Question about the Japanese language.

Tiff.   Sun Apr 05, 2009 10:13 am GMT
How come in the Japanese language, you don't pronounce the T's and the R's correctly? Like in the word "watashi" they really pronounce it as "wathashi" >_< And "arashi" they say it as "adashi" or "alashi" Do Japanese people not know that they're saying it wrong, or are they just incapable of pronouncing T's and R's correctly? Really, I'm curious. This may seem like a dumb question, but I would really like to know.


(I'm in the process of learning Japanese, and I speak Japanese the way it looks. Meaning, I fully pronounce the T's and R's. Like "aRashi" and "wTashi" But native Japanese speakers always look at me funny, as If I'M the one saying things wrong..)
yazomd   Sun Apr 05, 2009 10:48 am GMT
Haha , nice subtle trolling!
Super Korean   Sun Apr 05, 2009 11:38 am GMT
A language and its pronunciation do not correspond to another language perfectly.

No one can write わたし perfectly in Roman Alphabets, "watashi" is the best possible. You should follow the way Japanese people pronounce if you can. (I doubt you can reproduce it perfectly though!)

Also, ありがとう is not pronounced as most English speakers' attempt at "Arigato."
However, there's no better way to romanize ありがとう than "Arigato". If you are smart enougth, do not read <Romanji> and read as other Japanese people do.
Wingyellow   Sun Apr 05, 2009 1:20 pm GMT
The T in watashi is pronounced like the T is "star".

We call it unaspirated unvoiced consonant.

In English, there are aspirated unvoiced consonants, like S, T, Ch, K,
and unaspirated voiced consonants, like Z, D, B.

There are aspirated voiced consonants in some languages, but not English.

As for unaspirated unvoiced consonant, in English, it only happens behind the letter S, like Spain, Star, etc. You never pronounce the "tar" in "star" as tar, right? And you should never pronounce the Ta in watashi as Ta.