never -> ever?

[Katsuo]

With regard to native English speakers, as a quick test of someone's Japanese pronunciation, get them to say this word: 禁煙車 (きんえんしゃ). Many will get the え reasonably well, but that's all.

To my ears, many native English speakers pronounce the following sounds poorly:

い（especially し、ち、ひ）
しゃ
ん
らりる etc
わ
ふ
お

Suggestions for each of the above sounds:

い. For this sound, move the middle of the tongue very close to the roof of the mouth. Practice: First, try saying the English words "pick" and "peak". Then try saying just the vowel parts of those words. Notice for the latter the middle of the tongue is closer to the roof of the mouth. For the Japanese い sound, exaggerate this and move the middle of the tongue even closer to the roof of the mouth. (The tip of the tongue should be touching the back of the lower teeth.)

し. English native speakers tend to pronounce the "sh" much too strongly. In romaji, し is mostly transcribed as "shi", but some systems write it "si". If you are pronouncing い correctly (see above), then saying "si" will be more accurate as doing so creates a small amount of friction which gives a slight effect of an "h" (which is why some transcribe it as "shi").

ち、ひ. (chi (ti), hi). Same explanation as for し: If you pronounce the "i" (い) part correctly, the overall sound should be correct too.

しゃ. Again, avoid making a strong "sh" sound. You may get a more accurate sound by saying "sya".

ん. The pronunciation of this character depends on the syllable following it. For example, it can sound like "m", "n", or "ng" (no problem as we do the same in English). In each of the three sounds just listed, air is stopped by either the lips or tongue, and passes out through the nose instead. However, ん has another sound which occurs when followed by either a vowel, "s", "sh", "w" or "y". In this case, for ん, the shape of the following sound is adopted and air is passed through the nose and mouth simultaneously. So, for example, if ん is followed by え then make the え shape for both syllables, but the first with the nasal passage open, the second with it closed. This sound is used in 禁煙車 above.

らりる etc. To get the Japanese "r" sound, modify an English "l" as follows: We normally make "l" by pressing the front of the tongue on the gum just above the upper teeth. For Japanese "r", instead of pressing, just touch the tongue very quickly and lightly in the same position.

わ. Ask a Japanese person to say "woman" or "wood". Many will pronounce these words "ooman" and "ood". To get the Japanese sound, don't purse the lips.

ふ. Don't touch lips against teeth as in English "f". Instead, modify an English "hoo" sound (as in "hoot") by narrowing your lips more and blowing a small puff of air through the slightly open mouth.

お. This is similar to British English "o". American English speakers will need to round their lips more.

To Jimmy Seal, sorry I meant ever. Just made the edit.

Katsuo Wrote:ん. The pronunciation of this character depends on the syllable following it. For example, it can sound like "m", "n", or "ng" (no problem as we do the same in English). In each of the three sounds just listed, air is stopped by either the lips or tongue, and passes out through the nose instead. However, ん has another sound which occurs when followed by either a vowel, "s", "sh", "w" or "y". In this case, for ん, the shape of the following sound is adopted and air is passed through the nose and mouth simultaneously. So, for example, if ん is followed by え then make the え shape for both syllables, but the first with the nasal passage open, the second with it closed. This sound is used in 禁煙車 above.

excellent post. one of the things I personally have trouble with.

I also have trouble with the word 遠慮. Or more broadly words with ん followed by りゃ　りゅ　or りょ

I used to have problems with the ryu and ryo sounds but my biggest problem now is when two or more vowels are in a line. They tend to become a dipthong of their own, which ofcourse is very incorrect. Words such as aoi. Do others have this problem?

[Katsuo]

kyotokanji Wrote:I used to have problems with the ryu and ryo sounds but my biggest problem now is when two or more vowels are in a line. They tend to become a dipthong of their own, which ofcourse is very incorrect. Words such as aoi. Do others have this problem?

A few years ago a person named 井上（いのうえ）was in the news a lot. The NHK English newscasters used to mangle his name into something like Inooey. They were probably reading romaji, i.e. Inoue.

One way to stop adjacent vowels melting together is to put the appropriate pitch accent in. In this case iNOue. (capitals indicate high pitch).

For 青い the accent is on the "o", i.e. aOi.

There is a rather good ambient musician called Tetsu Inoue and whenever people say his name (non-Japanese people that is) they always say something like ai-nu-ay. That vowel combination must be baffling then to anyone without any training in Japanese.

