L and R pronounced or not?

5 comments

1. Standard Japanese ‘r’ is something called a flap, which is really annoying to explain in English because it exists… sometimes. And the most common variation of this is not thought of by English speakers as ‘r’, but as ‘t’ or ‘d’.

   So, first things first, what dialect of English do you have?

2. If you’re American, it’s the sound “TT” has. Attitude, forgettable, committed…

3. spanish short-r is the closest thing i’ve heard that’s easily accessible for a lot of language learners to grok

   it’s a tap of the tongue to the roof of the mouth just behind the teeth. it’s not trapping air beforehand like a d-sound, but is similar otherwise

4. [This video may help.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TZ3j7PZR8QA&t=48s)

5. [Australian English native, Japanese beginner here.]

   Any text description of the sounds may well lead you astray.

   The kana represented in roman characters as ra, ri, re, ru, ro are just the most obvious example — it is likely that almost all sounds in Japanese differ in some way from similar sounds in your native language(s); and will also be different from how you would read the romanisations.

   Pronouncing the romanisations as you see them is a useful very first approximation, but then you have to let that go and learn the actual sounds — what you are doing now. And yes, that sound in Japanese is sort of between an r and an l, although other people find it better to think of it as between t and d.

   Its not really that you “don’t pronounce the r”, its that the “r“ is just used as a reminder token to point towards the actual sound. Use the romanisations as mnemonics towards the pronunciations, not as pronunciations themselves.

   In the absence of an in-person teacher, its probably best to just listen repeatedly to good samples of Japanese speakers saying each of the sounds. There are plenty on Youtube, and almost any good online or app system for learning kana has them. Listen closely, and try to mimic them. If you’re not sure, record yourself and compare.

   EG I found the “Kana Drill” app quite useful. A lot of people use Anki with sound samples.

   Tofugu has samples for each one along the way using their mnemonic method, and also has youtube videos.

   [https://www.tofugu.com/japanese/learn-hiragana/](https://www.tofugu.com/japanese/learn-hiragana/)

   But there are plenty of other tools.