I have two problems... How to talk and when to talk.
Recently I decided I would mega-destroy my reading inabilities and so have read literally a pile of manga, some books for children and almost finished the first, "日本人の知らない日本語". I decided also just to boost myself further I will complete Genki, 皆の日本語 and perhaps any other smaller textbooks I can find at the local library (it's free yay!).
My reading comprehension has become somewhat epic compared to a few months ago and my writing is coming along nicely too.

Now, that is all fine and dandy, but what about speaking and listening? My mother-in-law speaks Japanese to me every day and I still don't get it after 5 months of being here. Feels bad, man. I can't get Japanese TV either, unless I try to read the super fast subs. So here I put to you my problem, "How to talk, when to talk."

How to talk:
Apparently I have a "外人" accent, that is the first turn off. I'm scared to talk because I feel like it will just make my accent bad. But how do I improve it without talking? Such a timeless predicament. Also, it seems when I make "日本語タイム" with my wife, I usually fail between ten and twenty seconds later because I can't say anything yet. How do I make sentences on the fly? I wonder.

When to talk:
So I think I figured this one out, I make a "日本語タイム" with my wife in which we speak exclusively Japanese. However, as you read above (providing it wasn't a case of tl;dr) I just can not do it. Nothing comes out. Ever. It's terrible. My wife tells me to say aloud everything that I read. But won't that create a bad accent? I know I have listened to hundreds of hours of Japanese, but I still can't hear my own voice if that makes sense. So when do I talk?

If anyone can provide me with some simple tips and help I will be very grateful.
Thanks in advance.

(I already thanked you, you have to help me now right? Right? ;3)

TheMage Wrote:How to talk:
Apparently I have a "外人" accent, that is the first turn off. I'm scared to talk because I feel like it will just make my accent bad. But how do I improve it without talking? Such a timeless predicament. Also, it seems when I make "日本語タイム" with my wife, I usually fail between ten and twenty seconds later because I can't say anything yet. How do I make sentences on the fly? I wonder.

When you first start talking of course you'll have an accent! Even if many of the sounds in Japanese are already within the English language it'll take time and practice to train your muscles to form proper Japanese. In the mean time your accent will be stronger, but through careful practice and imitation it'll become better. You may never reach the point where native speakers assume you're a native speaker as well by just listening to you; most westerners always will have some sort of accent, which leads me to the most important point: WHO CARES? There is absolutely nothing wrong with having an accent. You weren't born in Japan, and your mouth and tongue were never trained your entire life to shape those sounds. It doesn't matter.
My English accent has improved tremendously through my time living in California, and I am comprehensible as anyone else, but I will never sound exactly like a native of the state. Anyone who hears my voice will know that I am a foreigner, but who cares? Accents add a flavor and variety to a language, and there are plenty of native accents in Japan itself. Being afraid to speak Japanese because you'll sound like a 外人 is as silly as someone from India afraid to speak English because people will know they're Indian then. Well, they ARE Indian, and you ARE a 外人. Can't change reality, and there's not really a need to.

As for the issue of learning how to express yourself on the fly, it'll take time and patience. You may only be able to spout off simple sentences like "Hello" and "nice weather" at first, but in time your brain will become used to formulating thoughts in Japanese, and you will progress to longer sentences, short paragraphs, and eventually entire discourses. It may take months and years to develop that skill, but it WILL happen, you just have to keep at it. The solution is the same as your solution to reading: you decided you wanted to read, and you did it, simple as that. Focus that same kind of energy and time on speaking, and your speaking abilities will progress as rapidly as your reading skills did.

Quote:When to talk:
So I think I figured this one out, I make a "日本語タイム" with my wife in which we speak exclusively Japanese. However, as you read above (providing it wasn't a case of tl;dr) I just can not do it. Nothing comes out. Ever. It's terrible. My wife tells me to say aloud everything that I read. But won't that create a bad accent? I know I have listened to hundreds of hours of Japanese, but I still can't hear my own voice if that makes sense. So when do I talk?

Every time is a good time to talk. Continue speaking to your wife, as a native speaker to converse with is your best resource. As I mentioned above, your skills will gradually build up. Don't become frustrated, just accept that you'll be horrendous at first and go with the flow, because eventually you will become more proficient. It just takes time and patience By yourself you can practice reading aloud as you mentioned, or just having monologues with yourself. Do anything you can to speak, any time is a good time

If you can learn to read, you can learn to speak. Don't worry!