Cheers for the advice there . The only trouble with the pitch thing is that your are entering the debate on dialects there. The pitch changes are the biggest difference between dialects in my opinion. I try to learn the Kyoto way of saying words as much as possible, which is grouped into the broader kansai way of speaking.

I think that after hearing a significant amount of spoken Japanese (or other language) you begin to develop an ear for what sounds normal and what doesn't and an attentive person can use that experience to adjust their own speech.

A technique that I've found to be helpful is reading aloud in private. You can listen carefully to your own voice, and go back and adjust it and experiment when you think it sounds a bit off. You can focus more on your speech than you can when you are spontaneously conversing with another person.

Another related thing that I haven't tried much is to cup your hands behind your ears while you are speaking or reading aloud. This will amplify the sound of your voice and allow you to observe the articulation of the sounds better.

I believe that natural pronunciation really comes from being attentive, and being familiar with how the language is supposed to sound, and not as much about consciously knowing how to produce the sounds.

JimmySeal Wrote:Another related thing that I haven't tried much is to cup your hands behind your ears while you are speaking or reading aloud. This will amplify the sound of your voice and allow you to observe the articulation of the sounds better.

Oh wow. I just tried that. That is a crazy sensation.

kyotokanji Wrote:There is a rather good ambient musician called Tetsu Inoue and whenever people say his name (non-Japanese people that is) they always say something like ai-nu-ay. That vowel combination must be baffling then to anyone without any training in Japanese.

Once again, is this because people are reading the romanji or is it simply because it's a difficult structure to say?

Megaqwerty Wrote:

kyotokanji Wrote:There is a rather good ambient musician called Tetsu Inoue and whenever people say his name (non-Japanese people that is) they always say something like ai-nu-ay. That vowel combination must be baffling then to anyone without any training in Japanese.

Once again, is this because people are reading the romanji or is it simply because it's a difficult structure to say?

In my experience it is almost invariably because people read te romaji without knowing the rules of pronunciation. Unfortunate for my friend Natsue, which people pronounce at Nats or Nuts.

I think getting a proper accent in a foreign language is to a great part done by listening and imitating the native speakers, and to a lesser part by knowing how certain sounds are formed. Though, when you don?t know that the English ?th? sound is produced by putting the tongue between the teeth, then it?s very difficult to master that sound. Just an example but same goes for French etc.

Never thought of it that way, but Serge certainly made a point by saying that one tends to focus on the ?missing sounds? and pays less attention to the other sounds. So I guess I should start working on my English pronunciation again to try and reduce my German accent a bit more. Native speakers have told me that I have a German accent mixed with a British accent ? sound pretty weird to me, but then again I never had to listen to myself.
I wonder if the same thing goes for Japanese. Do you know if you have a regional Japanese-accent in combination with your native accent?

Now to Japanese:
We are only starting to learn the pronunciation in class, but since the teacher is German I was wondering how well his own pronunciation is ? better than mine obviously.
Now then, he tried to explain to us the ?r? pronunciation used in Japanese, by telling us that it?s a combination of ?r?, ?l?, and ?d? (German pronunciation). There is no way I?ll be able to pronounce all three at once.
Katsuo?s explanation was very helpful, but in the animes I?ve watched so far, I think there is also an ?r? somewhere in it. So does that mean that you have to roll your ?r? in the back of the throat while simultaneously pronounce a light version of the ?l? in the front? Or is the ?r? more the southern USA-?r? version? Or is there no ?r?-sound at all?

Biene Wrote:Now to Japanese:
We are only starting to learn the pronunciation in class, but since the teacher is German I was wondering how well his own pronunciation is ? better than mine obviously.
Now then, he tried to explain to us the ?r? pronunciation used in Japanese, by telling us that it?s a combination of ?r?, ?l?, and ?d? (German pronunciation). There is no way I?ll be able to pronounce all three at once.
Katsuo?s explanation was very helpful, but in the animes I?ve watched so far, I think there is also an ?r? somewhere in it. So does that mean that you have to roll your ?r? in the back of the throat while simultaneously pronounce a light version of the ?l? in the front? Or is the ?r? more the southern USA-?r? version? Or is there no ?r?-sound at all?

I don't know any pronunciation terminology or technicalities, but when I make an 'l' sound, my tongue touches the back of my teeth, bordering on the roof of my mouth. When I make a Japanese 'r' sound, my tongue just (barely) touches the ridge of the roof of my mouth. Maybe that helps a bit? ^_^;
It's not like an english 'r' at all...

