Japanese Phonetics Episode 51 (With updated native recordings!)
Added 2018-10-20 08:51:28 +0000 UTCBibliography
Japanese Phonetics Index Page
Good evening Patrons! The fifty-first episode of Japanese Phonetics, with updated native recordings, is live! In this lesson we analyze what I call the 'textbook r sounds', which are widely considered to be the most difficult Japanese consonants for native English speakers. In the next lesson, we'll look at the mainstream variations of the 'r' sounds, as well as common issues that Japanese learners, myself included, have with these sounds.
As always, if you have any questions or concerns with regards to this lesson, please don't hesitate to leave a comment below. Thank you very much for your continued support, and good luck with your Japanese studies!
Best from Beppu,
Dōgen
Comments
Hi, Gargan. I’ve never seen any literature about that difference—any kind of information that mentions this. The one thing I should probably mention is that the tongue shouldn’t be curled back like an English R. Other than that, I’d like to withhold on commenting for fear of saying something I might later come to regret. For a question this detailed it can be good to get live feedback from a skilled native speaker. Maybe you could attend one of Natsumi Sensei's group lessons and ask during the Q&A at the end of the lesson. Hope this helps!
Dogen
2025-05-20 02:29:14 +0000 UTCThere seems to be something distinctly different in the way the female and male speakers pronounce the る and りゅ. In my ears is sounds like the male voice's tongue more curved with る, while the りゅ almost sound like a "d"... almost like デュ. Is it just me?
Gargan
2025-05-19 08:16:52 +0000 UTCNice that this one has both male and female native recordings. I think it's easier to mimic someone that is closer in pitch
Curtis
2022-02-05 01:38:36 +0000 UTCHi Turtly, this is a bit hard for me to comment on, as I also suffer from a similar problem in words like 歩く and 歩いて, but I have found that in certain word/sound combinations (not necessarily those that you've described, or the ones I've listed above, however) thinking about the 'r' sounds as 'extremely fast L sounds' or 'extremely fast D' sounds can help. I would encourage you to try this with the sounds that you've mentioned, and to do so in the presence of native speakers who can give you feedback. You may find the following information from Labrune (2012, page 92, the Phonology of Japanese) also useful. "The retroflex [ɽ] might be encountered initially before /u/, or intervocalically in sequences such as /ere/, /ara/, /uru/, /oro/ (citing Tsuzuki and Lee, 1992). The voiced lateral fricative [ɮ] is a combinatorial variant occurring before the high vowels /i/ and /u/." Labrune lists some other variants as well, though I don't believe they're what you're looking for. Apologies for not being able to help more with this. Cheers!
Dogen
2021-04-25 11:38:06 +0000 UTCHi Dogen, I'm have a question about the "r" sounds after an open vowel like "a". Do you think it's more natural to pronounce the "り" in "あり" with the tongue slightly farther back than in "いり"? I'm having some trouble pronouncing palatalized り directly after あ.
TurtlyP
2021-04-22 06:03:14 +0000 UTCHi Kelvin! This is a bit difficult to answer. The vowel 'i' tends to palatalize most preceding consonants, even in languages other than Japanese, so in my understanding it's actually more natural for the tongue to be in a palatalized position in り than a non-palatalized position. That said, the consonant in question is the quickest sound in Japanese by far, so perhaps in some circumstances this speed may cause speakers to pronounce り in a non-palatalized manner, or for the point of articulation to slightly change, but not undergo full-palatalization. To answer your question specifically, I believe that natives would probably be able to pick up on the difference, but only if they were told to listen carefully, or if they were already conscious of the difference, and then had to choose between the two. I don't believe most natives would interpret [ɾi] to be a major error in pronunciation, as there is already so much variety in the the way natives pronounce this sound (I cover this in the next lesson). Hope this helps! Cheers!
Dogen
2020-04-07 04:08:30 +0000 UTCWould a native actually hear a difference between [ɾʲi] and [ɾi] without palatalization in the case of り? If you presented random native speakers with 3 clips of someone saying りりりり (one with the "correct" pronunciation throughout, one with the unpalatalized pronunciation and one that alternates) and told them to rank the three clips by most clear pronunciation, would they notice any major difference? In other words, are the Japanese aware of their tendency to palatalize i or is it just built into their perception of the vowel?
Kelvin T Nguyen
2020-04-05 23:44:47 +0000 UTCHi Kauko! I actually talk about all the different variants of ら in the next lesson, (https://www.patreon.com/posts/japanese-episode-22484478), and even talk about how the pronunciation of these sounds can change in music. Do you mind first watching the next episode to see if it answers your question? If not I would be glad to help! Thank you very much!
Dogen
2020-01-24 04:56:25 +0000 UTCHello, Dōgen! Glad to have become a new patron of yours, thanks for great content! I would like to ask you about the following pronounciation of らりるれろ as one can hear for example in this song: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=njwto4B3UaY . Lately I noticed that there are more examples of singers pronouncing those sounds in a manner similar to that of the song above and I am quite confident that it significantly differs from the standard Japanese pronounciation I got used to while living in Tokyo. Could you tell me what might be the reason for this? Does it stem from regional differences, artistic expression, some sort of a lisp or something else? I would be grateful for your response : )
Kauko
2020-01-23 23:55:54 +0000 UTCHi Kelvin! Yes I am aware of it, but it actually confused me a bit while learning the Japanese R sound, though this could be just me. I believe that they would choose パリオ, granted the vowel in パ is a bit different. Hope this helps! Cheers!
