Pronunciation of the kana Ra, He, Wo and Fu

3 comments

1. Google Japanese pronunciation.

   There’s countless videos website’s providing the answer.

2. Liquid consonants (the kind English “R” and “L” belong to) are interesting across languages. There is only one liquid consonant in Japanese, and most speakers don’t differentiate between what English speakers hear as “R” and “L” and actual pronunciation varies widely, by region, between speakers, and even between different words and moods for the same speaker. Just like English has only two liquid consonants while Spanish or Russian have four (the actual sounds again differ between these) and many English speakers don’t differentiate these.

   And yes, the f in fu is not the labiodental (between lip and teeth) fricative you might know, but a bilabial (between upper and lower lip).

   The Wikipedia page https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_phonology has lots of details, it may help to click through to the descriptions of the individual sounds (the IPA-symbols) and read about the lip and tongue movements involved.

3. > ら…

   Listening to English or another language that cares about the distinction has shaped your brain to pay too much attention. You should certainly be paying more attention to vowels and timing and maybe pitch.

   > ふ

   Don’t use a lip-to-teeth /f/ – make a similar sound by pinching air between your lips. Then again, don’t worry too much about it.

   In these particles and phrases made from them

   – へ is exactly the same as え
   – は exactly the same as わ

   You can think of those as intentional misspellings – because during the spelling reform people were *just too attached* to those particles and didn’t want to change them.

   Similarly を is exactly the same as お – you’ll rarely see it except in the particle, but it’s always the same.