Japanese Pronunciation Guide

I decided to make this guide because I have been embarrassed too many times by
other gaijin who give my Japanese a bad name. I want the Japanese people themselves to
lift the embargo of their already hardened idea and assumption that gaijin cannot speak
their language. In America, a full blown Japanese person, or a Chinese person, or a
Korean person, or anybody from any other country is thought as strange if, in America
they don’t understand English. So instead of outright ringing the necks of Japanese
learners who fail to take into account their lips, teeth and tongues when studying the
pronunciation of Japanese, working with great care for the progress of their own
improvement in the field, I created this article.
Although it’s not recommended to learn Japanese pronunciation on your own, this
article can be used as reference in your for those with a sincere desire to help me save
gaijin face by giving them more an impression that there are gaijin who can speak their
language, and speak it like a native. So by reading this article you can help me change the
world a little, well at least change the minds of a lot of Japanese people and their already
hardened thoughts and pre-assumed, generalized opinion that if you are a gaijin, then it
follows that you can’t speak Japanese like a native. My best advice to beginning learners
is to live by the adage, “When in Rome, do as the Romans do.”
Of all the facets of Japanese language learning, pronunciation isn’t one of the
harder ones. The three toughest things about Japanese language which a SL2 learner will
face in regards to pronunciation will be 1.) The pronunciation of the syllable tsu, 2.)
The ra, ri, ru, re, ro row of the Hiragana and Katakana syllabary (and their words) and 3.)
The words that contain an apostrophe between 2 syllables where one syllable ends with
an n. The rest of pronunciation can be mastered quite quickly. It may take some time to
actually develop the tongue or the workaround for being able to speak the language like a
native.
The similarities between Japanese and English
1. Even stress or accent given to each syllable.
2. Rising pitch for questions
3. Stressing of words for emphasis

In Japanese there are times when the meanings of words can change dramatically.
Depending on the length of time a vowel sound is sounded. There are two types of vowel
sounds you will want to get familiar with in your Japanese studies. They are: 1.) Long
vowels and 2.) Short vowels. We can see how these vowel sounds affect the meaning of
words by taking a closer look at the Japanese words for grandmother and aunt, or o-
baasan and o-basan. In the first word the longer aah in o-baasan means grandmother
while if you shorten the length of that ah but just to a quick ah and pronounce it o-basan
the meaning changes with minimal effort. So it is wise to pay very close attention to the
length of vowels when memorizing words and developing our Japanese vocabulary. with
no elongation of the vowel.
Another area worth consideration in your quest to master Japanese pronunciation,
is the use of double consonants. Although in English there isn’t quite an equivalent sound
so hard as there will be in Japanese, something similar in English can be found in the
English word bookkeeper. The hard double k sound in bookkeeper is found frequently in
Japanese as is hard double t, p,s,

N without associated vowels