Comments on: News #10 - Captions Anyone?

by: Dave S.

Sun, 12 Mar 2006 03:51:58 +0000

Peter mentioned that someone composed a song just for JapanesePod101. When do we get to hear it?

by: Dave S.

Sat, 11 Mar 2006 14:58:53 +0000

I love the news episodes where you thank everyone. Awesome stuff.

by: Matt

Sat, 11 Mar 2006 01:09:51 +0000

I would like to request a show for DISNEY characters and how you pronunce some of the DISNEY movies and characters in Japanese.

by: jay

Wed, 08 Mar 2006 01:44:02 +0000

cool thanks nathan!

by: Nathan

Tue, 07 Mar 2006 21:36:41 +0000

Jay-san,

Yeah, actually I do You’re talking about phonology, and there’s a pretty good Wikipedia article on it here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_phonology

As it mentions, the Japanese “s” is a laminal alveolar consonant, which means that the tongue is placed close to the backs of the front teeth and the airflow is constricted with the blade of the tongue, rather than the tip. In other words, it can have a slight lisp sound, yes. It’s good to keep in mind that we’re all individuals and thus our speech can vary slightly and still be correct.

by: Alastair

Tue, 07 Mar 2006 18:52:42 +0000

I thought you guys might be interested, japanesepod101 was mentioned on the planet japan podcast.

http://www.planetjapan.org/podcast.html

Keep up the great work!

by: Todd

Tue, 07 Mar 2006 11:41:18 +0000

Peter, when you guys finally get that armadillo problem worked out:

http://www.exotickitchen.com/recipes/recipes3.htm

by: JP

Mon, 06 Mar 2006 23:53:54 +0000

Steve-San,

Nice blog, keep bloggin!!! tokorode, cool joke!

by: monkeyjay

Mon, 06 Mar 2006 20:44:11 +0000

ok fine ventrilo out. haha

Mike I think I know what you are referring to. I find when I practice speaking by imitating kazunori that my tongue makes the ’s’ sound a lot closer to my teeth than normal. same with the ‘r’ sound, seems to use a lot more front teeth tongue action in japanese, so it almost could become ‘l’ or even ‘d’.

I am a total beginner so I could be wrong, but I am also pretty good at imitation and this is how I found my voice to match kazunori’s better.

There is most likely a natural tongue placement for the japanese sounds, nathan you got a link?

by: Mike

Mon, 06 Mar 2006 16:16:12 +0000

Sorry by “lisp” I meant the “desu” sounds slightly like “desth” to me from Kazunori, but sounds like “dess” from Peter and Natsuko. I heard another male talk this way so it must be a correct way of speaking. Thanks.

by: steve

Mon, 06 Mar 2006 14:08:24 +0000

Mmmmm! Here is a stupid joke. I placed it on my blog…but I thought you might like to see it…

A Bear, a Lion and a Chicken…
The Bear says “When I growl, the whole forest goes quiet”
The Lion replies “Well, mate, when I roar, the whole of Africa is scared”
The Chicken responds “Hah! That’s nothing. When I sneeze, the whole world trembles”

Well, it amused me anyway.

by: Ayu

Mon, 06 Mar 2006 10:55:22 +0000

Angie!! I’m from Indonesia too

I’m a begginer too…My friends are soo much more advanced than me because they watch anime more than me–at least they know all the bad words >

by: Agus

Mon, 06 Mar 2006 10:27:07 +0000

You guys are so great. It is the first time for me to hear a Japanese lesson that is actually so fun. You should be thinking about putting all these podcasts into a CD and selling them. Sakura, I love your voice
Please please continue your good work !

by: steve

Mon, 06 Mar 2006 08:37:45 +0000

Mike-san.
I think Kazunori-san speaks like most males in Japan. I am not sure if it is a good example…but when I watch Japanese films, I find the women much easier to understand than the men (not that I understand much Japanese) I think maybe Japanese men speak a lot quicker, were as Japanese woman…Maybe speak a lot clearer?!?!?! But I think Kazunori-san is a fine example for all us men to follow when it comes to speaking Japanese more natural. I swear that a lot of Japanese text books teach a more feminine form of Japanese.
Also another thing to remember, Japanese is much more mono-toned compared to English and other European style languages which can make it hard, sometimes to listen to…If that makes any sense?
O-genki de
Steve

by: Nathan

Mon, 06 Mar 2006 07:09:18 +0000

Everyone,

Hope you all had a great weekend! It’s nice to be back at home. Thanks again for the mention in the news, but once again - it’s the least I can do for such a great group. I’ve just finished adding all of the links that were posted while I was gone

Steve-san,

You definitely over-estimate me! There’s nothing to be jealous of here, and to prove it, I’ll give you permission to swap our brains. I’m sure you’ll be wanting yours back soon enough

Jay-san,

The Ventrilo idea is a good idea in theory, but in practice I’m afraid to say I don’t think it would be very successful. There are a couple of reasons. Our user-base is spread out across the globe, so time zones are an issue. Many would probably be too shy to get into a chat room and speak, much less speak a language they don’t know very well. And then there are the server issues you mentioned. I think a better option is to stick to one-on-one conversations through something like Skype or Google Talk. That’s much easier to coordinate and it’s free

Mike-san,

Welcome to the community! I’m not quite sure what you’re referring to as a lisp, but Kazunori-san is a fine role-model for speech