Japanese Pronunciation

bubblehead · Post by **bubblehead** » Wed Jul 21, 2004 10:15 am

I've noticed that Japanese r's sound a little different, oftentimes, from English r's. It' almost like R meets D or you're rolling your r's but you stop after one.

and what is retroflex?

WordNet wrote:The verb "retroflex" has 2 senses in WordNet.

1. retroflex, replicate -- (bend or turn backward)
2. retroflex -- (articulate (a consonant) with the tongue curled back against the palate; "Indian accents can be characterized by the fact that speakers retroflex their consonants")

so is that what I just described? or if not, what would it sound like?

Touya_girl · Post by **Touya_girl** » Wed Jul 21, 2004 10:20 am

Japanese "r" and "l" sound the same like how Kirara's name becomes "Kilala" in English

Org Profile · Post by **Otohiko** » Wed Jul 21, 2004 12:18 pm

by retroflex I meant the 2nd meaning, bubblehead - in English, some people pronounce their 'r's by kind of pushing the tip of their tongue against the palate and bunching it up, and others do it by retroflexing it, and touching the palate further back with the bottom side of the tip. It's funny since you wouldn't really know this unless you were a linguist and actually studied how sounds are made. Though there's really not much difference in sound, and it's kind of an unfair comparison with japanese r/l almost. I pronounce it both ways, actually, not sure why or when.

Now, as for 'v' in japanese - no, a speaker of (only) Japanese wouldn't be able to pronounce it since it's not in their standard set of consonants. You have to realize that there is no language that has ALL the possible sounds. I don't think there's even one that has even half of them used. The japanese tend to replace 'v' with a 'b', because it's closest one they have phonetically.

You would do the same with, for example, a Russian 'ы' - since english doesn't have a high back unrounded vowel, you would replace it with the closest thing and make it sound like an 'i' when trying to pronounce a word from Russian that has it (usually written as 'y', while it actually sounds like... try pronouncing a 'u' without rounding your lips

)

Another example is the Japanese 'f' which is actually different phonetically from the english 'f'. Whereas in English, you make an 'f' by blowing air between your bottom lip and top row of teeth, Japanese pronounce it by blowing air between BOTH lips in a similar manner. Since english doesn't have that sound, and japanese doesn't have the english 'f', both tend to pronounce the other's 'f' like their own, which ends up sounding kind of inaccurate.

As for the rolling R - it's a tricky one, I haven't studied it much as far as Japanese. I think STANDARD japanese (tokyo dialect) uses the liquid r/l, but when you hear all those characters from Osaka, you do get that rolling R trill occasionally (like the famous 'KORRRRRRAAAA!!!')

Anyway, that's more academics for you. Shows you what I've been doing these past 2 years

DrngdKreationz · Post by **DrngdKreationz** » Wed Jul 21, 2004 12:29 pm

Kudos Dude!

The Rolling R could be compared to the R in spanish Especially the double R's

Org Profile · Post by **Otohiko** » Wed Jul 21, 2004 12:38 pm

Yeah, spanish R's are the 'r trill', commonly known as the 'rolling R'. A lot of languages actually use that. It's one of 3 trills, the other two being the uvular trill (commonly known as the 'french R') and the bilabial trill (commonly known as the 'raspberry')

English has a pretty moderate-sized consonant set and a pretty complicated vowel set in comparison to other languages. Japanese, by comparison, has very limited sets of both. That's why despite how hard it may look, pronouncing Japanese isn't that hard at all

bubblehead · Post by **bubblehead** » Wed Jul 21, 2004 2:19 pm

gah, this is all reminding me of a voice class I took last summer, where the teacher was trying to get us to make this one "a" sound that most of us (including me) couldn't seem to do. It's like, if I know what it sounds like, I can usually learn to copy it, but this one was hard.

Thanks though. I am now both less and more confused. Must be less confusing if you study it for awhile (like anything, just about).

I find sometimes if I'm learning a foreign language word, there is a sound I have trouble with. Maybe I'm lucky, but I can usually learn it (or at least learn to more closely approximate it) if someone repeats it several times correctly and then I go off and practice awhile. Or maybe I just haven't hit a really hard one yet (except that one "a" I mentioned earlier).

The most commonly-mentioned problem with English is that oftentimes it doesn't look much like how it's said. And it doesn't follow rules really because it comes from a lot of languages. Which might be why we have a decent selection of letters, too.

EvaXephon · Post by **EvaXephon** » Wed Jul 21, 2004 2:23 pm

...I can't roll my R's...it's painful...

Also, no one mentioned it, so I thought I'd throw in that in addition to having trouble differentiating from R and L, B and V, the Japanese also have trouble with C and K.

Isn't that where the word 'Korea' came from? Whereas it was originally known as 'Corea'? Or maybe I have my knowledge all jumbled up.

bubblehead · Post by **bubblehead** » Wed Jul 21, 2004 2:32 pm

C is pronounced as k or as s, so I don't know what you mean.

And I suspect that Korea was originally known as something in Korean, which doesn't use the same alphabet as English in the first place.

Org Profile · Post by **Otohiko** » Wed Jul 21, 2004 4:50 pm

Yea, K and C, besides those cases where 'c' is pronounced as 's' are exactly the same. There's no separate sound for 'c' in english.

Yea, I can see why it would be confusing - heh, I don't think I can actually explain all this too well in plain language, so I just say exactly what I was taught, in the more fancy linguistic terms... some say we have our own little language about language

DrngdKreationz · Post by **DrngdKreationz** » Wed Jul 21, 2004 6:17 pm

you mean like worse than just Jargon?!?