moaning about my Japanese textbook
Feb. 19th, 2007 08:56 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
baratronI would like someone to translate my Japanese book into English, please.
From "Let's Learn Hiragana" by Yasuko Kosaka Mitamura, p32: "The pronunciation of the Japanese [r] deserves careful attention because it produces a sound not found in English. It might be considered a cross between [r] and [l]. This sound is articulated by saying [r] while lightly touching the ridge behind the upper teeth once with the tip of the tongue, producing a flap [r]. This constrasts with curling the tip of the tongue back to produce the retroflex English [r]."
Er. WTF? I already knew that the Japanese (and Korean) "r" is somewhere between English "r" and "l", but I can't make any sense out of the last two sentences in that paragraph at all. I don't think it would have killed them to have simply included some photographs or diagrams here :/
The book is also going on about unvoiced, voiced and semivoiced consonants. Now, I get that the unvoiced consonants are the regular hiragana, the voiced ones have a " after which changes the meaning (e.g. hi --> bi), and the semivoiced have a circle after (hi --> pi) - but I have no idea why they're called "unvoiced", "voiced" or "semivoiced"! It's just assumed that you understand those terms - which would be great, if this wasn't a teach yourself Japanese-type book. And I have a feeling even were I to look up all the terms in Wikipedia or wherever, I still wouldn't understand, as I understand all the words in "saying [r] while lightly touching the ridge behind the upper teeth once with the tip of the tongue", but still have no actual clue what it means.
From "Let's Learn Hiragana" by Yasuko Kosaka Mitamura, p32: "The pronunciation of the Japanese [r] deserves careful attention because it produces a sound not found in English. It might be considered a cross between [r] and [l]. This sound is articulated by saying [r] while lightly touching the ridge behind the upper teeth once with the tip of the tongue, producing a flap [r]. This constrasts with curling the tip of the tongue back to produce the retroflex English [r]."
Er. WTF? I already knew that the Japanese (and Korean) "r" is somewhere between English "r" and "l", but I can't make any sense out of the last two sentences in that paragraph at all. I don't think it would have killed them to have simply included some photographs or diagrams here :/
The book is also going on about unvoiced, voiced and semivoiced consonants. Now, I get that the unvoiced consonants are the regular hiragana, the voiced ones have a " after which changes the meaning (e.g. hi --> bi), and the semivoiced have a circle after (hi --> pi) - but I have no idea why they're called "unvoiced", "voiced" or "semivoiced"! It's just assumed that you understand those terms - which would be great, if this wasn't a teach yourself Japanese-type book. And I have a feeling even were I to look up all the terms in Wikipedia or wherever, I still wouldn't understand, as I understand all the words in "saying [r] while lightly touching the ridge behind the upper teeth once with the tip of the tongue", but still have no actual clue what it means.
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no subject
Date: 2007-02-19 10:20 pm (UTC)I also think pronunciation of a foreign tongue could be better
taught than by demanding from the pupil those internal acrobatic
feats that are generally impossible and always useless. This is
the sort of instruction one receives:
"Press your tonsils against the underside of your larynx. Then
with the convex part of the septum curved upwards so as almost--but
not quite--to touch the uvula, try with the tip of your tongue to
reach your thyroid. Take a deep breath, and compress your glottis.
Now, without opening your lips, say 'Garoo.'"
And when you have done it they are not satisfied.