Japanese pronounciation

[tsukikage]

Cross-posted all over the place:
I have two questions at the moment.
1) In Japanese, how do you properly emulate the y-ish sound found after ん (n) and before a vowel, as in "千円" ("せんえん", or sen'en)?
2) Does anyone know of any good dictionaries or other resources for looking up pitch changes? Neither my dictionary nor my textbook indicate this, and I have trouble telling well enough from my textbook's audio CDs to mark them down in my textbook. I know that if I were to talk to someone in Japan, they could tell what word I was using from context, but I still want to perfect my spoken Japanese as much as possible. Also, for anyone else who tries hard to get the pitch changes right, do you have any tips for "memorizing" them, especially when in compounds? I never know how to adjust these changes and when...

Comments

[aluminumstudios.livejournal.com]

Answer to 1.) You take Japanese class with a native speaker who repeats it and makes you repeat it until you get it right :-P

It's actually very subtle and MUCH less voiced than the "yen" that us Americans say (there isn't even an official "ye" sound in Japanese.)

Think about saying 'senyen' and even position your tongue like you might say the y but then skip it. The ever so sligh infuence of having moved your tongue like you were going to say the 'y' should get you a more native sounding pronounication of it.

2.) My classes used old textbooks called Japanese the Spoken Language by Noda and Jordan. It ALWAYS took time to explain intonatoin and pitch and document it in words and such. It's an annoying series of books because there are 3 years worth that take you through the language and it doesn't teach the useful stuff all neat and together ... but they did stress pitch and intonation!

[tsukikage85.livejournal.com]

I'm so glad that you know what I mean about the y-ish thing. I know that by no means is it actually pronounced "yen", but I swear there's SOMETHING there. I really wish my Japanese teachers were more anal about proper pronounciation. I mean, they don't even bother correcting our "r"s.
I actually have the a versionfirst volume of that book, and they used to use it at the U of MN, but they switched to げんき before I started.

[mrinx.livejournal.com]

I've never heard this silent or subtle "y" sound before the "en"... I have always just heard the "en"... even the Japanese teachers here at the U just hit us with a straight forward "en" sound...