Hey guys, maybe I'll see some familiar "faces" here; haven't posted in a while, my summer has been really busy. I found a site called Japanesepod101.com, so I've started Japanese now. I've been learning for about 2 months now, I know the kanas, and have been learning Kanji from the start, always practicing writing them as well.
And since I have some Indian friends, we'll see how much I can learn of Hindi. I know all the vowels and how to write them in Devanagri; I am now moving onto the consonants.
I THINK I have the Japanese R down pretty well. The best description I found was like, trying to put your tongue in the english R sound position, while also trying to do an L sound, by putting the tip of the tongue up to an alveolar position. It should be kinda lazy though and not hard to do, so this allows for the tip of the tongue to make a little flap, barely stopping the air, and the air still goes over the tongue. It gives a recognizeable R sound, but with a hint of D or L.
Now for Hindi. I seem to hear their R sound kind of like Japanese, but wikipedia, wikibooks, and other random online sites seem to say there are are few different R sounds? And although I understand that it's not the english R, why is "ri" listed with the vowels? what's it really like? Wikibooks article on hindi "speaking and writing" had a couple of things to say about R sounds, such as:
--ड़ (ṛṛ) is difficult to describe, except by example. The Hindi word गाड़ी (gaṛī) sounds very much like "gardee."
--r, like most non-English "r" sounds, is flipped, but not rolled. [what does flipped mean???]
And wikipedia article on Hindi / Urdu phonology says:
-- /ɾ/ can surface as a trill [r], and geminate /ɾː/ is always a trill, e.g. [zəɾaː] (ज़रा — زرا 'little') versus well-trilled [zəraː] (ज़र्रा — ذرّه 'dust').[11]
I still need to do more research about murmured consonants so I will not get into that right now.
Thank you!
PS: I do look at other sites, but Wikipedia tends to have pretty good articles for phonology puts together in one locations things that may be hard to find otherwise.
And since I have some Indian friends, we'll see how much I can learn of Hindi. I know all the vowels and how to write them in Devanagri; I am now moving onto the consonants.
I THINK I have the Japanese R down pretty well. The best description I found was like, trying to put your tongue in the english R sound position, while also trying to do an L sound, by putting the tip of the tongue up to an alveolar position. It should be kinda lazy though and not hard to do, so this allows for the tip of the tongue to make a little flap, barely stopping the air, and the air still goes over the tongue. It gives a recognizeable R sound, but with a hint of D or L.
Now for Hindi. I seem to hear their R sound kind of like Japanese, but wikipedia, wikibooks, and other random online sites seem to say there are are few different R sounds? And although I understand that it's not the english R, why is "ri" listed with the vowels? what's it really like? Wikibooks article on hindi "speaking and writing" had a couple of things to say about R sounds, such as:
--ड़ (ṛṛ) is difficult to describe, except by example. The Hindi word गाड़ी (gaṛī) sounds very much like "gardee."
--r, like most non-English "r" sounds, is flipped, but not rolled. [what does flipped mean???]
And wikipedia article on Hindi / Urdu phonology says:
-- /ɾ/ can surface as a trill [r], and geminate /ɾː/ is always a trill, e.g. [zəɾaː] (ज़रा — زرا 'little') versus well-trilled [zəraː] (ज़र्रा — ذرّه 'dust').[11]
I still need to do more research about murmured consonants so I will not get into that right now.
Thank you!
PS: I do look at other sites, but Wikipedia tends to have pretty good articles for phonology puts together in one locations things that may be hard to find otherwise.