4 ms·

Well, I'm certain of two things: 1) there is a clear difference between l, l/r, and r and it's easy to say all three if you know what you're doing; 2) I'm doing

Well, I'm certain of two things: 1) there is a clear difference between l, l/r, and r and it's easy to say all three if you know what you're doing; 2) I'm doing a bad job of explaining the difference. I'm pretty sure I know what my tongue is doing in English, but alright it may be due to the vowel instead of the consonant. The problem in Japanese is there's no distinction between vowel and consonant. Yes, it could be that touching the bottom of the mouth during the vowel part is not as important as the position of the tongue initially. l: relaxed, some sliding, top of mouth; l/r: tighter, as for a rolled r, more forward, top of mouth; r: does not touch top of mouth. loo and roo are both incorrect pronunciations of ru.

wildgift 13y ago
The Mexican Spanish "r" is close to the Japanese r/l. You don't say "bulito" or "burr-ito" like a burr of metal. You say "burrito", and know that people who can speak it add a tiny bit of a roll to the "r". The Japanese R is not rolled, but it's like just starting the roll.
- foobarbazqux 13y ago
  This is a nice and concise way to articulate it.
Jongseong 13y ago
The simple description you'll find in most linguistic descriptions of Japanese is that the Japanese r is what is called an alveolar tap and written as [ɾ] in the International Phonetic Alphabet, which is also the Spanish r in pero (not the trilled r in perro). The reality is more complicated because Japanese only has one liquid phoneme. The fact that there is no separate l sound in Japanese means that there is a bigger phonetic space that the r sound can occupy. What ends up happening is that the Japanese r can be lateralized, that is, part of the airstream is through the sides of the tongue rather than through the middle of the mouth. A lateralized tap which results in this case is written as [ɺ]. This ends up sounding like l, which is technically known as a lateral approximant because the airstream is only through the sides of the tongue. The more complete description of the Japanese r is that it is a tapped alveolar consonant that can range between a completely central [ɾ] and the lateralized [ɺ], with different degrees of lateralization. All will be interpreted as the Japanese r, and speakers tend to use [ɾ] after vowels, with lateralization likely to creep in if the r comes at the beginning of an utterance or after an n. I'm a native speaker of Korean by the way, and while at the abstract phonemic level we also have a single l/r sound represented as ㄹ in the Korean alphabet, we do distinguish [ɾ] and [l] between vowels. 아리 ari uses the tap [ɾ] and 알리 alli uses [l] because that's how double ㄹ is pronounced. It's a similar distribution to the tapped and trilled r's in Spanish, where trilled r's between vowels can be analyzed as double r's.
- foobarbazqux 13y ago
  Thanks for the thorough explanation. IPA seems useful, like the kind of thing schools should teach, but it also scares me with its complexity.

wildgift 13y ago

The Mexican Spanish "r" is close to the Japanese r/l. You don't say "bulito" or "burr-ito" like a burr of metal. You say "burrito", and know that people who can speak it add a tiny bit of a roll to the "r". The Japanese R is not rolled, but it's like just starting the roll.

foobarbazqux 13y ago
This is a nice and concise way to articulate it.

Jongseong 13y ago

The simple description you'll find in most linguistic descriptions of Japanese is that the Japanese r is what is called an alveolar tap and written as [ɾ] in the International Phonetic Alphabet, which is also the Spanish r in pero (not the trilled r in perro). The reality is more complicated because Japanese only has one liquid phoneme. The fact that there is no separate l sound in Japanese means that there is a bigger phonetic space that the r sound can occupy. What ends up happening is that the Japanese r can be lateralized, that is, part of the airstream is through the sides of the tongue rather than through the middle of the mouth. A lateralized tap which results in this case is written as [ɺ]. This ends up sounding like l, which is technically known as a lateral approximant because the airstream is only through the sides of the tongue. The more complete description of the Japanese r is that it is a tapped alveolar consonant that can range between a completely central [ɾ] and the lateralized [ɺ], with different degrees of lateralization. All will be interpreted as the Japanese r, and speakers tend to use [ɾ] after vowels, with lateralization likely to creep in if the r comes at the beginning of an utterance or after an n. I'm a native speaker of Korean by the way, and while at the abstract phonemic level we also have a single l/r sound represented as ㄹ in the Korean alphabet, we do distinguish [ɾ] and [l] between vowels. 아리 ari uses the tap [ɾ] and 알리 alli uses [l] because that's how double ㄹ is pronounced. It's a similar distribution to the tapped and trilled r's in Spanish, where trilled r's between vowels can be analyzed as double r's.

foobarbazqux 13y ago
Thanks for the thorough explanation. IPA seems useful, like the kind of thing schools should teach, but it also scares me with its complexity.