klaoth wrote:

My problems with Japanese pronunciation consist of tsu changing and sounding exactly like su half the time and knowing when to make ga sound like ga and when you make it sound like gna.

Can't help with tsu as I still confuse it sometimes. I think it's a vocabulary thing.
Someone correct me if I'm wrong but ga gi etc are pronounced nga ngi etc when they inside a word, but just ga gi etc at the beginning.

Ex. kage sounds like ka(n)ge

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tTMiMz7U3lw

but getsu does not change

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ygPzH8uUaCE

Probably like Tsu sound different depending on it's play in a word.

tsubasa -  tsu sounds like sss

batsu - you can notice the t more.

klaoth wrote:

I also have a huge problem picking out words in a lot of Japanese if I don't know the word.  Sometimes I'll think the ni in the middle was a particle and the second half was a new word, and other times the opposite happens.  I really hope listening to a lot of Japanese will make their word separation more noticeable, but I swear they always make the particle after the word a part of the word.  Hence how beginners think watashiwa is the word for I and some such and so forth.

This is probably also a vocab/ear thing. The more you know the easier it is to tell where one word starts and the other ends.

Last edited by kazelee (2009 June 11, 5:52 pm)

Jarvik7 wrote:

Nasalization of the 'g' sound is entirely dependent on the person. Some people nasalize everything, some nothing.

うそぉ

So everything I have read was a lie!?

I'm sure the region a person is from has a lot to do with it as well.

Get access to the google spreadsheets for the text.  The audio is neatly arranged on the cd as mp3 files.

The "Iverson's method" is described here.  To summarize: "memorize word lists in groups of 5-7."  The grouping is the only thing 'new' here, otherwise that's exactly how I was taught German in a classroom setting, for example (plus some grammar instruction).

(EDIT: actually, the grouping thing is not new either, now that i think about it.  back in german class that's exactly how we studied vocab for quizzes.  there was about 30 words for each quiz, and we'd break that up into groups of about 5 or so to memorize, since that was more manageable.  i just never thought anything of it at the time)

Last edited by mafried (2009 June 12, 11:44 am)