It has nothing to do with the German throaty "r" either! It's pronounced in the front of the mouth and it's closer to the English "d" actually! (David, different, deep, etc.)

Open your mouth, press your tongue against the roof of your mouth as if prepairing to pronounce "d" but instead start blowing air through your mouth while vibrating your tongue. The sound should be something like the purring of a cat.
When you get a hang of producing the sound, just doing that quickly and softly should bring you pretty close to the Japanese "r".

The Finnish "r" is almost the same, only stronger, and often kids have problems before they learn to pronounce it correctly.

Just for the record, I have immense problems to learn to pronounce the German "r" right! ^^



By the way! Is "inoue" hard to pronounce because it has three vowels right after each other or only because some people don't know how to read romaji?

In my opinion Japanese pronunciation is not that difficult relative to many other languages out there - there are a very limited number of sounds, and they are always pronounced in the same way, no matter what comes after or before them... maybe except for double vowels and the 'ん' + vowel, which is difficult (but then again, it is still just a matter of practice)...
The difficulty for me is not that, but the fact that no one ever tells students that Japanese is tonal (this maybe the wrong word, I'm not a linguist, sorry)... for example ぶどう　is pronounced differently depending whether you are trying to say grape or martial arts... ok, 80% of the words are said to lack tone, but even then, what that means depends on what accent you are learning... for example, the standard Tokyo word (the only accent I even partially understand) starts with low pitch on the first mora and high for the rest... the pitch falls for が... compound verbs and nouns have their own rules, and there are many other things I don't know. Kyoto has twice the number of tones... I was recently shown a pronunciation book for reporters, and every word had some kind of change in tone. If I think of how I speak English, if I switched the stressed syllable (take the word syllable for example), I'd be confusing people most of the time... I notice that I do the same with Japanese a lot...

ilyag Wrote:In my opinion Japanese pronunciation is not that difficult relative to many other languages out there - there are a very limited number of sounds, and they are always pronounced in the same way, no matter what comes after or before them... maybe except for double vowels and the 'ん' + vowel, which is difficult (but then again, it is still just a matter of practice)...

That isn't quite the case, although you will still be understood if you make the mistake. Someone already mentioned the softening of the ends of *su and *shi. *ki and several others also exhibit the same behaviour. You mentioned ん which can take on several different sounds depending on the environment. Then you have rendaku (小刀！＝こかたな,三百＝"sambyaku" <--two changes there, and in some circumstances the ku would have a softened u for a total of 3 environment based changes) which is totally irregular as to when it appears (there have been several different theories devised but none fit all cases), although the manner in which it appears is regular. In short, pronunciation IS influenced by environment, and in the case of rendaku, must be memorized on a word by word basis.

The term you were looking for was pitch accent. I agree that it is really something that needs to be taught in books and classes. However, formal Japanese classes are pretty awful in the west (at least from what I've done myself, and stories I've heard from people from other places) and lack of teaching pitch is far from the most important thing that needs to be fixed. You will eventually pick up proper pitch if you have regular conversation with natives anyways. Pitch is for the most part standard; from some random numbers I read somewhere, maybe on this forum, only 20% of words even have pitch.

[Katsuo]

Biene Wrote:I think getting a proper accent in a foreign language is to a great part done by listening and imitating the native speakers, and to a lesser part by knowing how certain sounds are formed. Though, when you don't know that the English 'th' sound is produced by putting the tongue between the teeth, then it's very difficult to master that sound.

That's a good example. I think an important factor is whether a particular sound is similar to one in your own language. If it is, then careful listening to the sound and to yourself making the sound should be enough. However, if the sound does not exist in your own language, or if it is made a very different way, then it is important to first understand the mechanics of how the sound is made.

For example, consider words that end in "n/ん". In English (my native language) I complete words such as "pen", "sun" etc. by raising the front of my tongue and pressing it on the gum just above the upper teeth to block the airflow.

On the other hand, Japanese people normally complete Japanese words such as "ほん"、"めん" etc. by pulling the tongue backwards to block the air flow. The resulting sound is noticeably different.

Before I read up on the subject, I was trying to achieve the final "ん" sound by raising the front of my tongue (as described above) and then contorting my mouth and tongue in various ways to make it more like the Japanese sound. Of course it never sounded quite right. Then I read in a pronunciation text about pulling the tongue backwards. It seemed awkward at first, but with practice soon became natural.

