The Japanese T isn’t easy. 

Japanese pronunciation lessons: www.patreon.com/dogen Video on Aspiration: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-YDpC4WC7y8k.html

So what I learnt from this is: -My japanese Ts have been naturally perfect. -I've been mispronouncing the english T for the last 24 years... Alas, the pros and cons of being hispanic...

Being Spanish native speaker... Japanese "T"s are extremely easy

Luckily for us French people, the "T" sound is the same as the Japanese. The tongue placement is identical, the tip touches the back of the upper teeth. But I have to thank you because I learnt how to improve my "T" sound when speaking English!

日本語ネイティブにとっても、英語の発音の勉強になるわ

I use the Japanese “itte” and “chotto” as examples to show the difference in T’s to English speakers. Those words cannot pass as Japanese with the English T sound, so it usually brings some around quicker

I've been pronouncing the English ”t" like the Japanese "t" my whole entire life lmao

I'm a Spanish native speaker fluent in English and Japanese. The Spanish t is, as far as I'm aware, the same as the Japanese t. So this particular phoneme was never a problem for me in Japanese. The funny thing is that, even though I've spoken English ever since I was 10 and I'm at least as comfortable with it as I am with Spanish, and even though I can aspirate my stops (p, t, k) with no problem in English, I'm still completely unable to say the English t in the "correct" tongue position without overshooting and pronouncing an Indian retroflex t instead. So my English t's are the ones that are slightly off, at least according to all the mouth diagrams I've ever seen, but luckily it's not as noticeable as the lack of aspiration, and thus my accent is not (that) terrible.

As a French person, this actually taught me that my english T sound was wrong :'D

As an American, I just learned I've been pronouncing the English T the way you described the Japanese T. According to some Spanish speakers' comments, the Spanish T is the same as in Japanese, and I had a lot of exposure to Spanish as a child, so maybe that influenced me.

I would say that it's English "t" that sounds a bit unusual. The front placement of "t" is probably more common among different languages than the English language. I speak Russian, German and a tiny bit of Japanese besides English and they all have a similar "t" sound.

What blows my mind is that I'm nowhere near fluent in Japanese, yet somehow I still subconsciously picked up on this subtlety and have been using it without realizing it; that is until now. Linguistics is a trip.

Wow holy cow. I was unconsciously speaking somewhere between the Japanese T and the English T up until now. This helped bridge the gap to a more natural sounding T sound in Japanese. It makes total sense now! I noticed an improvement in my pronunciation immediately. As always, thank you Dogen!

Today I learned that I make my Ts in English more like a Japanese speaker. (I already knew I did that with F/V thanks to losing my two front baby teeth long before my adult teeth came in.)

Luckily, some languages have both types of the Ts as their main alphabets. Using Thai as an example, we have "ท" as the equivalent to the English T and "ต" as the equivalent to the Japanese T.

This is amazing. I'm realizing now that I'd been actually doing this more or less automatically (I'm fairly good at mimicking and picking up on accents, sometimes without realizing it) but still never consciously realized there was actually any difference between the Japanese and English T sounds, and I certainly never would have been able to explain it to anyone else if you hadn't done it first, so this has been very helpful. I've already learned more from these first couple of short pronunciation videos than from a lot of other resources out there on the net. I'm so glad you decided to do these, and I'm really looking forward to more of them!

Thank you! This series is helpful. I wish you a speedy recovery!

Ah, cənab Dogen, artıq neçə ildir sizin maraqlı videolarınızla yapon dilimi inkişaf etdirirəm. Çox maraqlı və sadə açıqlayırsız. Amma mənə özümü "sadə şeyləri anlamayan səfeh" hiss etdirmirsiniz. Bunun üçün təşəkkür edirəm! ❤️

This is something I don't think I would have picked up on by myself, thank you for making this video!

Thank you so much for these videos, Dogen. I am trying to improve my pronunciation and this type of video helps a lot.

I learn so much from your videos!

As a T, I can confirm that it is easy.

thank you much love Dogen. you are doing things right for us learners!

This is something I think ive naturally started doing unconsciously as i listened to native speech and tried to replicate it, but now that you've taught us the difference in tongue placement i think it will help me replicate the sound with more success, accuracy and consistency! Thank you and stay well!!

This is extremely helpful! Thank you!

So that's why Asian people on early stage have better pronounciation. The tongue position for Asian's languages was much more natural compared to English words. Definitely good tips for people who wants more natural Japanese pronounciation!

For me, it’s Spanish and Italian that have done the trick for me. I’ve always spoken Spanish and used to speak and am familiar with Italian. The t in both languages is the same (as Japanese), and doubled consonants in Italian are the same/very similar to those with chiisai tsu. It’s very funny to see how much of an outlier English is compared to other languages.

