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Overcoming L/R for Japanese -- possible? | ||
Tags: Pronunciation | Japanese | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Questions About Your Target Languages |  | |
| GREGORG4000 Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5318 days ago 307 posts - 479 votes  Speaks: English*, Finnish Studies: Japanese, Korean, Amharic, French | Message 9 of 26 17 July 2010 at 6:49pm | IP Logged | |||||
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I'm a native speaker of American English and I have no idea how our own R works. It sounds just like a quickly spoken vowel to me, the same way as W and Y sound...
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| Arekkusu Hexaglot Senior Member Canada bit.ly/qc_10_lec Joined 5176 days ago 3971 posts - 7747 votes Speaks: English, French*, GermanC1, Spanish, Japanese, Esperanto Studies: Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Estonian | Message 10 of 26 17 July 2010 at 7:21pm | IP Logged | |||||
Unfortunately, your phonetic analysis is flawed. English r is an alveolar approximant (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alveolar_approximant), spoken further towards the front of the mouth than k and g. I wouldn't call that "everything from the back". If you look at an IPA chart, you will see that at least 1/3 of possible consonants are further back. If you compare Spanish r and l, for instance, the only different is the flicking, in other words, the length of time the tongue stays on the alveolar ridge. This distinction does not distinguish consonants in Japanese, just like nasality does not distinguish vowels in English or how certain dialects of English can have a front rounded u that is actually like the French u [y] without frontness making a difference. 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| sei Diglot Senior Member Portugal Joined 5736 days ago 178 posts - 191 votes Speaks: Portuguese*, English Studies: German, Japanese | Message 11 of 26 17 July 2010 at 7:27pm | IP Logged | |||||
I have never heard a native English person pronounce "ruh" with that /r/. Not saying you're wrong, of course, but it might just be a dialect not very diffused? Someone who has done studies in English Linguistics would be best to explain the confusion. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| anamsc Triglot Senior Member Andorra Joined 5998 days ago 296 posts - 382 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, Catalan Studies: Arabic (Levantine), Arabic (Written), French | Message 12 of 26 17 July 2010 at 7:44pm | IP Logged | |||||
In most dialects, at least in American English, the /r/ is definitely neither a tap or a trill. A tap is used in English for an intervocalic /t/ or /d/. A few dialects in Great Britain do use a tap or a trill, but I wouldn't say it's the most general realization of /r/, and I would think that a non-native English speaker would be more likely to have heard the alveolar or retroflex approximant versions. I can see where Tyr is coming from in saying that the /r/ sounds like it comes from further back than the /l/, since in AmE, the tongue never touches the alveolar ridge when pronouncing the /r/ (since it is an approximant), while it does when pronouncing the /l/. However, it is true, as Arekkusu pointed out, that the sounds is still alveolar or retroflex, even though the tongue doesn't touch the roof of the mouth (as it's an approximant).
Not to get too picky, but I don't really think that's the only difference. The /l/ is a lateral consonant, which means that the sides of the tongue are down during its pronunciation. On the other hand, if you pronounce an alveolar tap, you should feel the sides of your tongue touching your molars. I think that that's the actual thing that is underspecified in Japanese (laterality), although I don't know that much about Japanese. I do agree with your larger point, though. Edited by anamsc on 17 July 2010 at 7:47pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| sei Diglot Senior Member Portugal Joined 5736 days ago 178 posts - 191 votes Speaks: Portuguese*, English Studies: German, Japanese | Message 13 of 26 17 July 2010 at 9:15pm | IP Logged | |||||
You are right. I went to search (since I only really studied Portuguese Linguistics in my university course, and barely touched the other sounds not used in Portuguese), and it is an alveolar or retroflex approximant often heard. But I can definitely say that those are not the only English /r/. For example, a retroflex tap, as well as the alveolar tap I mentioned before, are used, the first more often. And as for Tyr, he said a "deep in throat sound" or something like that, and that's very different from a more posterior sound when comparing to other consonants, so hopefully he understand the difference now. :) 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Andrew~ Groupie United States howlearnspanish.com Joined 5063 days ago 42 posts - 67 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish, Japanese | Message 14 of 26 17 July 2010 at 9:33pm | IP Logged | |||||
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I knew a Japanese girl in college who spoke absolutely perfect American English at native-level fluency.
If you were an American who was born and raised here and you met her and talked to her for a couple of hours you would absolutely SWEAR she was American-born and raised. I realized later how unusual this is, but it's also the example that I whip out when people say "you can't ever speak a language as well as a native if you didn't start learning it as a child" or some such nonsense like that and I say "Bullshit, yes you can". You absolutely can get to native-level fluency in a language, whether you start studying it at 4 or 40, it's just going to take a LOT of work and several years of full immersion in the country where the language is spoken. Edited by Andrew~ on 17 July 2010 at 9:35pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Arekkusu Hexaglot Senior Member Canada bit.ly/qc_10_lec Joined 5176 days ago 3971 posts - 7747 votes Speaks: English, French*, GermanC1, Spanish, Japanese, Esperanto Studies: Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Estonian | Message 15 of 26 17 July 2010 at 10:34pm | IP Logged | |||||
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In college, you are still pretty young. How old was the girl? How old was she when she
started learning English and how long had she been living in an English speaking country? 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Volte Tetraglot Senior Member Switzerland Joined 6234 days ago 4474 posts - 6726 votes Speaks: English*, Esperanto, German, Italian Studies: French, Finnish, Mandarin, Japanese | Message 16 of 26 17 July 2010 at 11:09pm | IP Logged | |||||
Some people can get to native-level fluency as an adult. However, there are a lot of people who put in a lot of work and spend several years of full-immersion in countries where the language is spoken. They can uniformly get by in the language, but most of them don't sound anywhere near native... Just because something is possible - and native fluency as an adult certainly is - doesn't mean that an arbitrary list of what it "just" takes is going to bear any relationship to reality, unfortunately. 2 persons have voted this message useful |
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