Thanks! I noticed your posts recently, they pretty much all seem to be amazing in one way or another. I hope that you specifically would reply. =D

Great victory! Thanks again!

Aijin, I also find your posts particularly helpful! Thanks for participating here.

My recommendation to you is try out shadowing audio when you are unable to converse. Find high quality audio recorded in natural speed and shadow the hell out of it until you've gotten the intonation and vocal patterns down. It's not only vocabulary for me... it's the 　ちゃったん〜　　　言ってといて〜 sort of natural stuff that always got my tongue in a bind at first. Some good books to accomplish this would be

Japanese Live - Speaking Skills Learned Through Listening - Intermediate/Advanced
http://www.whiterabbitpress.com/product....ctid=16530

Shadowing - Let's Speak Japanese
http://www.whiterabbitpress.com/product....ctid=16500

Nihongo Kaiwa Training
http://www.whiterabbitpress.com/product....t=0&page=1

Didn't mean to plug White Rabbit Press, haha. I've had personal experience with all of these books and they offer them.

I'm really really liking Japanese Live right now. It has a script booklet, and a workbook included.

It's just like your reading: if you practice, you'll improve. I've been talking as much as possible over the past couple of months and I've noticed a great improvement in my confidence and overall fluency. Like with anything, effort and consistency will pay off.

I agree with Aijin about accents adding flavour, but I think there's a big difference between an endearing accent and the way some gaijin speak. It seems like a lot of learners see Japanese pronunciation as easy and don't bother studying it, but a relatively small amount of effort can greatly improve your intelligibility and avoid a lot of unnecessary communication breakdown!

I relied mostly on lots of listening and Shadowing to begin with, but it wasn't until I started speaking to people they pointed out problem points. Maybe this is something you could work on with your wife. My confidence greatly improved recently after some pronunciation lessons.

I think it's worth adding the pitch accent pattern number to your flashcards as well. You can see a number between 0-6 on dictionaries like sanseido. They correspond to the following patterns.

0 low-high (no pitch)
1 high-low (initial high pitch)
2 low-high-low
3 low-high-high-low
4 low-high-high-high-low
5 low-high-high-high-high-low
6 low-high-high-high-high-high-low

It took me a while to train my ears to recognise them, and longer to produce them, but I definitely feel like I sound more 'Japanese' when I get it right. It's another way to avoid a lot of misunderstandings too. I found these links useful as well.

Vowels and mouth position
Mora and pitch
http://www.sharedtalk.com/ (maybe finding someone other than your wife will be helpful)

Excuse the rambling post, but hopefully there's something informative in there. I'd personally still like to read some decent explanations on Japanese phonology. The most useful thing I took away from my lessons was awareness. I don't suppose anyone knows a good book?

How are you supposed to speak and form sentences when there is no one to verify the correctness of your sentence? Its one thing to have a simple sentence like AはBにSomethingをくれた, but most of the things you would want to say arent simple.

You would probably be inventing phrases as you go, which probably sound wrong.

sikieiki Wrote:How are you supposed to speak and form sentences when there is no one to verify the correctness of your sentence? Its one thing to have a simple sentence like AはBにSomethingをくれた, but most of the things you would want to say arent simple.

You would probably be inventing phrases as you go, which probably sound wrong.

You learn to speak properly when you read and listen to Japanese frequently. Eventually you will get a natural feel of what is wrong and what is right. Of course if you are a beginner that might be difficult. Just start with the basics and work your way up.

I understand what you are saying though. I guess a good way to find out if what you are saying is correct is to go online and talk with a native speaker of Japanese, like on Skype or something or through Lang-8. My Japanese friends online are pretty open to questions and whenever I say something that doesn't sound correct they will help me out.

Then again if you don't have access to the internet then it might be challenging to verify what is correct. The first thing that comes to mind would be textbooks.

LegionOfDeicide Wrote:

sikieiki Wrote:How are you supposed to speak and form sentences when there is no one to verify the correctness of your sentence? Its one thing to have a simple sentence like AはBにSomethingをくれた, but most of the things you would want to say arent simple.

You would probably be inventing phrases as you go, which probably sound wrong.

You learn to speak properly when you read and listen to Japanese frequently. Eventually you will get a natural feel of what is wrong and what is right. Of course if you are a beginner that might be difficult. Just start with the basics and work your way up.

I understand what you are saying though. I guess a good way to find out if what you are saying is correct is to go online and talk with a native speaker of Japanese, like on Skype or something or through Lang-8. My Japanese friends online are pretty open to questions and whenever I say something that doesn't sound correct they will help me out.

