Thank you! I think I've got it now. Apart from the occasional "LL" Welsh sound that's coming out. Damn the Welsh in me Definitely sounds like a smash between 'L' and 'D' on the audio though - that's where I got baffled :Alien:
yeh, a word like "arigatou" can sound like arigatou, aligatou or adigatou. to my ears it actually sounds most similar to the last one. you don't have to worry about getting it perfect though. the only time you would need it to be really good was if you were having conversations with japanese speakers. and if you're doing that, you'll hear the correct pronunciation and start assimilating soon enough anyway.
In that case, for now, it'll be "arigatou" (what does arigatou mean btw? It sounds like a spell out of harry potter )
It's funny, I totally remember the "r" sounding like a "d" when I first started studying Japanese. I was like, "the word for apple is 'dingo'"? The trick is that it is between an "l" and an "r" both in sound and in terms of tongue position. In English, the "r" has the tongue touching the roof of the mouth and the "l" has the tip of the tongue touching the line where the teeth and gums meet. The Japanese "r" is somewhere in between, with the tongue touching that little ridge between the front part of the mouth and the roof. Arigatou means "thank you." It's short for arigatou gozaimasu, which literally means "it is thankful."
Learnt a few words yesterday. I don't know what's so funny about squid but I'm still giggling every time I see "ika" Just to check I've got the right idea, can one of you advanced learners confirm a couple words please Dog - "i-nu" One - "i-chi" This morning - "ke-sa" Pond - "i-ke" I picked the roman out of hiragana but not sure if that's the right way to go about it?
Didn't read over the whole thread to see if anyone had mentioned this, but I've just found that Firefox has an excellent function called Rikaichan that enables you to just hover your mouse over a word on a page of Japanese text and it pops up the hiragana yomikata (reading) and the English translation. Don't know if Explorer has a similar option anywhere.
Just found out there's an updated version called PeraPeraKun available too. Haven't checked it out yet though. Of course, these are of limited use to you for now, but they will help eventually. Also the excellent online dictionary dictionary.
er download ff go to ff homepage search add-ons (or extensions - can't remember which) for rikaichan/peraperakun or just put in the word 'japanese' and bob ha anata no ojisan ni narimasu!
firefox. :bang: The subject you asked me about! Help us out a bit here: use yer loaf FFS! And no, I'm not telling you what FFS stands for!
Probably the best books on learning Japanese are the Genki series - not the cheapest of books but are recognised by the JLPT and I used them at Uni and you can get a handy workbook to go with them. They also start you off on Kanji from lesson 4 onwards - gently mind, you're not thrown in at the deep end or anything