Regarding Japanese "r". As you say, Japanese "r" can sound like English/German "r", "l" or "d". I think a lot of the time it sounds closer to "r". However, for an English speaker who is learning to pronounce Japanese "r", it's easiest to start with the English "l" shape and modify that.

English "l" is made by pressing the front of the tongue against the gum just above the upper teeth and letting air pass over the sides of the tongue.
English "r" is typically made by pulling the tongue back a little and (sometimes also) raising the tip so that air passes over the front of the tongue.
Japanese "r" is made by quickly and lightly touching (tapping) the tip of the tongue against the gum just above the upper front teeth and then pulling it back/down (to the position for the vowel).
In other words, Japanese "r" starts more like an English "l" and then becomes more like an English "r". This, of course, is why it can sound like either, or a mixture of both.

[Katsuo]

alantin Wrote:By the way! Is "inoue" hard to pronounce because it has three vowels right after each other or only because some people don't know how to read romaji?

The fundamental problem is the consecutive vowel sounds. In English we tend to meld such sequences, but in Japanese the sounds are kept distinct.

Romaji just compounds the problem.

Okay. Got it!

Thanks! ^^

By the way. has anyone heard of someone making the "r" more "l"ish just to sound cuter?

Although I think the Japanese are just generally unable to distinguish between the two..

I had a native Japanese teacher about a year ago and when she spoke Finnish, her "r" was always "l". Thus her "raportti" (report) was always "lapoltti". Another japanese person spoke English and his "playing" something always became "praying"!

In your experience, when speaking English, which is harder for the japanese people to pronounce? "l" or "r"? Or do they just mix them up without any control?

Of course the more advanced english students have much better pronunciation than the average "granny from the street" and don't have the problem.

Biene Wrote:Now to Japanese:
We are only starting to learn the pronunciation in class, but since the teacher is German I was wondering how well his own pronunciation is ? better than mine obviously.
Now then, he tried to explain to us the ?r? pronunciation used in Japanese, by telling us that it?s a combination of ?r?, ?l?, and ?d? (German pronunciation). There is no way I?ll be able to pronounce all three at once.
Katsuo?s explanation was very helpful, but in the animes I?ve watched so far, I think there is also an ?r? somewhere in it. So does that mean that you have to roll your ?r? in the back of the throat while simultaneously pronounce a light version of the ?l? in the front? Or is the ?r? more the southern USA-?r? version? Or is there no ?r?-sound at all?

I struggled with this sound when I first came to Japan. After my ears had got attuned to Japanese, I could hear that I wasn't saying it correctly, but couldn't make myself change. Then I read something in a beginner's Japanese book I borrowed from a friend and about a week later I had no problems with the r/l sound. (I don't know how useful this will be to a native German speaker, but still....)

The key is the name 'Eddie'.

If you say 'Eddie' fairly quickly it sounds almost like えり. I spent some time just repeating it to myself, mentally adjusting from thinking of 'Eddie' to えり. To practice I would repeat it in time to the music in my car on my drive home (about 30 minutes). When I was happy with えり, I moved onto chanting/singing えら、えり、える、えれ、えろ. I found that unless I kept the え I couldn't do it. Quite often my tongue would get confused and I'd have to think 'Eddie' -> えり etc, but little by little it got easier. Finally, when I was happy with that, I dropped the え and just chanted/sung ら、り、る、れ、ろ.

Like I said, I did this to a from school for about a week. After that I found myself quite naturally using the correct one as it sounded correct (finally!).

Of course, living in Japan this has the downside of finding myself using the Japanese r when speaking English (eg. America) *cringes*

Quote:In your experience, when speaking English, which is harder for the japanese people to pronounce? "l" or "r"? Or do they just mix them up without any control?

Most Japanese people studying English will have trouble distinguishing the two when listening. And when speaking, it will generally be an "L" if they make a mistake.

So for the sentence, "When I played, it was crowded", it would be much more common to hear:

"when I played, it was clouded" instead of "When I prayed, it was crowded"

Both cases change the meaning quite a bit! Good example!

Maybe this guy was just an exception that makes the rule! ^^

If you want to speak well, I think you need to see as well as hear native speakers. The visual clues help you to imitate the sounds.

What do you mean by visual clues and how do they help with sounds?

Drawings on how to hold your tongue or put your mouth to produce a sound?