I'll admit that I'm at risk of sounding like an anime character...  But that still doesn't stop me from watching them all the time.    I like to think I pepper in enough manga, books, drama, movies, and Skype to make me sound like a generic lunatic, rather than an anime character.

http://wiki.d-addicts.com/Aibou is good too, but way way way long. 9 seasons I think.

IceCream wrote:

recommendations for how normal people speak!?

Cranks wrote:

It's a samurai drama

Hmm...someone missed the question.


I guess I've never ran into this problem. What sorts of drama have you been watching? From my experience, if you're just taking words out of the normal conversations that they have, it shouldn't be a problem. Long, dramatic speeches and things could lead to some more dramatic vocab but hey..

Do you find yourself using phrases directly from the drama that sound out of place? I met a kid who learned to repeat things for effect (a la Obi-Wan: "Now, that's a name I've not heard in a long time. A long time") which sounded odd in real conversation.

What are you learning from drama that leads to this?

Cranks wrote:

can you think of a show where someone had a completely real general conversation in The States? Xfiles, CSI, Special Victims, Boston Legal, even CNN interviews? "How was your weekend?" "Did you watch the Red Sox game?" "How's your daughter's play going?" "I hear your wife is pregnant again, how's she doing?"

Oh, there's plenty of them.  The only problem is that they focus exclusively on just awful, trashy people that you would never want to talk like.

IceCream wrote:

hahah it's not so bad really, it's more funny... i think it's half just that i usually only speak japanese when i'm really drunk, so have a tendency to sort of, speak exxageratedly. It's things like using 「だよね」　or 「XXXじゃないですか」 when it's not a negation. it's not too hard to drop once you know. i would like to hear some more normal conversation stuff though...

one girl said to someone else, hahah your japanese is so funny, it's like an audiotape! then to me, ...and yours is like a drama!

another guy said to me, "your japanese is kind of like a mature womans..."
guy 2: what do you mean? ちょっとセクシー？
guy1: ない!!!!! ないない!! [looks round at me]... ah, ちょっと, a bit.

looooooool!

Where you living at?  Here in Osaka I hear  だよね　a lot.. mostly by girls tho (infact in this email I just got) I try to avoid saying ね at all and just use　な, but I think that sounds normal out here anyway.

was under the impression じゃないの form was an acceptable was to ask a question.. sort of like  "aren't you?"  行かないの  "your going aren't you?"

It's like American TV... or any TV. People say outlandish things and don't act like truly normal people do in real life. That would be boring.

You just need to filter in what's normal and what isn't. You won't find a show that has 100% normal dialogue. Shows are going to coin, turn, and generally do weird things to phrases.

Imagine a Japanese person learned all their English from... Dexter. Now, they if that's their only experience and they think that is 100% normal for America, they will probably start talking like a creepy serial killer, and have a strange way of expressing certain ideas ("Dark Passenger").

Ryuujin27 wrote:

Imagine a Japanese person learned all their English from... Dexter. Now, they if that's their only experience and they think that is 100% normal for America, they will probably start talking like a creepy serial killer, and have a strange way of expressing certain ideas ("Dark Passenger").

I did this when I watched too much dexter and I'm English :$ I realised I was doing it tho.

When I was taking a class for a couple weeks in Japanese, some guy sounded like Byakuya from Bleach lol. I'm starting to sound like Anchang from Sex Machineguns though so I'm not any better.

If you want natural speech, try radio talk shows. Plenty of podcasts you can grab with iTunes or whatever. Unfortunately at my level I find this stuff very hard to follow, since I have no visual context to go off of. And your not going to find subtitles for this stuff. Oh well.

juniperpansy wrote:

IceCream wrote:

anyone got any programme / film with subtitle recommendations for how normal people speak!?

I've been told by japanese that toki o kakeru shoujo has very good natural/slang japanese.

Lol, which one? There are 4 live action films, one anime, and one drama...

Last edited by jorrebenst (2010 December 29, 5:49 am)

Cranks wrote:

Edit3: No more edits, but can you think of a show where someone had a completely real general conversation in The States? Xfiles, CSI, Special Victims, Boston Legal, even CNN interviews? "How was your weekend?" "Did you watch the Red Sox game?" "How's your daughter's play going?" "I hear your wife is pregnant again, how's she doing?"

Many British soaps, e.g. Eastenders, Hollyoaks, Coronation Street, use very natural realistic British-English and UK-slang. They're meant to be real people talking to each other, so the writing and acting reflects this.

Watching these types of dramas is a great way of picking up natural speaking and listening skills - I guess Icecream is looking for the Japanese equivalent?

bodhisamaya wrote:

I know it may seem boring to some, but is there any way better to sound more intelligent  than by learning Japanese from watching the news?  I watch 30 second news bites at Fuji News most mornings with the aid of Rikaichan.   Play the WMP video at half speed while reading the transcripts.  Then go back to regular speed when you feel confident.  Keep up with current events while you are at it.

I just tried that and I imagine this must be exactly how IceCream sounds when she speaks Japanese. Drunk

Seriously this is a good idea I just have to remember they are sober.

Last edited by thurd (2010 December 29, 7:09 am)