Japanese has no tones, it has pitch accent. And not every word has them either, only about 1/3 (aka the remaining 2/3 are neutral).

thermal Wrote:柿 (persimmon) カキ(oyster)
酒 (alcohol) 鮭 (salmon)

FWIW I've also heard there is a difference between these
花 (flower) 　鼻 (nose)　　はな
橋 (bridge) 箸 (chopsticks)　　はし
although I can't say I can tell the difference.


There was a japanesepod101.com lesson where they did はな.
Peter, the host who has been in Japan for many years, couldn't seem to tell the difference, and definitely couldn't pronounce them differently.
Then again, his pronunciation of Japanese in general is terrible, he has a very strong accent. I'm not sure what that says about the theories of "just listen lots and you'll end up sounding correct".

Jarvik7 Wrote:Japanese has no tones, it has pitch accent. And not every word has them either, only about 1/3 (aka the remaining 2/3 are neutral).

Sorry, yeah pitch accent is correct.

Can you explain what you mean by neutral? I studied in a Japanese school for 6 months and every week we would get a new bunch of words to learn. They would drill us on them and every word was taught with it's pitching. There were no words that were flat if that is what you mean.

The thing is, it is very slight, so much so that you can barely hear it on some words, particularly in normal everyday speech. When telling stories or making announcement it is more pronounced.

thermal Wrote:

Jarvik7 Wrote:Japanese has no tones, it has pitch accent. And not every word has them either, only about 1/3 (aka the remaining 2/3 are neutral).

Sorry, yeah pitch accent is correct.

Can you explain what you mean by neutral? I studied in a Japanese school for 6 months and every week we would get a new bunch of words to learn. They would drill us on them and every word was taught with it's pitching. There were no words that were flat if that is what you mean.

The thing is, it is very slight, so much so that you can barely hear it on some words, particularly in normal everyday speech. When telling stories or making announcement it is more pronounced.

I was just reading something about this. I think by neutral pitch he's referring to the standard pitch that a lot of words have. Though, I could be wrong.

neutral/standard/flat/平板 pitch starts low and rises until the end (LHHHetc), and is used for the majority of Japanese words.

Icecream's and Thermal's readings were really impressive! Icecream, I'd say your voice is far more pleasant on the ears than mine! Upon clicking, I couldn't believe I was listening to a non-Japanese. I did, however, noticed the same errors that were mentioned before and sensed kind of a "non-flowing-ness," (<--for lack of better word)

Thermal, you seem to have a really good knowledge of this stuff and it shows in your reading!

I've gotten used to hearing the way that narrator (of the "Read Real Japanese" books) reads after listening to her dozens of times, but my first few attempts were really different from how the narrator did it herself. After listening to the narrator reading the passage many times and shadowing each sentence over and over, I've come to a big difference and I'll post both of them here:

Before shadowing:
http://www.snapvine.com/bp/lAld5HskEd6EywAwSFsPiA
Unnatural pauses and even the last sentence spoken with incorrect grammar. あら．．．

After shadowing:
http://www.snapvine.com/bp/fnVOUnskEd6GpQAwSFsPiA
Now I can stand hearing myself.

Anyone else wanna give the before-and-after a try?
After intensely shadowing and recording this one paragraph I noticed a huge improvement in how I started to read other things in Japanese immediately after doing this... and even noticed a difference in my pronuncation while I'm thinking and talking to myself in Japanese. I think if I'm not too lazy I'd like to do this to a whole essay/story (one of the shorter ones of course) >>

Anyway, thanks you guys for helping me to revive this idea I started awhile back but completely forget about!

I might have a go at a before and after tonight. I just finished decorating and I can find all my stuff again, so I'm starting (or restarting) pronunciation/voice training today. Having a sort of record would probably be useful. Or embarrassing enough to spur me on when I listen to it again.

Although I don't have that Read Real Japanese or any kind of audiobook like that, so I think I might finally use something from here for shadowing.

This is a great thread. You are all very brave lol.
It's a bit late, but I just wanted to point out that Tobberoth speaks a charming southern dialect of Swedish that is sometimes considered a bit hard to understand by us "finer folks/stupid folks" up in Stockholm. The national dialect is a bit clearer and probably easier to study if learning the language.

