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Nagoyankee (Offline)
中庸を得るのだ~
 
Posts: 2,119
Join Date: Mar 2008
Location: Tokyo, Japan
05-07-2009, 05:52 PM

Quote:
Originally Posted by Laian View Post
Honestly, just pronounce them as Ls.

When I was studying in Japan, it boggled my mind when people years deep in studying Japanese still pronounced the らりるれろs with an R sound.

Next time you say something like れんらく (renraku) just say "Lenlaku." Honestly. If you try to perform some of these other suggestion of meeting some medium point between both the L and R pronunciations, you'll just look like you're trying too hard and it wont be natural.

Best of luck.
I kind of agree with you. Start with the L sound rather than the R first. If you're a serious enough learner, your らりるれろ will only get better as your progress.

When I first started learning English in grade 7, I had more difficulty producing the R sound than the L. The same went for nearly all my classmates. This fact should give you a clue, I hope.

Then again, as a native speaker of Japanese, I know for sure that we don't really pronounce らりるれろ as lalilulelo in any natural setting. But for a start, you've gotta replace some sounds by the ones you CAN produce from your native language. This happens to everyone studying a foreign language. You cannot afford to allow one consonant bog you down.

The real sound may technically be found between L and R. But I feel it pretty useless to explain this consonant by how close to or how far from R or L to someone who recognizes R and L as completely different sounds.
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