I’ve been trying tricks like catsu, eight suits, etc. and have been trying to look up vowel frontness charts and pictures of tongue position that I hardly understand. 2 years later, I still can’t make a good tsu sound at least as discerned by this Siri program on my iPhone. I can hardly ever get it to understand “tsukuru” as “tsukuru” and not sukuuru for example.
Tricks on other difficult sounds are also welcome. I also have trouble making this sound
Siri is an idiot.
Do people understand you ? That is more important.
Record yourself, come back next week and listen to your own recordings. Do you understand yourself ?
Honestly, while I can distinguish the sounds other people make, I can hardly distinguish my own tsus and Japanese Ns.
I’m using Siri precisely because it has a harder time understanding people than actual people do to my understanding. You’d have to get pretty close to native pronunciation for things to register so I use it for the lofty goal of testing whether I’m getting anywhere near native-like pronunciation.
I’d say siri is a decent tool to evaluate your pronunciation (it should have no problem understanding you if you say 津波, for example, correctly), though I’d also echo Combiendemarins’ advice to record yourself and check later.
One difference between つ and す is the position of the tongue. Pronouncing them myself, I notice the tongue strikes against the back of the teeth with つ, while it touches the front part of the roof of your mouth with す. Don’t know if this is helpful at all, as it’s difficult to explain in writing. If you have any Japanese friends/acquaintances, perhaps they could help teach you.
That’s my problem lol. I can’t get it to recognize me saying tsunami correctly. If it relies on hitting the front teeth then that might be my problem through as I got one of them knocked out a while ago.