how many people, like me, when you are:
1. not sure if what you are about to say is the right way to say it
2. you don't know the word you want to say
3. are looking for a way to take up time why you remember a particular way to conjugate a verb

say... なんてゆうか followed by your expression? (I know I have spelt 言う in this なんて言うか wrong. It is done on purpose to be closer to the pronunciation and is written like that all the time by Japanese anyway)

I recently asked my girlfriend to tell me what mistakes I make frequently make. Among some small things like the old - adding だ after い-adjectives - as in すごいだと思う, she said that I say the above "なんてゆうか" quite a lot. And yea, I think I do. Before, I thought it was really necessary as a bit of a precursor to the mess I was about to say after it. but after a bit of thought, there really is no need to say it as much as I do. I don't make that many mistakes, and so I shouldn't feel like going "なんてゆうか = I don't have confidence in what I am about to say", as often as I do.

so, I am writing this with the hope for us to ban Mr. なんてゆうか from our daily conversation, thus saying to ourselves, "I know what I am saying, look at my confidence. (Back of the net!! Alan Partridge)"

rikaichan has both いう　and ゆう　for 言う　so I guess you're not mistaken.

^_^

but yeah, いう　sounds like ゆう to me too.

From what I've been told, ゆう is the actual pronunciation even though it's written いう. On the other hand, conjugating it as though it actually were ゆう (ゆった, ゆって) is a dialectical feature.

yorkii: ask your girlfriend to say "huh?" every time you make a mistake. better she points it out when you make it so you can correct yourself. :-)

resolve Wrote:yorkii: ask your girlfriend to say "huh?" every time you make a mistake. better she points it out when you make it so you can correct yourself. :-)

That's just gonna encourage domestic violence!

Aside: I've heard people say that many non-Japanese men who learn Japanese from their Japanese wives/girlfriends sometimes speak in 'women's Japanese'. (I suppose it would depend on your level and how much time you spend with Japanese men). But is there any truth to this? Have you experienced it or noticed it in others?

Quote:I've heard people say that many non-Japanese men who learn Japanese from their Japanese wives/girlfriends sometimes speak in 'women's Japanese'.

I won't let that happen to me.

あたしは頑張るわね！

yorkii Wrote:I am writing this with the hope for us to ban Mr. なんてゆうか from our daily conversation

I didn't think this really applied to me. But after talking with a teacher at school I realise I blurt out 何というか perhaps more than is good for one's health.

Yorkii, I don't think you can avoid these *wait a minute, I'm thinking now* phrases in your own language let alone Japanese. (Try speaking for 60 seconds without saying um or er) I guess what you want to do is try and mix it up a bit and sound bit more Japanese. Instead of saying なんてゆうかな, say other things like あのう・・・, そうだね、and anything else that might be appropriate.

Thora Wrote:Aside: I've heard people say that many non-Japanese men who learn Japanese from their Japanese wives/girlfriends sometimes speak in 'women's Japanese'. (I suppose it would depend on your level and how much time you spend with Japanese men). But is there any truth to this? Have you experienced it or noticed it in others?

Definitely true. The majority of people that I have learnt Japanese from have been female. In fact, at my Japanese school, I specifically requested some classes with the male teachers. I wish there were more male teachers about. I've made quite a few people laugh at times by using female intonation and phrases. I've seen it happen to friends too.

JimmySeal Wrote:From what I've been told, ゆう is the actual pronunciation even though it's written いう. On the other hand, conjugating it as though it actually were ゆう (ゆった, ゆって) is a dialectical feature.

My English isn't good enough to work out what you mean by 'dialectical feature' here but where ゆった　and ゆって are spoken, it wouldn't follow to the negative. Has anyone heard ゆわない?　I've only ever heard いわない, I think.

All I meant was that pronouncing いう as ゆう is standard (dare I say universal?) Japanese, but conjugating it as ゆった and ゆって only happens in certain areas and is not standard.

I think that いわない and ゆわない are so phonetically similar that it would be hard to tell them apart. I have no evidence to back this up, but I suspect that ゆった/ゆって arose to remove ambiguity with 行く which of course wouldn't be ambiguous in the negative.

なんてゆうか , at least, is better than my habitual linguistic crutch that I picked up on the street: なんか. I use that like valley girls use "like".

As in, like, a lot.

Thora Wrote:Aside: I've heard people say that many non-Japanese men who learn Japanese from their Japanese wives/girlfriends sometimes speak in 'women's Japanese'. (I suppose it would depend on your level and how much time you spend with Japanese men). But is there any truth to this? Have you experienced it or noticed it in others?

I never wanted to let it happen.. but to my eternal shame.. I can sound way too girly when I speak Japanese sometimes... いや～だ、このしゃべ方！　まー、しょうがねぇな。

Erm, my favourite gap filler is 「何だけ、え～とね」

I saw one poor　guy on TV saying 「・・・でございますわ～」. Ouch!

If you want to get rid of a habitual phrase, get your friends to point it out every time you use it...they can repeat it themselves, hit you on the head, etc.. Like Pavlov's dogs, you will soon be trained (although hopefully you won't drool when you hear a bell ringing).

so, I stopped saying it as much as possible, instead I kinda go a bit silent or (unfortunately) fill that silence with あの～

but the good thing is, if I say a word now that I am unsure about and it is wrong, I get corrected. instead of before when it would have just been passed because i had indicated what I was about to say "may be incorrect" with Mr.なんてゆうか.

I'll keep on with this experiment.

Thora Wrote:Aside: I've heard people say that many non-Japanese men who learn Japanese from their Japanese wives/girlfriends sometimes speak in 'women's Japanese'. (I suppose it would depend on your level and how much time you spend with Japanese men). But is there any truth to this? Have you experienced it or noticed it in others?

Definitely happens with me. I tend to overuse "の" as a question marker. Considering I live in tsugaru-ben country though I guess that's the least of my problems though.


I can also relate to accidentally throwing "だ" after い-adjectives sometimes. It's a hard habit to break.

My favorite gap filler would be "あの～" or "その～" with an occasional "なんだっけ".
A friend of mine uses "まあ" all the time (and he first went to japan in '85!)

外国人-men using women's language?

そうかしら....

drifty Wrote:I tend to overuse "の" as a question marker.

I don't think that there's anything wrong with using that marker, what's probably the problem (at least it was for me), is the intonation that you use with it. I unconsciously imitated the female intonation where it rises quite substantially at the end. Make it a bit lower and shorter and you get fewer funny looks.