Re: Your Help Appreciated

From: "Nik Taylor"

> > The <dd> in "ladder" or the <tt> in "butter" are pronounced
> > as alveolar flaps in rapid speech, in many (most?) English
> > dialects, so this might help you.
>
> But the Japanese "r" is a *retroflex lateral flap*, IIRC.  Really tough
> to say.  But I can't get "ry" either, and it's really hard for me to
> make any kind of flap at the beginning of a word (which is why I like
> the Spanish pronunciation of initial "r" as "rr").
Retroflex? That does sound tough. I don't remember having difficulty with
these sounds (ryuu, ryo -- no problem), but I didn't treat them as
retroflex.. For me, the Japanese "r" is further forward in the mouth than
the Spanish (actually, that was an initial difficulty, breaking away from
the Spanish idea).

Kou