Shirow66 Wrote:This is a great thread. You are all very brave lol.
It's a bit late, but I just wanted to point out that Tobberoth speaks a charming southern dialect of Swedish that is sometimes considered a bit hard to understand by us "finer folks/stupid folks" up in Stockholm. The national dialect is a bit clearer and probably easier to study if learning the language.

Wow, a 08 calling Skånska charming, that's quite a treat. (For others, 08 (pronounced noll-åtta) is a swedish slang word for people from Stockholm since the area-code when dialing a person in the Stockholm area is 08. And yes, it is quite often used in a derogatory sense down here, since we are Danish. In a way.).

Completely true about learning though, my Japanese neighbors are starting to get decent at Swedish, but Skånska still makes little sense to them. It's not like they will ever be able to pronounce our beautiful french R's.

haha, now that's a sight. Guess the rift isn't as deep as one might have thought. Or maybe he's just trying to put you at ease while making the physical rift between Skåne and the rest of Sweden deeper (/Gräv Loss Skåne-reference)
Of course, if we're talking adorable dialects, norrländska easily wins. Those northern chaps are all so huggable when they talk ^^

As a related anecdote, I'm currently studying in Lund (southern Sweden), and we had a number of Japanese exchange students here studying Swedish (god knows why =p). They got a lot of trouble from the fact that the teacher was local and had a pretty heavy Skåne-accent. I suspect things only got more complicated when they got some help from us, and the guy they spent the most time with is from Småland and thus added a whole new way of pronuncing R to the mix.

Still, most Japanese seem to hit far more basic obstructions in their quest for correct pronunciation, like O and Ö, so dialects aren't the biggest problem for quite some time...

Back in March, iKnow Sentences
http://www.snapvine.com/bp/CWWWxAw7Ed62DQAwSFxxvg

Back in March, Ashita Hareru Kana (maybe shouldn't count as I sang this a lot).
http://www.snapvine.com/bp/PZ43fg7VEd6uTwAwSFxytA

Today, Intro to Zettai Kareshi (male and female lines). It's the J-drama Karaoke, so you read as the scene goes.
http://www.snapvine.com/sb/f72315e27f791...30485c71d2

No, it's not good. However, it's a snap shot of where I am at the moment with reading out loud. Maybe posting something like this once a month will encourage me to improve even faster.

PS: Got the idea of doing J-Drama Karaoke due to Masamo's clip of a Japanese guy reading off subtitles of Matrix (no it was not Masamo, I hope).

doesn`t sound incredibly bad to me... i would be nervous as hell if i was speaking into a mic for everyone to judge my Japanese.

It sounds like you're running out of breath while talking. You should try to breathe naturally while you speak instead of holding it.

I forgot about that vid of the JP guy reading Matrix subs. He is awesome. I wish he'd dub entire movies.

I had a go at shadowing this time. This is probably the longest I've shadowed for (and I've not really shadowed much before anyway), and I've still not quite got the hang of it. I notice I tend to either not say the first part of the first words, or mumble them while shadowing.

I don't have a before recording now, only the after one (about 30 minutes shadowing). I guess it can act as a 'before' for pronunciation/voice training. Not that I'll probably ever want to listen to this again to check :p This is the prologue from the first episode of 'Code Geass' (original audio first, then my attempt).

http://www.snapvine.com/bp/lHbn_H-mEd6G8wAwSFxytA

Albion, I'm once again very impressed. That's a huge shadowing job right there... tons of hard words one after another. About how long do you think it took to shadow/read it over and over till you felt you got it right? And did you feel any kind of "level-up" in your ability when reading other material after doing this?

Nukemarine, you really improved since I heard your first recording from a couple months ago. You sound very Japanese now, I'd say. How much shadowing have you been doing?

One of the main reasons I chose that was because there were a lot of words or phrases I couldn't really say fluently before (２０１０年８月１０日、島国、超大国、日本の地下資源を巡る…、敗戦国、etc.). 人型自在戦闘装甲機 might not be the most practical word to know, but I can say it a lot better than I could before. I'm still not sure about 威力, though.

I think by about 20~5 minutes (going listening > mumbling > shadowing), I think I was basically done and mainly just did the extra 5~10 minutes to try to reinforce it.

