Customer Reviews

Pronounce It Perfectly in Japanese (Pronounce It Perfectly S.)

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This is a fantastic course on Japanese pronunciation. All of the relevant features of the phonology of the language are covered. Contrasts in sounds that are difficult for Europeans to hear and/or produce are exemplified very clearly, and there is opportunity to practice hearing them in context as well as in isolation. This cassette/book set couldn't possibly be any better.

This tape-book package is very useful in refining your pronounciation. The book provides not only advice on adapting English sounds to allow you to produce authentic saounding Japanese (i.e which English vowel sounds closely match the Japanese ones- plus warning of important differences), it also includes diagrams of mouth and tongue positions and detailed descriptions of these. The diagrams are great, but could be a little more clear.

The tapes contain a lot of Japanese samples including practice on some of the more difficult sound combinations and some tests of your ability to hear difficult sounds.

The only real problem is that there is too much talking by the English speaking announcer- it must be at least 1/3 of the total content. The reason is that he reads absolutley everything that is in the book. I guess the iead is that you don't have to efer to the book if you don't have to- but there is an awful lot of needless repetition.

Overall though- a great buy.

I just got the two cassettes yesterday and listened to both of them.

This is an excellent teaching tool for pronunctiation of all sounds, including the more difficult ones of double consants and the correct pronunction of the "n" sound.

It also has a great summary of all of the Japanese "sentence types," i.e. the different intonation patterns.

I'm an upper intermediate learner that can already speak fluent Japanese but I found that these cassettes were very useful to me. One bad thing about Japanese is that you can totally butcher the pronunciation and intonation and native speakers will still understand you. Because of this you don't get feedback and will continue your errors and never leave your gaijin accent.

I wish someone would put these on CDs and re-release them. They are an invaluable set for someone wishing to speak more like a native speaker.