Great video, Dogen! Hope everything is going ok and you're getting better

Super useful tip! Wishing you a speedy recovery!

I'm a native Portuguese speaker and the "T" sound we use here is the one you described as Japanese. Actually, I would go as far as to say that the English's "T" sound is the odd one out. Besides, I find very curious for someone to not be able to differentiate between both sounds, because, at least for me, it is a pretty huge difference. When I switch my brain to English mode this is one of the most notable and automatic changes in speech.

And now I'm wondering if it's because I speak a general form of Northern British English that I articulate the T the same way as in Japanese, or if it's just me "doing it wrong". Either's possible, it was only when I started learning Japanese that I realised I "pronounce R wrong" ; somehow I get a distinct r sound with a low tongue, lip and teeth placement somewhere between and

Somehow never noticed this, super useful! Thanks!

Thank you for the video!

I've been molded by years of Japanese anime and speaking it even though I'm still not good at it. I was doing this without knowing, but I'm not very happy about that, because even if I can parrot the words, I still can't speak to someone else in Japanese without all my knowledge flying away.

fun fact, that is also the T for Spanish at least on Spain, not sure about Latin America, but probably applies too.

Thank you I needed that video, I was struggling with the Japanese T sound お疲れ様でした。

Glad u made a vid for this, i noticed it has a difference before and ive been searching for resources on how to say the japanese t

t

English speakers do have it rough when it comes to the pronunciation, havn't thinked about that before, good luck to y'all srsly o: (as a French native, i feel blessed to already have every sounds that the Japanese language can offer without having to worry about it www)

Wow this was really interesting. Thanks for sharing!

Very good to know! ありがとうございます！

This was awesome, because I actually learn also how to pronounce better the “t” in English…I’m a Spanish speaker and I just realized that I have been pronouncing that sound already like in Japanese, but wrong in English 😅😂

Me singing a Japanese song after watching this video and realizing how bad my pronounciation is: 時効なんで "wait, I put my tongue in the wrong spot!" 時効なんてやってこない 奪ったように奪わでで "No, I messed up again!" 奪ったように奪われで "Ah, I can't move my tongue fast enough!" う・ば・わ・れ・て う・ば・わ・れ・て 奪われで "Why is this so hard?!"

I love this sort of content.

You drop so much GOLD, man!! Be well.

I've noticed this, but couldn't put my finger on what it was. The only way I had of explaining it was that the Japanese 't' sound had a tiny bit of a 'd' sound and a tiny bit of a 'th' sound. Thanks for the video!

As a native Vietnamese, what I learnt from this: - the Japanese T is pronunced just like the T in Vietnamese, so I'm pronuncing it right the "Japaneses way". I also used this pronuncitation when first learning Japanese because it's "natural" to me. - I've been pronuncing the english T the wrong way up until I went study abroad in the U.S, in when I unconciously got the right English pronunciation from listening to native English speakers. From then on my brain just switch pronunciation based on what language I'm speaking, without me realizing the difference.

なるほど！勉強になります😉

Thanks for this, really cool insight. Going to be conscious of every T sound for a week, but probably worth it.

This explains so much how ち is latinized as "chi" instead of "ti". With that more forward tongue placement, "chi" becomes more natural than "ti" to pronounce.

My native language is Māori (from New Zealand), we have a combination of either T sounds. For Ta Te and To, it's the same as japanese, but Ti and Tu sound a little more like Tsi and Tsu.

ありがとう！！ 図がめっちゃわかりやすいです。 日本人目線ですが、これで英語のtの発音が改善された気がします。

You are awesome!! Thank you!

As an Ukrainian and Russian native speaker, I can confirm that Japanese "T" is exactly the same as in Slavic languages.

This vid is totally legit, blew my mind! I’m a native speaker of Jap/Eng and had never given this a second thought since on paper they’re written the same, but just now realized that my tongue positions and sounds are completely different when I switch between Jap and Eng to say words with the “T” sound. Maybe this is why Japanese people have a hard time pronouncing “Th.” The Jap “T” sound is physically further from “Th” compared to the Eng “T” sound (tongue is further back).

thanks for uploading this helpful video. Hope your treatment goes well Dogen-san

Thanks for the info! Tongue placement is very important!

In English I noticed how I have my tongue placed similarly to the Japanese T sound, of course I am far, far north in the United States and living in the mountains too. We also get Canadians here sometimes because of how close to the boarder I am.

Oh my god... I learned Japanese as a 2nd language when I was a child, and I've been using the Japanese T my entire life?! My mind is broken now, thank you Dogen-san.

This explains soooo muchhhhh!!! 😨😨😨😨 thank you so much!!!!

Your instruction of differences in pronunciation make sence for Japanese! 日本人ですがめちゃくちゃ勉強になります！

What's interesting is that the "T" sound is also more dental in the stereotypical New York English (as is the "D" sound). This is coming from someone raised by Long Islanders.

