Yeah, but most dialectical misunderstandings come from unique vocabulary/expressions/grammatical constructs and sound changes I think. The average person should understand ex: 端 vs 橋 vs 箸 regardless of the pitch, through context. Most people don't use hardcore dialect anymore anyways, except for the elderly. Comparing my ex-gf's 山口弁 to her parents’, or my current gf's 名古屋弁 to her grandmother's is like night and day, even though it's the same dialect. The grandmother's speech sounds more like Korean than Japanese to me!

I actually think it's kind of sad how so many Japanese people are ashamed of their dialect and try to adopt 標準語 for everything except their childhood friends & family. Linguistic variety is great, especially when it's not faddish crap that will be gone or ださい in a year. I encourage all of my Japanese friends to use their 方言 when they talk to me. One of the first things I ask a new friend is for a sample of their dialect. (Maybe I'm too much of a linguist?) I only have one friend who always uses their 方言 (京都弁) and everyone thinks that she is adorable because of it. :/

It's not just a Japanese thing. I think British/Irish/etc English dialect is great (I'm not referring to accent either). Imagine if most Brits tried to New-York-ize their speech out of some inferiority complex.

This is great! Thanks to everyone who corrected me, 勉強になりますよね.
Nuriko, you read my passage really well. You've got a nice attitude towards this stuff, it's inspirational.
Oh, and that sentence is in my deck, with the audio, so I'm pretty used to it. But as I said in the previous post I had never shadowed it. I tried it a few times when recording, using the audio as a guide, though. It came out pretty fast, and is sounds like I'm on a hurry, but that's because I tried using the same pace as the real one. The result was pretty crappy

And masaman, what an honour to have a native speaker among us! Your comments were very very helpful. I now realise that I didn't put nearly enough attention in the way I spattered my pitches. They are difficult for foreigners because we are not used to distinguishing them. Gotta start practising like hell!
And ーthough I'm really no authority in thisー your English looks perfect to me!

Albion and Nuriko, thanks for your feedback! I was beginning to think that mine went by without anyone noticing it!

Hmm.. I will have to look into those things that you pointed out because I honestly thought I did pronounce them right.. :/

Albion Wrote:Edit:
- 朱雀（しゅじゃく?）　＝　すざく
- 転生（てんしょう）　＝　てんせい
- 魔神（ましん）　＝　まじん

It seems you heared exactly what I intended to say!
That's what Jim Breen's dictionary gave me!
I just wonder which ones are the most common pronunciations and if they are completely interchangable.. :/

Nuriko, yeah.. I couldn't have read "四神天地書" any more wrong had I tried!
The weardest thing is that those are all kanji that I should know like the back of my hand.. These long kanji compaunds can be tough just because my tongue sometimes can't follow the thought.. :/


The monotonous thing comes from my native language and it is actually really difficult for me to add pitch to my English!
And truth to be told... I did rehearse it a bit before making the recording.. s.

Now that we have a native here too, I would really like to hear masaman's thought on it too if it's not too much trouble!
どうぞ宜しくお願いします！

http://www.saunalahti.fi/alantin/salaa/reading.mp3

Nuriko Wrote:LordGolem, you actually have a really nice voice I'd say and really good Japanese reading ability too. Aside from 以上 having the incorrect accent, no pronunciation problems jumped out at me. What I really noticed though is vocal volume changes throughout your recording (one of the many super Japanese-girlfriends pointed this out in my recording as well.) It's hard to get rid that volume change thing!

Never nice as your voice, Nuriko! You seem a professional speaker and actually have a really pleasant voice! (or maybe I'm too fascinated by female voices )
I keep hearing my southern italian accent all the time, even in my Japanese... weird

It's the first time I hear myself in Japanese, I never did shadowing. I think from now on I'll do this recording like exercise

The vocal volume issue is something I notice even when I read, not only when I hear the recording. It's like I go short on breath and lower the voice. I think it could be fixed with practice, reading long passages or doing shadowing. I'll try and let you know.