Dogen
2020-01-07 00:42:40 +0000 UTCAre you aware of the English language phenomenon known as t-voicing/intervocalic flapping (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flapping)? What is your stance on the existence of [ɾ] in the English Language? I think it's pretty amazing to learn that English speakers struggle so much producing a sound that they later learn they already make (just not intentionally). It makes me wonder if Japanese speakers hear the difference and are confused by it. For example, if you had a sound clip of the word "patio" and you made a Japanese person choose between パティオ、パディオ and パリオ which one was most similar would they chose パリオ?
Kelvin T Nguyen
2020-01-06 22:25:15 +0000 UTCMy piece of advice would be to completely separate the sounds from romaji characters. Stop thinking of it as “ra or la” and start thinking of it as ら exclusively, with all of the nuance that this sound carries. The sooner you train your brain to think of it as an entirely distinct sound to either l or r, the sooner you’ll be able to make it accurately with confidence
greyface
2018-10-21 19:12:29 +0000 UTCThank you so much for this episode. I am very much looking forward to the next one as well! R sounds have been a real struggle for me.. The mind keeps interpreting the sounds I hear as either Rs, Ls or even D, so when speaking myself, I often feel like I need to give my brain a distinct command What to say - so when speaking, am I saying "kokoro" or "kokolo"? I apologize if I am not making sense. As I see it, there is the correct tongue movement/placement ("physical" part), but also What we are trying to say , what sound? It makes me very confused. I end up trying to say, for example, either "lo" or "ro", and my Japanese tutor can't actually tell I am saying different sounds!! (I definitely can..) He says my sounds are still not 100% Japanese - but the upsetting thing is, that sometimes with the same tongue placement, my "ro" is right, and other times, "lo" is "better", he says. .. The same way most Japanese kind of "merge" English "r"s and "l"s, my mind always distinguishes them, and I can't seem to find a way around it. I hear the native female speaker in the beginning of your video lesson saying "la, ru, re, ro.." - I trust it is not just me though, right?...
Annabel
2018-10-21 16:38:49 +0000 UTCThey are certainly closer to the L than the R, though still different than either (though some Japanese people pronounce their r's just like Ls). Good luck with the shadowing!
Dogen
2018-10-21 10:47:38 +0000 UTCThe んら sounds like how people from India say the R english letter. Overall for me the Ra, Ri, Ru, Re Ro sound rather an L than an R, it is somewhere between the two, but rather an L than a R. La Li Lu Le Lo. But the Ry* sounds more like an R. Interesting. I need to record myself and try to shadow it properly :D
Adam Papai
2018-10-21 10:35:42 +0000 UTCHi Corey. I absolutely will—most likely more than one episode, in fact, as the ん sounds are so incredibly complicated! こちらこそ, thank you for your support—really appreciate it! ^^
Dogen
2018-10-21 09:56:52 +0000 UTCGlad to hear that Arthur, and very glad to hear that you found the lesson useful! It's definitely a good sound to work on straight from the beginning!
Dogen
2018-10-21 09:53:24 +0000 UTCThis might have been asked already (so sorry in advance if it has been!) will you be doing an episode on the ん sounds? (not the one you've already put out for な、の、etc). I have my fingers crossed since I find the exact rules and pronunciation for that "sort of M" to be really challenging! Thanks in advance ^_^ for this, and the amazing content on this Patreon!
Corey Baker
2018-10-21 06:55:47 +0000 UTCSeconded - for the longest time I struggled to pronounce the word 便利 coherently. It's passable now, but I'd be interested to know if the tongue position is meant to be the same as for 〜んら
Miles Gard
2018-10-21 00:07:04 +0000 UTCThanks for another great lesson! Ack, hit 'enter' trying to start a new line, and it posted my comment early. Ha ha. Anyway, I have a question! Is there any special handling for んり as compared to your example of んら? Since り is different than ら in its r sound.
Nathan Vegdahl
2018-10-20 18:38:11 +0000 UTCThanks as always. This was the very first set of sounds I focused on when I started practicing Japanese phonetics. I've been waiting for this video for a long time! So glad to see I was on the right track.
greyface
2018-10-20 17:46:45 +0000 UTCAbsolutely my pleasure Charlie! I hope that you're able to learn a few things from the follow-up lesson as well! ^^
Dogen
2018-10-20 13:55:08 +0000 UTCYou were hearing it correctly! Incidentally, I'll be talking about this a bit more in the next lesson, so stay tuned! ^^
Dogen
2018-10-20 13:54:34 +0000 UTCHey TJ! I plan on covering these in the ん lesson, which I'll probably divide into two episodes as well, as the sound is incredibly complicated. Thanks for the support! ^^
Dogen
2018-10-20 13:53:58 +0000 UTCBeen waiting for this. I had asked about this a few weeks ago, but now I know what to do to pronounce the r sounds. Thanks!
Quiche
2018-10-20 11:25:30 +0000 UTCI've thought I was the only who sometimes misheard the "r" in んろ as a "d". So cool to find an explanation for that!
Maksymilian Strzelecki
2018-10-20 09:02:12 +0000 UTCThanks Dogen! Another sound combination I have trouble with (thanks to a professor pointing it out to me) is the んや combination. Apparently I end up saying it more like んにゃ in words like 翻訳、婚約 etc. After that there's also the んい combination, 店員、単位 etc. which are also very difficult.
TJapan
2018-10-20 08:54:28 +0000 UTC
