Torikun

Yeah, I agree that it is very funny. I know the word.

But it's not something I'd like to hear when tired and relaxed at the end of a day

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アメリカでは、子供はテレビやコンピューターゲームの影響で外で遊ばなくなり。。。
http://chirb.it/CLFaAb

Usually it's stuff like this that I practice my pronunciation with Because it's too funny ＞＜
http://chirb.it/f9bPvJ

Criticize constructively please!

@Tori-kun: thanks!

well, i know i made grammar mistakes at times in my post (and i recorded each of them roughly the same thing twice to reduce the long silences a bit). but if you're worried about making too many mistakes or speaking freely in general, you could also try just picking one of the questions, and writing out the answer on http://lang-8.com/ . When it's been corrected by Japanese people, then you can speak the audio without mistakes. It'll still be good for you

IceCream Wrote:Since i feel like i'll be stuck on Q3 forever right now, i'm actually gonna move onto chapter 2 now, and come back to that one one day when i've learnt more about it.

Skip this question and pick the one that's the most fun for the next recording.

ｗｗｗyou make a great yakuza!!! perfect lol

i'm rubbish at analysing people's voices in general, but your other recording didn't sound so bad to me either. There were three things i noticed in particular... 接する needs a longer pause, because it's せっする, you said more like せする. The next is つ, it sounds like you're using the english "ts", like in "its" but the Japanese version all the sounds are together not one after the other. The 3rd thing is pitch accent... lots of places were off, but i dunno, i find it impossible to get right too, but i think shadowing helps.

so yeah, good job! Sorry if i've got any of this wrong, maybe someone else can analyse better...

Some japanese girls already said it:

へ、あなたはヤクザになりたいの？ｗ

I didn't know what to answer..."No" would be so dissapointing for them, but that's the truth

Yeah, it's so hard to say tsu. Thanks!!

Gotta improve...

i know! つ and ふ are my hardest... oh, and う if i knew what it was :/

I will record the u for you tomorrow, gotta go party right now

The つ sounded fine to me, the 接する sounded alright as well I thought...
Your accent sounds native, just need to get it flowing.

hahah like i said, i'm rubbish at analysing voices

jettyke Wrote:I will record the u for you tomorrow, gotta go party right now

cool... have fun!!!

Ok finally got this to work. I'll just need to upload it somewhere.

I'll just use the same site you guys are using.
(I'll do one of those bleach anime characters for now. So pardon the language I will use)

jettyke Wrote:pm215: To tell the truth, you should definitely work hard to improve your pronunciation. Sounds gaijin-ish People might even sometimes find it hard to understand you.

Yeah, I know (spent a long time either not worrying about it or just plain not speaking much). Any suggestions for techniques?

Tori-kun Wrote:I assume both pm and IceCream are native English/American speakers, but such a huge difference!

Native UK English speaker, FWIW.

Quote:@pm: You sound like the dad of my girlfriend (he's about 70 years old. Sorry man XD)

Heh. I've had a bit of a cold and sore throat this week, hopefully it was the effects of that :-)

@IceCream
I really like your accent, it sounds somewhat unique.

thecite Wrote:@IceCream
I really like your accent, it sounds somewhat unique.

Agreed. It's close enough to a native accent that i'd be stunned if anyone had problems understanding it, but it's different enough to be interesting.

Quote:Yeah, I know (spent a long time either not worrying about it or just plain not speaking much). Any suggestions for techniques?

pm, I'm not sure, if my pronounciation is 'correct' or less gaijin-ish, but.. as we discussed with jettyke, the 'u' sound in Japanese sounds like the the sound between the German/Estonian 'ü', like in the word "Natürlich" (sounds like "Naturally", right? ). Slightly like that. Practice saying that. Watch how your mouth moves. There was a video of a German on youtube explaining in Japanese for Japanese how to pronounce the vowel and so called 'Umlaut' (ö,ü,ä) sounds correctly. Perhaps this will help you a lot, since she's showing how to move your mouth and Japanese vowel sounds sound like German/Estonian (jettyke ). Slightly.
Perhaps you'd like to listen to Bobby Judo (thedailyyoji.blogspot.com). I find his Japanese really good and understandable, although he's American.

I always try to somehow imitate voices. Female, male, both respectively. Can be quite fun sometimes. I have not spoken a word Japanese yet, which makes the first try really exciting, right?

Quote:Native UK English

Still have difficulties talking without accent. Can I record also my English voice (speaking freely is no problem for me in English) in order to get a feedback and suggestions how to improve?

P.S. Somehow all of your records sound quite.. depressing and very unemotional, haha XD

Quote:Usually it's stuff like this that I practice my pronunciation with Because it's too funny
http://chirb.it/f9bPvJ
Criticize constructively please!

Cool! Sounds like a vampire from Hellsing! Really really good. Just the 'r' in ぶっ殺す sounds still slightly Rrrrussian. I really would like to hear your "normal" voices in your mother tongues, like Estonian. I have no clue how that sounds..