Thanks for your insights!

Alantin, actually it's not me the one you quoted. I believe it was Albion who made those corrections

Okay! Sorry!
I corrected it!

So I'm that bad huh lol?

activeaero, you sound like you have the basics down pretty well. I noticed though that when saying "...ます" your S sound is extra emphasized. Maybe this is done on occasion by native speakers but I don't think I've heard it often (then again I mostly listen to scripted material). For the most part "su" gets cut off quickly and doesn't go on to make it sound like "sssss." I think if any syllable were to be drawn out, it would be the あ。But that sounds a little too hyper and happy to me. If anyone notices I'm saying some incorrect sounding stuff, correct me please. I'm just thinking based off listening experience.

I couldn't hear too much in the beginning because you're doing a grumbly voice like 緑川光。One of my favorite 声優, so I'd say that's not entirely a bad thing

Nuriko Wrote:I couldn't hear too much in the beginning because you're doing a grumbly voice like 緑川光。One of my favorite 声優, so I'd say that's not entirely a bad thing

What is 緑川光? Oh and BTW my first line was supposed to be 彼は、これは何だと言いましたか。

And yeah I noticed my extreme す sounds, which surprised me, so thanks for confirming it.

BTW can anyone tell I'm from the South? I have a terrible ear for my own southern accent.

緑川光（みどりかわ・ひかる）：

http://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E7%B7%91%E...D%E5%85%89

　(first one to speak)

albion Wrote:緑川光（みどりかわ・ひかる）：

http://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E7%B7%91%E...D%E5%85%89

　(first one to speak)

Well I'm only 600 sentences in so Japanese wiki isn't really something I can get a lot from at the moment lol. The youtube video shows a malformed ID for me.

Trying again:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hikaru_Midorikawa

Hmm, being drunk made me stupid/brave enough to do this. Hope I don't make too much of an ass out of myself.

http://www.snapvine.com/sb/49e9df2e0b7e1...30485c71d2

My pronunciation is way worse than I thought myself, this is my first time recording myself speaking Japanese. Hopefully, peoples comments will let me know what I need to work on. Personally, I find my consonants way too hard, but there's definitely more than that to work on.

EDIT: Let's not forget my Korean accent which I'm sure is very prominent, at least for those who know it. Speaking Japanese to a Korean girlfriend on a daily basis leaves some marks.

Jarvik7,
Ok, you're right. If they only used different pitch, I could probably guess almost everything from the context. But it would still make them hard to be understood. Regardless, I'm all for linguistic diversity too, and actually think it will be pretty cool if you nail one of the dialects instead of 標準語.

nac_est,
Thank you for the welcome and the complement. I hope I'm not spoiling the fan factor of this :-) My Bolivian friend got my full name correctly after only several tries and it seems it's easier for people who speak Latin origin languages, so your back ground should help.

alantin,
では不肖私めが。You've already got the mispronunciation of 漢字 words corrected, so I'll skip these. You do sound pretty unique. Is this finnish?

I have no idea what they are saying but for some reason it sounds weirdly familiar. Addictive. Anyway, You have almost perfect rhythm, with only one exception where 本 became ほーん, really good pitch, but you have a tendency of using a declining pitch pattern in places. like　高校 being

こ
　う
　　こ
　　　う

It's actually a straight pitch word like

こーこー

I noticed you used the same pitch pattern in some other words too. I'll list them with correct pitch.

冒険を：　ぼーけんを

再び：　　たたび
　　　　ふ

転生：　んせい　
　　　て

ところが：　ころ
　　　　　と　　が

邪悪な：　　あくな
　　　　じゃ

魔人：　じん
　　　ま

恋人の：　いびとの
　　　　こ

時計：　けい
　　　と

And if I nitpick even further, It seems you have very delicate 「つ」 sound that sometimes sound more like 「ちゅ」. That's probably about it.

activeaero,
If you just started learning Japanese, I think you are really on the right track. I couldn't make out what you were saying in the first 1/3, but「始めまして、キーランです」is PERFECT.　That would pass as Japanese. 「そうですねー」is pretty good too. You have tendency to change the rhythm like "よろしっくおねがいします"　"にほんごっかー" "どうもありがっとうございます", but i think It's pretty good overall. And no, no way I can tell you are from the south from your Japanese. We really can't tell the subtle differences in English vowels. A lot of them sound the same to us.

