Question about 'quirks' of spoken Japanese, for lack of a better word.I've recently gotten really into a Japanese singer named Tatsuro Yamashita. Something interesting I've noticed about his songs are that he very often says r-sound characters with a s

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Anonymous 06/25/15 (Thu) 22:47:12 No.2482

Question about 'quirks' of spoken Japanese, for lack of a better word.

I've recently gotten really into a Japanese singer named Tatsuro Yamashita. Something interesting I've noticed about his songs are that he very often says r-sound characters with a strong L sound. Hitori as Hitoli, Sayonara as Sayonala, etc. This is pretty consistent through many of his songs. I know that there are peculiarities to all spoken word and furthermore that singing follows very different rules from normal speaking, but is there something that would make someone pronounce their r-sounds this way? He's also very capable of singing in English, with a Japanese accent only very seldom affecting his pronunciation, and in English he has no problem with L and R sounds. Is there perhaps a certain dialect or other thing which may affect his pronunciation to cause those L-heavy pronunciations?

Anonymous 06/30/15 (Tue) 21:01:58 No.2490

The L sound has been a long standing sticking point for English learners from Japan because it’s formed almost the precise way Japanese R sounds, which involve the tip of the tongue flicking the roof of the mouth.

The main difference, for those not privy to the mechanics, is this: the L sound places the tongue’s tip for the beginning and middle parts of forming the sound, where the Japanese R sound only places it there for the middle portion (assuming it’s the crisp type of R sound, and not the soft, growl-like R familiar to English speakers). It takes lots of time, lots of practice and lots of getting wrong to ingrain these into the tongue’s muscle memory; as anyone ridiculed for not sounding like a native speaker will tell you, it can shred on your nerves when you have to learn it all from scratch.

Consequently, since L sounds aren’t part of their phonetics, R sounds are used to render words like Light（ライト) and Lonely（ロンリ), and since folks in Japan don't care much, their L sounds will be somewhere between what we know as R and L sounds, some people on one extreme, and others, on the other

Anonymous 07/01/15 (Wed) 06:31:35 No.2491

>>2482

It's an accepted variation of the sound. In normal speech the basic "R-like" sound is most common.

An "L-like" sound tends to be observable in certain words, and is more frequently heard from female speakers; it sounds softer and more childish (hence maybe "cute").

The other extreme is a rolled "R", which sounds rougher and more aggressive or masculine (note its association with lower-class accents and gangsters).

In singing, both a prominent "L-like" sound or a rolled "R" sound could be considered as an attempt at flair.