Concerning what you said: I did only get the part with ぶっ殺す Uah, my listening comprehension really sucks. I have to watch more anime.

pm215 Wrote:

jettyke Wrote:pm215: To tell the truth, you should definitely work hard to improve your pronunciation. Sounds gaijin-ish People might even sometimes find it hard to understand you.

Yeah, I know (spent a long time either not worrying about it or just plain not speaking much). Any suggestions for techniques?

@pm215
To my ears (another native UK English speaker), you sound pretty fluent rhythmically, but you're falling down with a few sounds which are superficially similar to English, and you need to make them sound more Japanese!

It might be worth doing a bit of close listening and imitating (just single words) to get those sounds nailed. In particular, I noticed your [sh] (e.g. しかし) is too lip-rounded, and sometimes your long vowels tend to be a bit diphthongal (e.g. second vowel in 結構) [o:] - yours sounds a bit like the vowel in Br English "echo". Vowel devoicing - where high vowels like [i] get deleted (or nearly so) in certain contexts would also help, I think.

アイス、

Here I said the Estonian U and Estonian Ü. And the Japanese one is in the end. It's like in between the two.
http://chirb.it/4fkDM1

Never mind the last part here, I don't know what I tried to say because all sounds sound the same on this recording So yeah, your U is sometimes too long, make it shorter
http://chirb.it/8Og2sc

Just testing 家族　a lil bit. The first one is bad because it was too long.The last 家族would be the correct one.
http://chirb.it/wqx4Ja

Btw I can't seem to forget your 「家の家族構成は」。。。you said it like gazillion times and now it's stuck in my head forever XD

IceCream Wrote:EDIT2: jettyke, is it possible to upload an estonian, english, and japanese U for me so i know what i'm doing?

Btw, I just saw this after already having recorded the audio...

So next time be careful with edits. If I hadn't proposed to record the audio and had never seen your edit, nothing might have happened Don't hesitate to ask twice on those kind of occasions.

thecite Wrote:The つ sounded fine to me, the 接する sounded alright as well I thought...
Your accent sounds native, just need to get it flowing.

Hmmm...I just need to record more then.
I am sure that my accent is bad, even if it would flow.

I think that my 子供たち sounded quite bad.

Maybe the I said 接する　like Sessuru. But it should be Se suru?

Speaking and listening more would certainly be the way to go.
Your accent's fine, you sound like a native.
I listened to the 接する again and I still think it sounds fine, maybe someone else can give their opinion too.

jettyke Wrote:アイス、

Here I said the Estonian U and Estonian Ü. And the Japanese one is in the end. It's like in between the two.
http://chirb.it/4fkDM1

Never mind the last part here, I don't know what I tried to say because all sounds sound the same on this recording So yeah, your U is sometimes too long, make it shorter
http://chirb.it/8Og2sc

Just testing 家族　a lil bit. The first one is bad because it was too long.The last 家族would be the correct one.
http://chirb.it/wqx4Ja

Btw I can't seem to forget your 「家の家族構成は」。。。you said it like gazillion times and now it's stuck in my head forever XD

oh!!! i get it now!!! yeah, i did do that on 家族 and 近く！！！　Thanks, i'll try to fix that

don't worry about the 接する and つ btw! I really don't analyse sound well at all... when i listened again, i couldn't hear what it was i was talking about in the first place. It sounds fine. So, i don't think you need to think about it anymore...

p.s. i love your accent!!!!

IceCream Wrote:p.s. i love your accent!!!!

Which one ?

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Today I had one of my fastest, funniest, most intensive and interesting conversations in Japanese in a bar here. After that I asked about my pronunciation on FB.
正直言って良いかな？
発音ではなく、「の」とか「が」とか「に」とか「と」とかの違いに注意して勉強すると良いと思う
発音に大きな問題は無かったと思ってる
ただ言葉と言葉の間に少し変な所があって、それを聞いている人は気にするかもしれない
その結果あなたの発音が少しおかしく聞こえるかもしれない

Here comes mine. I haven't 'dared' to talk in Japanese yet, but I thought since many of you are native English speakers, I could get some really objective and constructive feedback if I'm understandable in English and which accent I should try speaking (British sounds cool, I guess). I have never been to an English speaking country (hang on, Romania? ) and since English in school is crap, I tried to help myself as well as possible. Peace~

http://chirb.it/wgwwxN
@jettyke: I hope I didn't mix up Lithuania/Estonia with Litauen/Lettland lol Sorry for mispronouncin' your name XD

Ok, Japanese XD (= embarrassing myself, yeah)
はず: http://chirb.it/cJMNzP
こと: http://chirb.it/zmh4bG
Just some sentences from UNICOMs JLPT 3kyuu book.

Tori-kun

すぐfor you
http://chirb.it/CHIJ2s