I haven't tried reading anything else yet, since I only did that yesterday just before I uploaded. But I though about trying again with something different in a few days/a week.

Not sure if I'm needed but here is what I think.

Nukemarine Wrote:Today, Intro to Zettai Kareshi (male and female lines). It's the J-drama Karaoke, so you read as the scene goes.
http://www.snapvine.com/sb/f72315e27f791...30485c71d2

I think shorter sentences like「社長！」「いい加減すぎますよ」are very good. Both mora and accent wise. You seem to have problems with longer ones, may be you can brake them up a little and do part by part? Anyway, It sounds like you are on the right direction.

albion Wrote:This is the prologue from the first episode of 'Code Geass' (original audio first, then my attempt).
http://www.snapvine.com/bp/lHbn_H-mEd6G8wAwSFxytA

Wow, I think your sense of mora is very very good. Your accent (pitch) is a bit off here and there, but just 25 min? that's impressive. And I would bite my tongue off if I tried to say 人形自在戦闘装甲機.

Masaman, unfortunately what I did I termed J-Drama Karaoke. The show is on, the sound is off and the subs are running. I'm trying to keep up and speak the parts of the actors. Part of the reason I tried to change my pitch to match as close as I could to the characters. When they come up in my SRS, they're part by part, but what fun would that be?

Thanks for the assessment though. I'll try again next month with Rookies or Last Friends. (Rookies would be really hard though).

Nukemarine Wrote:Masaman, unfortunately what I did I termed J-Drama Karaoke. The show is on, the sound is off and the subs are running. I'm trying to keep up and speak the parts of the actors. Part of the reason I tried to change my pitch to match as close as I could to the characters. When they come up in my SRS, they're part by part, but what fun would that be?

Thanks for the assessment though. I'll try again next month with Rookies or Last Friends. (Rookies would be really hard though).

It could be just me, but I often find myself "normal" speed English is too fast for me to mimic, because I can't remember all the phonemes correctly. I would be like "I cun't reemember al the phaneemus" Pronunciation won't be a problem for you though.

Whatever the case, I'm looking forward to your next one.

Just reading a few pages of the Hachiko story from a super simple book. My mic quality is kind of bad so I apologize.

http://www.snapvine.com/bp/WRywPo7NEd6fZQAwSFxytA

Thanks for the feedback.

I know what you mean. I think that what I was doing is normal. However, you are quite right that the real recording doesn't have this so much. I believe that rising up at the end and the slight pause says "more to come, keep listening, I'm just going to pause (and maybe think) for a moment". We do similar things in English partly when we need to think and partly to break up what we say and not overload the listener.

The recording is more of a story tone so there are less pauses then normal speech. Pauses are kept to a minimum but are still there eg 江部さんとでは the は rises a bit and there is a pause after. Normal Japanese has more.

Check out:

I'd love to know what you think about this IceCream and others. I could be full of it. I never read this anywhere, just my thoughts.

thermal Wrote:English speakers in general and in particular people like us have a lot of experience dealing with broken English and off pron, but the Japanese don't.

I don't know.. there is some pretty off pron for sale in Japan.

Jarvik7 Wrote:

thermal Wrote:English speakers in general and in particular people like us have a lot of experience dealing with broken English and off pron, but the Japanese don't.

I don't know.. there is some pretty off pron for sale in Japan.

I think Bai Ling had a short stint in Japan doing off pron.

Haha! I sound like an airhead! This is the worst day of my life!

Thanks for posting that. I think magamo is referring to the pitch perfect Japanese that is most pronounced with announcements or anything formal. These are comparable to the difference between "What's it going to do?" <> "watsitgonnado?"

In terms of what is Australian. I think the pronunciation of some of the mora is slightly off. There are some parts where I chew on the words a bit. Also, some of the pitching is a bit off (なぜなら). However, I think it is a silly goal to completely get rid of your accent. I have heard excellent speakers of English with accents that actually gives their English more character than anything. You can have an accent and still have essentially perfect pronunciation.

thermal's て　は　です etc. sound very natural to me too. It doesn't really sound airheady either. One thing I immediately noticed was the accent of 公平. He pronounced it 工兵.

Likewise, activeaero's ～は ～ます are natural. It's probably better to speak more flatly, stress wise, though. Some moras are pronounced too strongly. ただいまー is very nice.