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THE R'S: ra ri ru re ro
Pronunciation of the R's
10 MINUTE LESSON RULES: 1. Say the examples. 2. Pay close attention to the underlined parts.
In this lesson we will look at how to correctly pronounce the R sounds. For English speakers these are probably the most difficult to pronounce, because it sounds nothing like the English R sounds.
GOOD NEWS! Really, if you spend a little time learning how the sounds work, you can master it in no time! Get ready!
BEFORE
THE LESSON YOU NEED TO KNOW...
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PART ONE: The Tongue...
The sound is made by lightly slapping your tongue just behind your upper teeth. Think of making an L sound, like LOVE. That is the approximate place. The only difference between the Japanese R and the English L sound is how long the tongue is held there. In English the tongue is held a while while air goes around it. In Japanese, the tongue is immediately dropped.All of the R sounds are made the same way with the tongue.
Read that again and then once more while actually making the sound.
PART TWO: The Mouth...
The mouth takes a little practice to make it natural, but it is also easy, really. Very simply, for RA RI & RE the mouth is more opened and for RU & RO the mouth is more rounded and shut. [NOTE: actually for perfect pronunciation, ALL 5 sounds have separate mouth positions -- we will look at this, but remember basically for RA, RI & RE the mouth is more opened and RU & RO it is rounded and smaller.]
I apologize for the pictures, but here are the 5 general positions of the mouth for the 5 different sounds... To hear a sound file for each sound click on the letter below:
Again the most important thing is RA, RI & RE (the yellow) have a kind of opened, wide mouth and RU & RO (the red) have a more rounded, small mouth. Practice saying them in order -- (open mouth) RA RI (round mouth) RU (open mouth) RE (round mouth) RO. Listen to the sound file -- RARIRURERO.wav (53 kb)
Lastly remember, slap the
tongue with a wide mouth for RA, RI, RE and slap
the tongue with a round mouth for RU & RO.
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Is the R sound sort of like
Is the R sound sort of like a rolled R but only once (maybe with a little bit of a D after...sort of).
Also, is there any reason that sometimes the R sounds more like an L and other, well... not so L like. Is it that RA is less L like that RU (just a random thought) or is it just a random, spur of the moment, type thing?
thanx God i'm addicted to
thanx God i'm addicted to anime.. so, i think, some of the words are familiar to me.. thanx to this page, now i can fulfill my wish to learn japanese language.. i'll try my best!! :)
R is hard
r is really hard i think it's because i speak spanish so i need
to get use to it but i think i'm getting there. But this has really help
Eh?
I never quite understood these things. I can't work my mouth, at least not consciously. It's times like this I'm glad I somehow picked it up from anime.
The r's actually came very
The r's actually came very easily to me. The first time I saw that in Hiragana I said it doing that before even seeing this page. Because I knew Japanese r's sounded slightly different and my tongue and mouth just did the rest naturally.
Japanese R and D
Japanese "D" is very soft...think of "the"=(da), similarly (de_)="they".
how different are the sounds
how different are the sounds RE and DE?
The Japanese re is slightly
The Japanese re is slightly a rolled r sound and the de sound has a D sound.