I decided to learn Japanese today and started with the Hiragana syllabary, but when i got to the R row, i couldn’t reproduce a single letter i was hearing because i kept rolling my tongue. Is this something i can ignore or is this a crucial thing to fix? Is it incorrect Japanese to pronounce the R in words like Arigatou with a slight roll (sounds like d)?
If geography matters im a native English speaker from the southern US
9 comments
Ignore it for now and keep going . There actually is a little bit of a roll in the らりるれろ line, bug you will pick it up when you learn more words with it. 便利 べんり was the bane of my early japanese existence
The rolled R sounds very gruff in Japanese. It could sound angry or country-accent, depending on the situation.
The R is very close to the D or T in words like “water,” “ladder” and “butter.”
So when i think “rolling your R’s” I think of an extended trilling sound like that commercial “rrrruffles have rrrridges”. Or like the double R in Spanish. I’m not sure if that’s what you mean?
If you have any familiarity with Spanish, the single R makes more or less the same sound as in Japanese, not an extended trill but the same exact movement of your tongue, just a single tap.
So, the good news is that the trill (what I’m assuming you mean by ‘rolled R’) does exist in Japanese. The bad news is that it’s mostly associated with rougher types.
Standard (because there are variations, but that’s another conversation) Japanese ‘r’ is what’s called a flap, which is very much like a trill, but only done once. In American dialects, intervocalic (between vowels) t’s and d’s often get turned into this, as mentioned by others already.
I see you know Spanish, so I’ll mention also that single R in Spanish, specifically where it is contrasted with double R (e.g. caro vs carro) is also a flap. If you can get that sound down pat and avoid it turning into a trill, you’ve got Japanese R.
TL;DR: if you can do the trill, your tongue is already in the right place, you just need to practice doing it a single time and not repeating.
Practice along to cyber bunny’s original hiragana song on YouTube 🙂
Be grateful you can roll your Rs, I got rhotacism 🙁
Some things to try might be just trying to move on faster, Japanese is very fast. You may be li N wrong too long if you get a trill. Another thing may be slightly moving you tongue just a bit closer to you teeth but not too close, it’s easier to trill the further back you are in my experience. Finally, speak nasally! I find all the sounds come a bit more naturally in a nasal type is speaking.
Try saying them while holding your breath (not exhaling at all when speaking) which should prevent the trill. That helped me break the habit of rolling.
Maybe instead of making your R sound kind of like a D, start with an L..and make that sound more like a D. It’s not an R, but it’s hard for us to disassociate it as such, since we’re very familiar with our own R and romaji tries to persuade us that all those sounds are Rs. If you change your perspective on the sound, it might help disassociate those habits?