How to Pronounce the Japanese "R" (dialect comparisons)

....made this since it seems to be the most mispronounced syllable D:


English "R"

Starts with narrow mouth, tongue does not touch palate (roof of mouth), instead starts tucked back in throat and then mouth spreads open.

Spanish "R"

Tongue is rolled, producing a somewhat buzzing/vibrating sound.

English "L"

Wide part of the upper tongue touches the palate, and it curves down as the consonant is pronounced in full.

JAPANESE R

So the Japanese R is rather like a clipped "L."

Form an "L" but only let the tip of your tongue touch your palate and say it quickly. That's the best way I can think to describe it. It's like a combo "R" and "L" and can sometimes sound like a muffled "D" since it's more rhythmic.

And here's a handy webpage with examples!

(Fsst fffssst I argue that the most mispronounced is actually the japanese G, since no other languages seem to have something close, lol... it's actually not like the english G, like others seem to hear, it's more of a soft/nasalized K.)

I'm not sure if the Korean and Japanese R's are pronounced the same way, but they sound just alike, to me anyway, lol. *u*/

It's hard to describe but I like to say it's like a deep L. .u. (The tongue rolls back when you say it, unlike the english L.)

Very nice, this is one of the best tutorials I've seen lol.

Another commonly mispronounced one is that "T" sound.
This is one parallel that Japanese has with Spanish lol

산쇼씨 (Sansyo-ssi) wrote:(Fsst fffssst I argue that the most mispronounced is actually the japanese G, since no other languages seem to have something close, lol... it's actually not like the english G, like others seem to hear, it's more of a soft/nasalized K.)

That is true, but I guess it peeves me more when I hear a blatantly English "RRRRRRRAAAAAA" than a slightly harder-sounding "G" D:

I've noticed with proper otoing, the hardness of a "G" can be made softer if you clip it enough with the beginning cutoff, so it doesn't sound as loud or forced.

And it's a tad more obvious in UTAU with the "R"s since UTAU likes to make English "R"s sound all.... uh.... ripply. Or something. They just sound weird. Especially in fast songs.

I've always had a problem with pronouncing sounds that aren't in the English language.

So when I started making my UTAU (it's kinda of a 'test' voice bank at the moment), I just told myself it would be an English UTAU, so I did both the English ‘R’ and ‘L’ sounds.

I was testing my voice bank with a Japanese song, and the 'R' sounded more like an 'L' in the original version, so when I was writing the Hiragana for my sounds (in the voice bank settings), I wrote the Hiragana for the ‘L’ sounds instead of the ‘R’, it felt like I wasn't meant to, but I did it anyway.

I have since tried practicing the Japanese sounds, because I would like to re-record my voice bank (when I understand and know how to make a voice bank that doesn’t sound too ‘newb-ish’)with the proper Japanese 'R' sounds, but it never sounds right coming out of my mouth.

I took half a quarter of Japanese class and the first think Mikako-sensei taught us was your R's sound like "R/D/L" put together, otherwise it is wrong. C: -

at first it was hard, but once you learn it's quite easy.

hehe now I feel lucky of being Chilean C:


Yeah, the Japanese R is like L, R and D together...compairing it with Spanish, Japanese R = Spanish soft R.
Which is the soft R? It's like the 'rolled' R, but without doing the 'vibration'. What does that mean? It means you just 'touch' the hard palate with the tip of your tongue.
In IPA, the English R is /ɹ/ and the Spanish ones (soft and rolled) are /ɾ/ and /r/ respectively. If you check the articles in Wikipedia, you can see the pronunciations have a notable difference.


I've tried to explain it clearly, if you have any questions just ask me ^^