Enunciations difficult for native english speakers?

[green]

I am starting to study up on Japanese for a trip I will be taking in a couple years. It is important to me to be comprehendable, to sound as native as possible. So, I have some questions.

Can anyone recomend/point-to any sounds that are difficult for native English speakers to pronounce? Especially slight' hard to notice differences that an english speaker would assume on some level is pronounced in an English way.

thanks.

 

[samuraitora]

There are a few things that are hard for americans...tsu, fu or hu, and the r's...I will find and post a few good sites with audio files.

 

[Tomoko]

The hardest parts are:

single length vowels vs. double length vowels

the "glottal stop" of a small TSU

 

[StorDuff]

I had trouble with Tsu but picked it up fairly fast. I just find it very hard to talk/write in Japanese using r's then go back to English. I always get caught up replacing l's with r's then get mixed up on that and spell the rest of the word wrong.

 

[samuraitora]

I have ran into the same problem...when I was a kid with my Japanese friends...spending the night or just hanging out with them, I would come home speaking engrish with a japanese acent...too funny.

 

[moyashi]

samuraitora basically hit all the tough ones.

Other's I guess would depend upon your own native language or that native language's dialect.

R vs L
ra, ri ru re ro .... written with "R".

construction of the sound would be to start off with the English "L" mouth in a smile and when you make the sound don't allow your tongue to hit the roof of your mouth strongly like in the English "L and N" sounds but rather as light taps. Of course RU and RO forces a round shape at times but most importantly is the smile and light tapping when you run through ra - ri - ru - re - ro.

So, now you all know why Japanese confuse L's and R's, their "RA" sound is neither but both.

 

[nebosuke]

The toughest thing for me has been Ryu. I think I can make it sound understandable, but not sound correct.

 

[Harvey]

The "glottal stop" of a small TSU

That's hilarious. I love "glottal stops".
引越し。びっ・り。たっぷり。なまってる。ばっちり。 べりグッド。
ビッグカメラ。なにつっとんねん！？