Thanks God my mother tongue is Spanish so the 5 vowels that Japanese has Spanish has them too.
So in pronunciation is quite easier for a Spanish speaker pronounce the Japanese vowels.
Anyway is quite difficult in sometimes.

But dont worry I tried the “eddie” exercise and is pretty good.

My accent is pretty much just British, without any regional bias. I moved around a lot as a child in the UK and then went to boarding schools so never picked up a local accent as such. Most people guess London as it’s definately southern over northern, but that’s about it.

Strangely I’ve never been able to put on accents. I can’t even do Scottish and my mum speaks with a scottish accent!!

Like I said I guess it’s that I knew what I was listening for when saying ‘eddie’. Don’t forget to say it quickly. I’m not claiming that it’s a perfect for for えり but it gets you in the right place to just tune it with practice. Just really listen to yourself and think about what your mouth/tongue is doing…

Honestly, within two weeks of reading about it in a book I was using it in my Japanese without even thinking about it.

Whereabouts in Britain is your accent from? Did you try and put on an American accent or just speak with your British one? Thanks for letting me know that it works!

>The sound “r” (Obviously ;-P I don’t think the “eddie” trick works with British English!)

Well I’m British and it obviously worked for me. Although, I had been living in Japan for a year before I came across it so I guess I was pretty tuned in to the sound that I was trying to make and ‘Eddie’ helped me achieve that.

>The glottal stop (shown by a small tsu at the end of a word)
As far as I know, that isn’t pronounced as such. It’s just used sort of as an exclamation mark, to indicate that the sound was abrupt (this is usually the case in shouting). Examples:
安っ！is just pronounced “ヤス！！” , you might say it when something is cheap (low price). You just kind of shorten the end of the last vowel.

>The vowel “u” (unlike “u” in English/Spanish etc., it’s a close back compressed vowel)＞
The key to this is that it’s more of a “ew” than an “oo”.

Anyway, I don’t know of any websites that do this (if you find one let me know). But even if you never find one, you can still do perfectly well without it. You needn’t analyze it really, just listen carefully to people and focus on imitating them as closely as you can. You’ll figure it out; your brain and your body are designed for it.

I was wondering if you knew of any software/websites that show how to pronounce Japanese. I used the following site; http://www.uiowa.edu/~acadtech/phonetics/ to learn Spanish pronunciation really well and wondered if such a thing existed for the Japanese language. I’ve searched, but to no avail.

There are quite a few sounds which are bugging me:
The vowel “u” (unlike “u” in English/Spanish etc., it’s a close back compressed vowel)
The sound “r” (Obviously ;-P I don’t think the “eddie” trick works with British English!)
The sound “fu”
The sound “hi” (its “h” is slightly different to the “h” of “ha”, “ho” and “he”)
The glottal stop (shown by a small tsu at the end of a word)

It’s driving me crazy! Any help would be really appreciated! Accent is of course the biggest giveaway!

Still, I’d like to congratulate you on the great site! Keep up the good work and good luck with the Chinese!

Thanks!

>Would I have to create a new log-on and password for each language?
No, you don’t. However, as of the current version, everything would be mixed together in the same collection (I don’t think this is a bad thing, but I might add separation functionality if a lot of people want it).

Thanks again for your wonderful site.

What about the Japanese ‘r’ sound? That’s like a mix between ‘l’, ‘r’ and ‘d’. Or is that what you mean by a ’subset’? A mixing of English sounds…

Either way, this gives me an excuse to mention a good way to learn the Japanese ‘r’:
Say ‘eddie’. Now say it quickly a few times and let the two syllables blend a bit. This is now like saying えり. Note how your tongue kinda flicks the roof of your mouth.
I took this and practiced saying えら，えり，える，えれ，えろ over and over to whatever music I was listening to in my car at the time on my way home. If I felt like I was loosing the correct sound I would stop and go back to ‘eddie’ to remind myself.
Finally I removed the え to leave myself with ら，り，る，れ，ろ. This was a few weeks ago and now I’m finding not having to think so much about the sound everytime I say it