N1Grammar- studying differences between similar expressions

(2016-03-13, 1:18 am)Zgarbas Wrote: (Coincidentally, rich_f was there for the first time I ever spoke Japanese in front of native speakers, a.k.a. My first ever Joi class... I'm sure e can attest to how terrible I was at speaking... but I made a lot of progress really fast with those lessons)

It is kind of funny to hear different countries' "Japanese accents." It's always pretty easy to spot Americans speaking ジャパニーズ, though. (We're really カタカナ in the way we pronounce stuff at times.)

But you did fine, Zgarbas. I remember hearing a lot of people (myself included) brutalize the language on a regular basis in those classes, but I don't remember you sticking out by being any worse than the rest of us.

JOI is great in that regard-- you can get good fast if you want, because you can load up on lessons however you feel like, and I never really felt like the teachers tried to stress us out or anything.

Speaking is tricky at first. There's this balance between having to know enough "stuff" to be able to produce meaningful sentences without having to think for 5 minutes, and then there's the need to be able to say it in a way that isn't so heavily accented that it's incomprehensible. There's not really any way to get better at it, other than to talk a lot to other people.