This:

I've just stumbled across this gem. I don't know if this has been posted before,
or anyone knows the guy aleready, but I think his japanese is quite good. But then
again I'm still a novice in japanese, that's why I thought I wuld ask the community.
So, can the guy's japanese ability be considered good / bad / ecxellent?

I've seen his videos before. He lived in Japan half his life and experienced the salaryman lifestyle so it is pretty safe to say he is fairly fluent. Though it takes one to know one, so....

His pronunciation is far from native, but yeah, I would definitely call him fluent. Sounds very natural to me and he's very fast I'd say. Impressive.

The guy is good but sounds kind of unnatural. Probably a pitch issue or something. His カタカナ is closer to English too. After the abomination at the start, there are some ペラペラ speakers in this video

I can now mark 1 thing off my list of things I never wondered, but probably should have:

What Japanese sounds like with a Russian accent.

Been listening to this guy for awhile! He's really inspiring! Watch his videos about how he learnt Japanese! He has a very fluent sound because he originally learnt mostly from speaking to natives and was pretty much illiterate. Personally I'm pretty much the opposite, I can't produce much and can only really understand complex sentences if they're written down. I think that's one of the side effects of the AJATT method, if it wasn't for my Japanese classes at Uni, where I can talk to a native, I would be unable to produce anything.

There's all kinds of Russian hookers in Tokyo who speak perfect Japanese.

Javizy Wrote:The guy is good but sounds kind of unnatural. Probably a pitch issue or something. His カタカナ is closer to English too. After the abomination at the start, there are some ペラペラ speakers in this video

Hehe, nice vid. I've never thought to say this but I think the chinese guy's accent is the strongest Oh, and how did you like the hungarian guy?

bodhisamaya Wrote:I've seen his videos before. He lived in Japan half his life and experienced the salaryman lifestyle so it is pretty safe to say he is fairly fluent. Though it takes one to know one, so....

I guess, you're right except he said in a few of his videos that he never was an exchange student in japan, he has never lived there or anything, he acquired all his knowledge about the language outside of Japan

Womacks23 Wrote:There's all kinds of Russian hookers in Tokyo who speak perfect Japanese.

So I guess the gaajin-hate in Japane doesn't affect equally the genders from foreign countries

Javizy Wrote:The guy is good but sounds kind of unnatural. Probably a pitch issue or something. His カタカナ is closer to English too. After the abomination at the start, there are some ペラペラ speakers in this video

Wow.. I always thought Arudou Debito was.. you know.. fluent.

Evil_Dragon Wrote:Wow.. I always thought Arudou Debito was.. you know.. fluent.

That guy wasn't fluent? Or is this sarcasm?

Javizy Wrote:After the abomination at the start

Talk about a low blow. Though, according to a study posted by nest0r some while back, the reason his accent is so strong is because he lacks empathy.

kazelee Wrote:That guy wasn't fluent? Or is this sarcasm?

Depends on how you define fluency, but his accent sounds.. foreign. Well, maybe the whole "Japanese citizen" thing raised my expectations a little too high. I thought he'd be more like Pakkun. Or maybe I'm just biased against him.
In comparison, the first video's うp主's accent sounds a lot more natural to my ears. But yeah, it's probably just that I don't really like Arudou as a person.

I met the guy (有道出人）back in November/December(?) and he still had this same foreign accent. Despite it now being what, 9 years after this video aired?

He also got divorced from his wife, and I'm not sure what happened to his kids. He seems like an OK guy to sit down and have a beer with, but don't bring up anything regarding anything like this. You'll hear him repeat everything you've already heard, and he'll tell you to buy his book.

He's not one of my favorite people in the world.

Re the first video - the guy certainly has a bit of an accent, but wow, that is very impressive indeed. His sentence "flow" seemed pretty natural to me, but I'm only intermediate level, and better to take the opinion of a native speaker.
He's certainly able to express his ideas at full pace, and seemed to have a comprehensive active vocab. I'd love to be able to speak that well.

kazelee Wrote:Talk about a low blow. Though, according to a study posted by nest0r some while back, the reason his accent is so strong is because he lacks empathy.

I'd actually be interested to know the reason behind accents like his. He must have studied Japanese and lived in Japan forever, yet he still has fundamental pronunciation issues. It wouldn't be unfeasible for a beginner to produce better sounding Japanese, so I wonder if it doesn't have something to do with his ears, like being "tone deaf" with his accent.

This is the first time I've heard Debito speak, and honestly I expected him to have a much better accent. He has been in Japan forever, had a Japanese wife /w half kids, took JP citizenship etc, but he sounds like a first year student at a community college, even though his actual Japanese level is of course much higher.

Raschaverak Wrote:

bodhisamaya Wrote:I've seen his videos before. He lived in Japan half his life and experienced the salaryman lifestyle so it is pretty safe to say he is fairly fluent. Though it takes one to know one, so....

I guess, you're right except he said in a few of his videos that he never was an exchange student in japan, he has never lived there or anything, he acquired all his knowledge about the language outside of Japan

Huh? Hikosaemon has lived in Tokyo for at least 11 years.

Ooh, what's this thread about? What'd I miss?

People saying so and so person sucks at japanese.

Hooray we finally arrived at elitism on the boards.

Erubey Wrote:People saying so and so person sucks at japanese.

Hooray we finally arrived at elitism on the boards.

Where you been at?

Harsh criticism of others' Japanese has been here since I first came. So it's pretty safe to say it's always been here.

Criticism is good (constructive that is).

Ah, so this is a constructive criticism thread? Hmm, I think the thread needs work, then. ;p

OK, I searched YouTube for 'speaking Japanese' and clicked on a video that didn't have a cosmetically Japanese person in the picture.

- I haven't watched it or anything--is that a requirement? Now what?

It's not really elitism, and no one here is saying his Japanese sucks. It's really just an issue of accent. I, also, have no idea how someone can possibly live in Japan for so long and still carry such an accent. The only explanation I can think of, excluding the tone deaf, is that they still speak in their native tongue quite often. I noticed this in my time at a university in Japan. When I would be speaking with native and foreigners, when we would all speak in Japanese, those who I never heard speak their mother tongue and those who had no one else there to speak their mother tongue with, were always the most fluent sounding, even when their level of knowledge wasn't the highest. In particular were these two Koreans, who basically sounded like native speakers. Both were high level and never used Korean, even around each other (nor did they know any English).

So, I guess it comes down to how much you do in Japanese and whether or not you mostly (if not totally) eliminate your native language from your daily life.