G sound?

[Zelg]

こんにちは

In doing my flashcards and also watching videos on youtube, I've become a little confused on the "G" sounds in Japanese. I guess it's the same kind of confusion I have with the "R" sounds. Sometimes ri, ro, ru, etc... sound like an L sound, sometimes they sound like an R sound, and sometimes they sound more like a D sound. I've kinda found a little happy medium between all of them and figured it was good enough. The G sounds appear to be giving me the same issue. Sometimes I hear the G pronounced like an English G sound. The audio for 日本語 gives a clear and distinct G sound.

However the audio for　看護し, the G sounds much more muffled and almost like an N sound but used with the rear of the tongue rather than the front. So I'm wondering if there are different enunciations used in different words or if it's more just dependent on who is speaking. In the two example words I used, I noticed the audio for nihongo is done by a male and the audio for kangoshi is done by a female. Do males generally use the harder G sound or is that just a coincidence?

Anyways, that was just something stuck in my head and I read somewhere that someones the same word will mean different things if enunciated differently so it got me thinking about the G sounds.

ニール

[Zelg]

Oh one more thing. The one that really got me thinking about this was tsugi no. It almost sounds like "tsu-ni-no" to me.

[community.japanese]

ニールさん、
wow, you've got brilliant ears!!

You're ABSOLUTELY right about both G and R issues.
I personally think R sounds could be pronounced differently in indivisual level; some people might pronounce R
similar to L or even D. some people have problem pronouncing especially "ri". I often hear those people's "ri" as "di".

Regarding G, G should actually become "nasal sound" when it's not the first consonant of words.
For example, the word 看護師 has [n] before [go], right? This makes the pronunciation of "go" nasal.
The reason you hear "tsugi" like "tsuni" is also because of nasal "gi" sound. As to 日本語, it actually can be
nasal "go" instead of clear one. When G sound comes the last, it tend to be pronounced clearly even if it's
pronounced as nasal sound. Same thing applies to マンガ [manga], けが [kega] (= injury), etc.

People originally from Kansai area (area of Osaka, Kyoto, etc.) don't really like this nasal sound.
Their dialect is "clear G", and there's no nasal G.
You might hear clear G more often in that area

Natsuko(奈津子),
Team JapanesePod101.com

[mmmason8967]

ニールさん、こんにちは。

Although we write Japanese using ra, ri, ru, re and ro, Japanese doesn't really have a R sound. The sound is somewhere between R and L, so we might just as well write Japanese using la, li, lu, le and lo. If you say RA-LA-RA-LA, you'll find your tongue starts the sounds in different places--the R sound starts further back than the L sound. So you try to say RA-LA-RA-LA with your tongue starting both sounds from the same place, somewhere between where you start R and where you start L. It's roughly where you start a D sound…

I've kinda found a little happy medium between all of them and figured it was good enough.

Me too!　

Sidetracking a little … often when a Japanese person speaks English, they'll use the Japanese L/R sound for both the R sounds and the L sounds. The strange thing is, we tend to hear two different sounds, usually with L and R seeming to be reversed (that is, the Ls sound like Rs and the Rs sound like Ls). But the Japanese person is making the same sound all the time. So how come we hear two different sounds? And why do they seem to be switched around? But I digress...

The N and G sounds are often very nasal in spoken Japanese. My impression is that they're much more nasal if the speaker is older and male, and less so if the speaker is younger and female. But it varies: like you, I've noticed that one of the Jpod101 female voice actors is usually quite nasal, and she's easy to recognise on the flashcards that she's recorded.

The N sound is very much like the French nasal N. To make the sound, take a word like hon and imagine there's a G on the end: then try to say hong by pushing the NG sound out through your nose. And stop just before you get to the G.

I find the nasal G hard to do. I can manage it if the letter before the G is an N, as in ringo (apple) but otherwise I struggle to do it.

Oh one more thing. The one that really got me thinking about this was tsugi no. It almost sounds like "tsu-ni-no" to me.

Same here! The nasal G sound is a lot like a nasal N sound, and I often have trouble telling them apart!　

マイケル

[Zelg]

奈津子さｎ

Thank you for clarifying these pronunciations for me. Nasal is a great way to describe the G sounds and I think gives me a better idea on how to pronounce them. It'll also hopefully help with my listening as I'll be trying to pick out that sound rather than just being prepared to hear the clear G sound.


マイケルさＮ

I really try to not get in the habit of using English R or L sounds. I'm sure the more I get used to saying it and conversing with people it'll come to me a bit easier and more clearly. I feel like I can do it fine but I think I get lazy with saying it correctly when I'm by myself going through flashcards and just kinda spit it out cause I'm worried more about what the word means rather than how it sounds but thats definitely something I'm trying to focus on now.

In regards to hearing a Japanese person speaking English and using their L/R sound for both the English R and L sounds I think part of the reason we hear two different sounds is because we're expecting to hear either an R sound or an L sound, depending on what is being said. Maybe on a subconscious level. I dont know really but it just reminded me of a tv show I saw the other day that was talking about things we expect to hear and see and how sometimes they're actually very different in some cases.

Thanks for pointing out the N sound as well. That was another sound I had noticed but I guess forgot about. I think maybe I have only noticed it a few times and I definitely thought it sounded like "hong" in a way.

ありがとうございます。

[community.japanese]

> マイケルさん、
thank you very much for the brilliant help (as always)!!

> ニールさん、
glad my explanation helpd

Natsuko(奈津子),
Team JapanesePod101.com