pronouncing words in Japanese?

Question

I made the mistake of learning Japanese on my own using textbooks only. I can read Japanese fairly well, but I have trouble pronouncing the words. Any recommendations for CD's or Websites would be helpful.

Obviously, the best choice for me is to get a tutor, but I can't do that at the moment. I do plan on going to a tutor fairly soon though.

Answer 1

Watch Anime. You will get a sense of the inflection and speed etc.

Answer 2

The easiest way to speak Japanese clearly is to speak without any accent. Japanese has only pure vowels so pronounce the words as if you were speaking Spanish without any accent. The hardest thing for me were the sounds ra, ri, ru, re, ro. To get the proper "r" sound, produce the r by flicking your tongue outwards against your teeth. This will give your r the proper percussiveness that the Japanese r sound has. Also, reading Japanese that is at least written in hiragan is a must. If you try to read off of romaji text, it will be harder for you to lose your English-speaker's accent.

Listening to Japanese is a must. If there are no Japanese TV channels where you live, log on to live365.com and find a Japanese radio station. There are some Japanese talk stations as well. Even if you don't understand a word that they are saying, just by listening, you will be improving your Japanese more than you realize. This is how I learned Japanese myself while living in the States. When I arrived in Japan the first time, people were surprised by how clear my pronunciation was even though I just arrived. It was then I realized that the countless hours I spend listening to speech I couldn't even understand had actually paid off.

Answer 3

http://www.tokyowithkids.com/fyi/hiragana_chart.html The sounds are all displayed there. Japanese is a phonetically easy language and so all the pronunciations work by just combining each sound together.

Answer 4

Romanized Japanese is incredibly easy to pronounce. Almost everything is exactly how it looks.

Tokyo (city) = TO-KYOH
Takahashi (surname)= TA-KA-HA-SHI
Ogenki Desuka (Are you well?) = O-GEN-KI DES-KA
Otanjyoubi Omedetou (Happy Birthday) = O-TAN-JO-BI O-ME-DE-TO

A = ah
I = ee
U = oo
E - eh
O - oh

Understanding the vowels is really all it takes.

The alphabet is reasonably simple:
A-KA-SA-TA-NA-HA-MA-YA-RA-WA-N (pronounced un)
I-KI-SHI-CHI-NI-HI-MI-RI (there is no 'yi' or 'wi' sounds, and instead of si, its 'shi' and instead of ti, it's 'chi')
U-KU-SU-TSU-NU-HU-MU-YU-RU (instead of 'tu', it's 'tsu')
E-KE-SE-TE-NE-HE-ME-RE (no 'ye' or 'we')
O-KO-SO-TO-NO-HO-MO-YO-RO-WO

It's literally as it's pronounced. Some words, when said faster, may shorten the vowel sound. For example, desu is usually said 'des', but if you say desu you are not saying it rong. The "shi' sound is also sometimes shortened, so the surname Shimizu is sometimes pronounced "Shmi-zu".

It's really easy, hopefully this helped.