Then again if you don't have access to the internet then it might be challenging to verify what is correct. The first thing that comes to mind would be textbooks.

I agree, the more you get used to it, the more naturally you'll be able to point out how things sound natural and all. Just keep reading and reading and learning and it will all make sense. Even second nature once you gain the ability to skim through kanji

Aijin Wrote:When you first start talking of course you'll have an accent!

I agree that everyone has an accent to their voice, just like everyone has a particular pitch or intonation. To my ears, for example, no one has a neutral accent in English, except for me and others who grew up in a particular cluster of towns in Massachusetts.

And Japanese to me seems to be one of the easier languages to pronounce fairly well, except for the problems people have with りゅ, for example, which is very understandable. Japanese has a lot fewer possible sound combinations than most other languages.

To the OP, I've had the same demons with pronunciation and I'm at the stage now where I have been mistaken (occasionally) for native on the phone. One thing that helped me a great deal was recording my voice and playing it back to myself with a cheap dictophone.

A common pitfall for English learners speaking Japanese is emphasis and stress. English is stress timed, we increase the volume and slow down the pronunciation on certain words in a sentence. While there is intonation and slight emphasis in Japanese, it is nowhere near to the same degree. There are other constructs that provide emphasis in Japanese that don't require a change in volume or speaking speed.

For that reason, a basic thing you can do (and I'm pretty sure AJATT recommends this) is to quite literally, start speaking like a robot. There are of course certain hiragana that get silenced out (like す in です) but most of the time, each kana gets the same speed.

Once you can do that quite naturally, it really really really helps to imitate, almost comically so, any examples of native spoken Japanese. Do your best impression that you possibly can to imitate native speakers, almost as though you were doing a standup routine. Then record your imitation, play it back, and compare it to the original.

You don't have to do the recordings often, maybe two or three sessions will help you identify exactly whats wrong. Normally its something really obvious.

It's definitely worth it. Its a pretty awesome feeling when you get mistaken for a native. Good luck!

TheMage Wrote:How to talk:
Apparently I have a "外人" accent, that is the first turn off. I'm scared to talk because I feel like it will just make my accent bad. But how do I improve it without talking? Such a timeless predicament.

The other day I came across extracts from a research titled 'What Makes An Accent In A Foreign Language lighter? More Empathy'. Link here: http://learnalanguageortwo.blogspot.com/...guage.html

I don't think it will be of any practical help to you but it makes an interesting point that learners who identify and empathise with the native speakers of the language they are learning seem to develop lighter (more native-like?) accents.

On a similar note, Krashen in his paper ‘Principles and Practice of Second Language Acquisition’ references Shumann's Acculturation Hypothesis.
Quote,
"Second language acquisition is just one aspect of acculturation [fitting in with the natives], and the degree to which the learner acculturates to the target language group will control the degree to which he acquires the target language".

Krashen goes on to explain how acculturation improves second language acquisition. He says that those who acculturate have more opportunities to gain comprehensible input (see below):

Acculturation is easily restatable in terms of the framework presented in this chapter: social integration with resulting contacts leads to comprehensible input, while the open psychological state Schumann refers to is equivalent to a low filter [filter = anything which inhibits a learner from gaining comprehensible input]. The evidence Schumann presents in support of the Acculturation Hypothesis can be similarly interpreted.

The Heidelberg project, studied variables correlating with successful acquisition of German by foreign workers. Reported amounts of leisure contact with speakers of German correlated with syntactic performance as did amount of work contact. Apparently, either form of interaction was effective in encouraging second language acquisition. This confirms that it is interaction, and the resulting comprehensible input, that "causes" second language acquisition, a view consistent with both the comprehensible input plus low filter view as well as the Acculturation Hypothesis.

Schumann, in reporting the Heidelberg research, also notes that "learners whose work required communication with co-workers did better in German than workers who provided services (hairdressers, kitchen help, etc.)" Also, "learners who worked in an environment that was noisy or which constrained movement were at a disadvantage".

These results also suggest that those who were able to interact more in the target language acquired more German, all of which means more input meeting the requirements of the input hypothesis.

*my explanatory notes in [] brackets

So IMO all the above suggests that "going native" will improve your chances of successfully mastering Japanese and lessening the 外人 accent.

Native speakers are reluctant to correct learners' mistakes but you're wife can be an exception. Impress upon her the importance of her doing so.

