んり pronounciation

[ThisistheHenry]

One thing that has always bothered me about my Japanese pronunciation is the way in which I say the "r" sounds after a ん. I have no problem with saying the Japanese l/r/d sound, except when right after one of those んs... and I was wondering if this a common issue or something that anybody has a tip for.
It's not crippling, and I don't think that I am too bad at pronunciation in general... but I thought if I were to get help, there would be no better place than here.

[jkeyz15]

Maybe post an audio sample of a couple of words or something.

[Psy]

I think I might be able to help you without even hearing you. What often goes unmentioned in Japanese pronunciation guides is that the ん has several different pronunciations, however since your English ear is trained to hear the English "N," it probably affects your listening/speaking habits in Japanese (this is why people have accents to begin with). I don't want to dive too far into phonetics (the vocab gets... confusing), but here's something that may help:

The English N (and in some cases the Japanese ん) are pronounced by touching the tongue against the alveolar ridge (the spot right behind your upper teeth). However, there are many cases where ん can be an English M (like the first んin こんばんは), or even nasal like the NG in king (such as 禁煙・きんえん). Though it seems to vary from person to person, I've noticed a that the Japanese speakers on J-Pod lean more towards the nasal, NG-type sound than they do the N. The important part to realize is that to create this sound, you push your tongue back instead of forward, keeping the tip of your tongue flat in your mouth. I think if you try combining an "NG-style" ん with a ラ行 syllable, you'll find it a lot easier.

Hope that helps!

[jkeyz15]

my んs are nasal (at least I think they are) ^^

I don't know much about linguistics vocab but yeah maybe I should make a thread for people to post their pronunciations or to say something....

[Psy]

my んs are nasal (at least I think they are) ^^

I don't know much about linguistics vocab but yeah maybe I should make a thread for people to post their pronunciations or to say something....

There's a really easy way to find out: prolong your "ん" and while you're pronouncing it, squeeze your nose. If the sound stops, you're pronouncing it nasally.

[jkeyz15]

Ok, yeah it is. As holding my nose severely muffles the sound. The sound almost completely disappears.

I think in sentences, speaking in conversation... I don't think that I put so much nasal quality into it as saying a single word though.. But words like 全員 are highly nasal.

[ThisistheHenry]

That seems to have fixed it. I guess I was used to pronouncing the ん by using the alveolar ridge, which then made it difficult to pronounce the "r". It might take a while to break the habit of the English-y ん, but at least I now know my fault.
Thank you very much!

[Psy]

Glad I could help. Just remember that you don't always need to use a nasal ん, the English-style N is perfectly at home in words/phrases like こんにちは, きのう, 行くしかなさそうね、etc... just use whatever's easier for the given situation. If it's hard to pronounce (distinguish this from feels strange to pronounce, as unfamiliar sounds will undoubtedly feel different and unusual at first), this means you're probably doing it wrong!