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That's because a lot of native English speakers (not all though) do not know how to pronounce rolling R's. You won't solve that on a paper through textbook. "re
by BossingAround 4y ago
That's because a lot of native English speakers (not all though) do not know how to pronounce rolling R's. You won't solve that on a paper through textbook. "red" is the best the textbook can do, I'd think.
- katspaugh 4y agoThe Japanese R not being a rolling R doesn’t make it easier either. It’s a single tap. Americans are actually familiar with this sound in words like water and butter. The alveolar tap in the middle (the T) is close to where the Japanese R/L is produced.
- cthalupa 4y agoI don't know that the re in "red" and れ really sound nothing alike, though. If you want to reduce it down to something simplistic, "ray" would be a lot closer, if still not actually all that close. For the r sound specifically, it's like 60% r, 30% l, 10% d. Most people don't struggle with getting it passable once someone teaches them that it's more about tongue positioning than anything. Have someone say "la" and "da" back and forth a few times, tell them to position their tongue touching the roof of their mouth in between the position it is for la and da while trying to make an r sound, and they'll probably be pretty close. And once your understand where the difference is on pronunciation vs an english r, you know what to start tweaking as you try to match native pronunciation.