Hmm, maybe listening to so much Japanese just allowed me to move my tongue in the right way when I would replicate the sounds. I was a little worried I was doing it wrong this whole time!

thx this video help me fix my english-pronunciation

I've been trying to fix my T's for years and you just did it in three minutes 😭 THANK you.

I saw the title, tried "ta" as i would in English, then tried "dattebayo" and realized yeah it is a bit different. Also i shortly realized d has the exact same tongue position as t in both languages. It's always cool to know more precisely the mechanics and differences between the languages

As a Swedish native speaker the Swedish t and Japanese t is more or less identical. But as you explained regarding tongue position I realised that my tongue is where it should be 🤗

You’re so right!

気にしたこと無かったけど確かに言われてみればそうだ。凄い。

T

My dumbass has been pronouncing the japanese T since the start lmao

Wait, an actual serious learning video from Dogen? Anyway, thanks for the tip!

OMG ... I barely know Japanese but I'm somewhat of a linguistics fan... I love these kinds of videos. Pronunciation is one of my strong suites with foreign languages. I knew this about the different T's intuitively but interesting to know the "why" behind it. Thank you, Dogen-San!!

i dunno man this is where i put my t in english too

Hey Dogen! In Brazilian portuguese, Rio de Janeiro accent, the T is also linguodental (tongue to teeth) so I've never thought about english T (although I love a fresh brewed cup of it)... my problem is with the Rs, but I feel it is easier to us than it is to english native speakers.

Man this is so useful i've noticed this too but dont know how to explain it!

日本語と英語でTが違うなんて初めて知った！勉強になりました！ありがとうございます！

It's pronounced like the Arabic ط (ṭ). There's also a thing about か it's pronounced more like qa than ka. And I guess that's why English words with the sound 'ka' are written like キャ instead of カ in japanese, for example character キャラクター

Me, an Italian who never managed to pronounce the English "T" correctly but can pronounce the Japanese "T" perfectly. I guess all neo-latin languages can pronounce the "T" like Japaneses better than English "T".

日本人です これ見て自分の発音よくなった笑 ありがとうございます

For some reason, I think I've been doing this right instinctively. O_o Thanks for the confidence-booster!

I have no ide how I knew this, I guess it was like, subconscious or something, although this is the first time I'm hearing of the difference between 「た」 and "ta", and it had been doing it the right way apparently. Thank you for bringing this to my attention. As I've started to learn Japanese, I have begun to love the IPA chart (not because of Japanese in particular, probably just the fact that it's not a roman language), and I like a capella, so I have been interested in it and have been trying to learn the subtle differences between sounds.

ありがとうございます😁

As a native German speaker, I never realized that Japanese “T” pronunciation is so similar to German. The “T” pronunciation in 一般的 is the same as in Thüringen. Great video as always, by the way!

this is so interesting, being Dutch and having learned English as a second language I instinctively managed to pronounce both kinds of the letter T correctly (Dutch uses the same T as Japanese). This while I often have a bit of trouble saying the exact right vowel sound in English and will use a more close sounding Dutch vowel instead

Doesn't seem that different when listening to this video, but there it's pretty distinct when try it yourself, great tip!

I realized that even in English I say the T the Japanese way, I wonder if having Brazilian Portuguese as my mother tongue has anything to do with that?? I find easier to pronounce Japanese words than English words a lot of times

haha u know ur nihongo is on point when your opening sentence you flex with the pronunciation of "Engrish" - i had to rewind and check :P

interesting difference. nice. this one seems easy enough for me to understand. remembering will be another case.

Thank you 🙏

After you released this video, my students (many of my students are your fan) showed me how much their たちつてとpronunciations have been improved 😃 Thank you! Btw I read your Japanese ver Wikipedia and found that you ryuugaku’ed the university I graduated from! Not same year though, so I should call you Dogen-senpai (先輩)from now on😉

this is super helpful could you do the ふ sound next i'm struggling with that one

Bruh I didn't even realize I was doing this correctly by accident. Absolutely blew my mind when you threw up the graphics and I was sounding things out alongside them.

Wow i just realized i was doing the Japanese T sound all along, this video just helped my english pronunciation

Hi Dogen, I'm studying Asian studies and linguistics and you help me understand Japanese phonology better, these things aren't explained in class. Thank you for the video! Cheers from Israel!

It's so cool to hear someone articulate the difference between foreign and american 'T' pronunciation. For myself, learning japanese from my childhood friends, I always felt and heard the difference but could never explain it to my newer friends who are also interested in learning the language.

すんげ〜

wow. I'm a Japanese studied English linguistics in college but did not notice that! Thank you for your lesson!

dogen really shook after that video with summer sensei

You just taught me how to pronounce the English 't' correctly, thanks! 😄