.

Moreover, Japanese is one of those langauges that has a relatively limited palette in terms of discrete phonetic elements but one paradoxically which gives rise to a incredible variety and subtlety of reference. hence its endless fascination and frustration.

In short I suppose that its all good but IMHO perfection will not greet you at the top of the pronounciation chart mountain - only the vista of an endless range of other mountains. No aspect Japanese cannot be 'nailed' rather the opposite it nails YOU, for ever.

somstuff Wrote:On a side note, how important is pitch accent? Will lack of proper pitch accent give you away as a foreigner (assuming they don't already know, lol)? Is it as bad as improper accent in English words (ex: saying coFFEE instead of COffee).

Two easy signs of a foreign speaker are
1) fail pitch
2) fail intonation

Pitch is pretty important. In most cases someone will still be able to decipher what you are saying if you get the pitch wrong, but it will noticeably take them a bit. Also, some words have the exact same sounds with different pitches.

Learning pitch is a long and painful process. Easiest way to learn is to find something that will teach you: audio cds. Minna no Nihongo has audio, Pimsleur has audio, Genki has audio, and probably more I'm forgetting. Do the drills, mimic the speakers, and do it over and over and over and over again.

After a while you get the hang of it. But you gotta put in the work.

Tzadeck Wrote:One obvious instance of an ん that you need to be conscious of is when it's followed by a vowel, as in 千円 （せんえん). There is no way you are pronouncing the ん in せん correctly without deliberate practice. It's an awkward mouth movement for native English speakers, the vast majority of which will pronounce the word as せねん or せんねん rather than せんえん.

This is one of the more discouraging topics I've come across.

(I've spent most of my time concentrating on the written aspect of the language.)

OzarM Wrote:(I've spent most of my time concentrating on the written aspect of the language.)

No need to be discouraged. As with anything, practice makes perfect lol. Any language you learn requires a ton of deliberate practice and repetition to speak properly. To be honest, Japanese is one of the easier languages to pronounce.

If you want to speak you have to practice speaking. Its really just a matter of muscle memory via the tongue and mouth.

I remember going through a phase of obsession over pitch accent. It's safe to say that learning to speak with correct intonation in Japanese is a simple matter of making a conscious, directed effort at improving it through shadowing. A bit of research doesn't hurt though. In fact, pronunciation is imabi's first lesson for beginners (http://www.imabi.net/l1pronunciation.htm)

These other links are probably easy to find but in case anyone is curious...

What is Japanese Pitch Accent

"Against Marking Accent Locations in Japanese Textbooks"
http://ist-socrates.berkeley.edu/~hasega...ccent.html

Pitch accents for otherwise identical words
http://sp.cis.iwate-u.ac.jp/sp/lesson/j/...centl.html (might take a while to load)