Tobberoth Wrote:Hmm, being drunk made me stupid/brave

I can 100% understand what you are saying, and you have pretty good rhythm, and as usual, I can't really hear the difference in English native's different pronunciations especially when I'm using my Japanese brain, so pronunciation itself sounds really good to me, except for SF小説. But I have a problem pronouncing that word clearly too. I also had a problem with 心の底から. You are doing better than I am there, pronunciation wise.

Your pitch though, is kind of all over. That's probably the area you want to focus on. I don't know if you need it, but here is an another drunk guy's recording. It's not be really good, as I don't really talk in front of people that much, but at least I'm a Japanese native, so it should at least be pretty authentic.

http://hisazin-up.dyndns.org/up/src/90256.mp3

Yeah, I've always been ignoring the pitch which is biting me in the ass right now... I'm not an English native though, I'm Swedish. While I was hoping that would give me a Finnish like advantage, I can't really hear it myself, though I do hope my vowels are at least better than the average English speaker (since Swedish vowels are a lot more similar to Japanese vowels). Thanks for your input masaman, that drunken recording was awesome ^^

I'm kinda thinking of maybe recording myself speaking English and have people rate that as well, I've never gotten an honest opinion from a native on my English pronunciation.

http://www.snapvine.com/sb/27c297060b881...30485b0f88

Something quick and silly. I will remove this later to save me from embarassment.

Smackle Wrote:http://www.snapvine.com/sb/27c297060b881...30485b0f88

Something quick and silly. I will remove this later to save me from embarassment.

That's cute IMO Could easily pass as some Japanese voice actor from some sort of anime for kids.

Tobberoth Wrote:I'm not an English native though, I'm Swedish.

Oops sorry, Beer makes me lazy enough not to check your signature

Tobberoth Wrote:I'm kinda thinking of maybe recording myself speaking English and have people rate that as well,

I was hoping to ask people here for advices too, but my problem is I can't even pronounce words correctly... I need tongue exercises more than anything. Well, may be after a while.

Dude, Tobberoth. You MUST record yourself speaking English. I (and I think/know I speak for EVERYONE when I say this) have been curious about your spoken English, especially since your written English owns so much. Like, your written English owns the written English of native speakers on this board, lol. Masaman should make a recording, too. And then Tobberoth can make another recording in Swedish, lol.

Smackle Wrote:http://www.snapvine.com/sb/27c297060b881...30485b0f88

Something quick and silly. I will remove this later to save me from embarassment.

That's cute it sounds like some dialect that I've never heard. にんげんmay sound
better with

　んげん
に

and　クマ's K　could be stronger, but I don't know why you would be embarrassed.

masaman Wrote:it sounds like some dialect that I've never heard.

I do not know if this is a good thing or not.

igordesu Wrote:Masaman should make a recording, too. And then Tobberoth can make another recording in Swedish, lol.

Nooooo, seriously, I bite my tongue and can't even finish long sentences. That's MY problem. English pronunciation is too subtle and it has so many sounds. I'll be there though. And I am interested in Swedish

I seriously like Smackle's pronounciation, and it is not some dialect-y thing.
Sounds very much like a young japanese woman! Seriously Smackle, I really like your pronounciation. What do you do?

Smackle Wrote:

masaman Wrote:it sounds like some dialect that I've never heard.

I do not know if this is a good thing or not.

Depending on how you take it
I could understand you, and it sounded pleasant so I didn't want to correct it too much. I can record 標準語 version of the sentence if you'd like, but I warn you, that cute phrase ? It would sound REALLY silly when a stupid old man reading it.