PS Aijin is in the position of being fluent in Japanese and English and as such has "been there, done it". I agree with other posters regarding her excellent advice on this forum.

I think reading aloud would help a lot. It did for me when I was learning English. It was good sound-practice (muscle memory).

Thank you everybody for this great advice. I am not "themage" but it is still similar to what helped me and it has given me new ideas and inspired me to go back to some things I used to practice with.

I'll reiterate some just to share that it's worked well for at least one other person.

Shadowing.
I think has improved my pronounciation more than anything else has (or could). I put on headphones or really tight earbuds (so you can easily hear your own sounds) and do flashcards on Smart.fm with audio. If you go to the study section in iKnow you can replay the sentence over and over again and so I did that, and then say it outloud. Again and again and again. Until I can say it at the same speed and with the same intonation. It really sped up my speaking and helped my vowel and consonant sounds.

Reflection.
Anytime I say anything in Japanese I try to listen to myself and make sure I am saying it correctly. I think that accents are not bad. But I want to have control over my own sounds. So when I speak I listen to myself and try to see where I am making incorrect sounds. Years ago when I started, one of the first things I discovered was I couldn't make my "t" sounds like the Japanese "t" in "ta/chi/tsu/te/to". I asked a friend to repeat it for me, and asked him to explain to me where his tongue was hitting, and looked up some articles. Needless to say I discovered the motion was very different than the English "t" so I started doing it the other way (a lifetime endeavor).

Culture club.
This was my personal experience. I went to a US / Japan Culture Exchange club every Wed. at 7:30 to 8:30 and we went out afterwards to eat and drink. I built up rather good relationships and had loads of opportunity and support as I started to use more and more Japanese. A Japanese friend who likes you will make you feel like some sort of linguistic god or goddess if you say so much as "genki desu ka?". It's great positive reinforcement

Reiterate Aijin's point.
Accents don't matter and won't go away. I read a book by Kato Lomb called "How I learn languages" (she was a polyglot, speaker of 12+ languages), and she said one of the things she realized is you will always be able to place a person by where they lived from 0-15.

I agree with what you said, welldone101, except the last bit.

My dad is Iranian, and moved to America for university (around 20 years old or so).

Now, he can read complex English books such as "alexander" and "1776", and his profession is a manager at his office who edits papers (in english) for errors and fluency and runs several meetings a day.

I'd say his English is perfect, better than many Americans, and you could NOT identify his accent.

Another thing is that accents can go away. Sure, I probably have an accent. But when I was in homestay with a Japanese family, I said "ただ今" every day when I got home, and about half way through my trip (2 weeks or so), when I said "ただ今!" my host mother flipped out because she thought I was a real Japanese person who had randomly walked through her door. AKA: No accent.

So it's possible - and it's not even that hard especially for Japanese. It just takes practice and repetition and listening to native sources.

zachandhobbes Wrote:I agree with what you said, welldone101, except the last bit.

My dad is Iranian, and moved to America for university (around 20 years old or so).

Now, he can read complex English books such as "alexander" and "1776", and his profession is a manager at his office who edits papers (in english) for errors and fluency and runs several meetings a day.

I'd say his English is perfect, better than many Americans, and you could NOT identify his accent.

Another thing is that accents can go away. Sure, I probably have an accent. But when I was in homestay with a Japanese family, I said "ただ今" every day when I got home, and about half way through my trip (2 weeks or so), when I said "ただ今!" my host mother flipped out because she thought I was a real Japanese person who had randomly walked through her door. AKA: No accent.

So it's possible - and it's not even that hard especially for Japanese. It just takes practice and repetition and listening to native sources.

Seconded! I met this Japanese guy from Iwate while I was attending my undergrad institution. When I met him, I completely mistook him for an ABJ. His accent, and even his behaviors, had almost convinced me that he was born here. Lo and behold, I found out that he had a job on campus and had dated three or four American girls. I suppose these factors, and probably others, contributed to his success.

Anyway, complete acquisition of a target accent may be an unrealistic goal to expect to achieve; however, there is definitely no harm in pursuing such a goal. Although there are convincing arguments for accents from pluralism, cultural history, etc., they unfortunately do not change the negative social implications that having a foreign accent or speaking a non-prestige dialect may carry.

I used to live in Iwate, it's like the inaka _of_ the inaka. Good times.

Steve Kaufmann has stated that language is not performance. You are not performing for people! You are trying to communicate, it doesn't have to be perfect.