mgbp7 Wrote:By the way masaman, I am actually a girl/woman so... it made doing all those deep voices all the more silly/fun..

masaman Wrote:

mgbp7 Wrote:By the way masaman, I am actually a girl/woman so... it made doing all those deep voices all the more silly/fun..

oh really? not like your girls part was manly but your deaths were too convincing It sounds like you could be a good singer.

mgbp7 Wrote:Nuriko and masaman - thank you for your feedback! Very encouraging. I have made note of your comments and will try to put them into practice. By the way masaman, I am actually a girl/woman so... it made doing all those deep voices all the more silly/fun.

By the way Nuriko, your clips are very impressive -- very pleasant to listen to with excellent pronunciation.

Nuriko Wrote:

masaman Wrote:

mgbp7 Wrote:By the way masaman, I am actually a girl/woman so... it made doing all those deep voices all the more silly/fun..

oh really? not like your girls part was manly but your deaths were too convincing It sounds like you could be a good singer.

I wish I could pull off a man-voice like that...

ropsta Wrote:http://www.snapvine.com/bp/ZDjnVq4oEd6XtQAwSFsPiA
>_>
I blame it on peer pressure.

liosama Wrote:Okay here goes nothing.

http://www.snapvine.com/sb/d7621ca6b86f11de80e00030485c72b4?user=1528f680b74011de86300030485c71d2

This is a speech I have on tomorrow. It has to be completely memorised . As you can tell I'm actually reading in that recording lol

Lol I already found a mistake 使っているのでは, I said つかわれ：Ｓ：Ｓ：Ｓ：Ｓ

Nuriko Wrote:Wow, you wrote this yourself too? Really good work, interesting topic, something to be proud of (both writing and reading). Your pronunciation is very clear and easy to understand. I felt like I didn't even need the written paragraph most of the time because it was so clear.

I did notice that some syllables sounded different. ろ（in 1600)　sounded more like りょ。Also, きょう in 勉強 sounds like the accent is going up too far and should be more flat. The word 勉強 doesn't have an accent. Of course, keep the う sound there, just keep that second syllable monotone along with the first syllable.
Here's the iKnow recording for the word: http://smart.fm/items/matching?keyword=%E5%8B%89%E5%BC%B7

Also, the accent for 他 should be on か, so the sound will go more upward on the second syllable.
http://smart.fm/items/matching?keyword=%E4%BB%96&language=ja&translation_language=en

In the sentence 「間違っている」ということです。」 と is sounding like ど to me.

What stands out mostly as needing improvement is the volume changes of your voice. I learned this at the beginning of this thread in March when a user had a Japanese speaker critique my recording. The volume of my voice went up and down a lot, and since then I have mostly fixed it. I noticed that you are doing the same thing I did. Pretty much, just focus on putting more "monotone" into how you talk while maintaining a flat-line level of volume unless there are some things you really want to stress with emotion.

I've found lately that it's really important to focus on each and every separate syllable in words like など. In English, d often comes out as a more dull, soft sound but in Japanese and Spanish, they have more of a hard sound. I notice you're saying "ど” in ”など” more like how it might be said in English.
"など”：http://smart.fm/items/matching?keyword=%E3%81%AA%E3%81%A9&language=ja&translation_language=en

In this sentence: しょうがないと言えるのではないでしょうか。
It sounds like the　う needs to be extended just a little more. It sounds closer to "しょ”

Good luck, but you probably don't need it as you are doing great. It's quite an accomplishment to have come this far, I'd say, especially hearing you bust out with statistics like a pro. By listening to this, I can tell you've picked up the correct ways of saying certain phrases, so it's evident you've been listening quite a lot.

Hope to hear about how the speech goes!

edit: was "数(かぞ)" a typing error? I've always known that word as "かず”, is there such a pronunciation as かぞ as well?

mezbup Wrote:

I haven't done one of these yet but its just me trying to read a news article. I haven't even starteddd to work on my pronunciation yet! So feedback would be good

Nuriko Wrote:

mezbup Wrote:

I haven't done one of these yet but its just me trying to read a news article. I haven't even starteddd to work on my pronunciation yet! So feedback would be good

For not having worked on pronunciation, I think you're doing extremely, -extremely- well. Upon my first listen, I came across just a few errors and noticed an overall slight lack of sounding monotone. It's not noticeable to me as much as it would be to a native, but there are some volume changes here and there and should be kept monotone.

For 植物 the accent/mora is on the second syllable according to http://dictionary.goo.ne.jp/leaf/jn/96209/m0u/%E6%A4%8D%E7%89%A9/ and at the moment iKnow isn't working but a search on http://www.csse.monash.edu.au/~jwb/cgi-bin/wwwjdic.cgi?1C gave me an audio file that helped confirm it.

Also, when you said いろいろ in the beginning on the article, it sounds more like "いろいら” to me. Doesn't seem like a reading error, you obviously know that word is いろいろ but it just kinda got jumbled up in the midst of reading many many other syllables, it seems.

様々な方法： "na" sounds like it could be said just a little more clearly to keep it from sounding like "no." At first it sounded like "no" to me but as I listened a little better I could hear the "na" but it's still not a clear, outright "na." Perhaps natives do it too -- I know in English, for example, sounds can be changed a lot. For instance "a [noun]" -- the "a" sound often comes out like "uh."

技術's mora is 1, so when you pronounce it, place the accent on the ぎ syllable.

This is slightly more of a hunch than the above corrections, but when you say 「作りやすく」や「おいしく」 there's a larger emphasis on the く sound than I'm used to hearing. It's just a small thing to keep it mind though, perhaps something to ask a native if you would like to know for sure if it sounds correct or not.

There are a few other small things I noticed as just sounding different from how I usually hear (or "think" I hear them), but I'm not going to mention them. Not being a native and all, I don't want to lead you in a wrong direction.

And here's the best part, the pros:

- It's understable without looking at the text. (however, I did read this when it first came out and read it many times over so that's probably part of it)
- At least with my non-native ear, I didn't notice many incorrect mora placements (however do keep in mind that this is completely different from a native listening)
- Your pronunciation sounds very smooth to me -- words with many syllables come out very clearly and at a good speed. Seems to be a sign you've been doing a great deal of listening, but the fact that you don't practice pronunciation and have results such as these, it's quite impressive.
- "など” has just the right d sound (to me, anyway). Getting the correct ど syllable was a big hurdle for me, btw, and in this thread I've heard how other people have had a little trouble with it too.
- Overall, you focus on how individual syllables need to be pronounced, such as how you said 研究 while including the う。

Good luck with your studies