How is "sayonara" pronounced?

[flboffin_509724]

In 1956 a friend, John, loaned me the book Sayonara to read. When I returned the book, he was with a friend. I knew that both of them had been in Japan on R&R as they were Korean War vets. I told John it was a good book. "What book?" he asked. I smelled a trap, but walked in anyway. I said, "say-oh-nar-ah." "Sigh-oh-NAD-ah" they barked at me in unison. Ever since then I believed this was the correct pronunciation for the word in Japanese. But today I can find no confirmation of this on the Internet. Are there some dialects of Japanese in which this pronunciation is used? (I noticed in the film version of Sayonara, one of the Japanese actors actually used the "d" pronunciation at one point in the film.)

[Varsh]

I've heard many people say "sigh-your-nar-rah" and it's horrible to hear, it should be like this:
SA as in salmon.
YO as in yo!
NA as in nat.
RA as in rabbit.
Having said that the "R" isn't quite an R or an L, in fact try saying "rabbit" by touching the top front of your mouth with your tongue, it's like a slight rolled "R" but not rolled.

What you might have thought is a "D" is actually what I mentioned above. Your ears probably aren't accustomed to the slight differences yet. Remember that every character is a syllable and then you'll be fine.

If you want to bee 100% clear on how Japanese is pronounced, just go through one of the katakana or hiragana alphabets and you'll instantly understand what I mean.

http://www.japanesepod101.com/japanese-pronunciation/

[Leon1552]

RA as in rabbit.
Having said that the "R" isn't quite an R or an L, in fact try saying "rabbit" by touching the top front of your mouth with your tongue, it's like a slight rolled "R" but not rolled.

This may sound silly, but I would personally use bra or brother instead as an example instead for RA as the ra in rabbit sounds more like a re(れ) in Japanese.

I also think because people pronounce Salmon different like how they would with words such as France and Dance, Sardines would be a better example for SA.

[community.japanese]

さん、Varshさん、Leon1552さん、
こんにちは。
Regarding the pronunciation of ‘ら’, I recommend you to say ‘la.’
When you pronounce ‘l’, your tongue touches your gums of front teeth.
Then when ‘ら’ is pronounced, your tongue should touch your hard palate.
The places where your tongue should touch are a bit different however, if you stick to ‘l’, it should be ok.
When ‘d’ is pronounced, your tongue does the same action as you pronounce ‘l’. However, ‘d’ is a voiced sound. On the other hand ‘I’ is a non-voiced sound.
That is the reason why ‘ら’ is sounded like ‘d’ or ‘だ.’

Yuki 由紀
JapanesePod101.com

[Varsh]

由紀先生、ありがとうございました。

I wasn't sure if "la" would have been the better way of saying "ra" but your explanation was miles better than mine.

I have noticed, like you said, that there isn't an English sound/mouth position to say it but after a while it comes naturally. Just lots of practice.

[community.japanese]

Varsh san,
Konnichiwa.
Because you don’t reply on romaji now, you can pronounce ら, り, る, れ andろ.
Practice makes perfect!
Yuki 　由紀
Team JapanesePod101.com