The problem of speaking Japanese

October 21, 2023

This newsletter was also turned into a help article.

The ideas in the article are updated while this is more of an archive. Be sure to check out the article this turned into for the most in-depth and up-to-date information ^^

For the first 5 or so years of learning Japanese, I often felt that speaking on the fly was tough. (To be honest, it still can be even to this day).

There's a lot to keep track of, especially if your first language is English… which is in a completely unrelated language tree.

Speaking Japanese

When you're talking to someone in Japanese, you have to keep track of:

Word order, grammar, conjugations
The context of the situation, which can change meanings completely
Choosing the correct words for that context to not confuse the listener
Dropping words you use all the time in English (私 [watashi // I)
Dropping words you may have been taught you needed (を [wo]、は[wa])
Figuring out how to properly express your idea which is fundamentally different from how you do in English

While keeping in mind:

Pitch and overall speaking rhythm
Pronunciation
Their name, which they told you 20 seconds ago but you already forgot
Using the word for "you" in Japanese is almost always rude so you're playing 4D chess just to try to not say it while having forgotten their name
Intonation differences between males and females
Regional dialects, if they're being used

It's a lot. And because of that, we (understandably) see questions like this in our community:

It's honestly a really great question, and I used to be really worried about this when I started falling down the rabbit hole of improving my speaking.

But before we talk about how to improve our speaking, we really have to define what improving speaking means first.

What is improving speaking?

Our community member above brought up things like pronunciation, pitch accent*, and sounding more natural.

*If you aren't familiar with pitch accent, it's how your tone/pitch goes up and down in a Japanese sentence. This is fundamentally different from English, which has a stress accent that causes a volume and length change to words, rather than pitch.

Paying attention to these things will help you sound closer to a native speaker with enough practice.

But that begs the question:

Does speaking with proper pitch and perfect pronunciation as a native speaker might actually make you sound more natural?

To be honest, this might sound like a silly question at first.

But there's a lot of nuance to this.

I mean— what does a native speaker even sound like? There are patterns, but they vary widely from region to region in Japan.

This lesson from Phase One, Unit 59 in NativShark goes over some gender differences when speaking while also pointing out regional ones, specifically that some regions in Japan think that men from Tokyo tend to sound more feminine.

This is due to many factors including their word choice and intonation when speaking.

So what sounds natural to someone in Tokyo might sound a bit odd to someone in the Kansai region. And that can sound different to someone over here in Fukuoka as well.

On a personal note, I remember when I was starting to pick up 博多弁 (Hakata dialect) which is spoken in Fukuoka, but I would still sometimes mix in standard Japanese.

My friends would tell me I sounded weird when I suddenly and seemingly randomly started speaking like a person from Tokyo, even if I was using the "correct" pitch accent and phrasing for Tokyo.

In short, which version of Japanese should you be copying to sound "natural" can get pretty messy.

English as a second language

Before we get further with Japanese, I'd like you to think about someone you know who speaks English as a second or third language and is really good at it.

They know the slang. They express themselves without stumbling over their words more than anyone else would. They have no trouble communicating with you.

When speaking with them, you don't have to think about filtering your language to make them more likely to understand it. You just say what you normally would. And they respond in a normal and natural way.

As long as their accent is understandable to you / not too strong, then you probably haven't thought much about it other than, "huh, they have an X accent".

This is because they have:

Natural Phrasing

It is true that having a reasonable level of pronunciation and pitch accent is helpful. It doesn't matter how naturally you phrase your language if you can't be understood.

But! Here lies the secret of how we improve our speaking:

Once you get past that baseline level of pronunciation, you are more likely to be readily understood by saying a naturally phrased sentence in a foreign accent when compared to a hard-to-comprehend or incomprehensible sentence in a "natural, native accent".

And in Japanese, natural phrasing is the one that takes the longest time to fully figure out, (if that's even possible).

How to improve your speaking

All of the above is to say that in order to improve our speaking, we need:

A baseline level of pronunciation
A sprinkle of pitch accent
8 giant heaps of natural phrasing

So how do you get there?

Well, to be honest, you don't need to pay a ton of attention to the first two if you have a comprehensive resource, lots of exposure to Japanese, and keep these ideas in the back of your mind as you study.

If you listen to naturally spoken audio and try to repeat it every now while trying to copy the general flow and pronunciation, intonation, and pitch, that's enough ^^

That said, I know students (including myself) have found success in reaching a comfortable level with #1 and #2 by occasionally recording themselves copying natural speakers.*

*Don't worry about turning that into a project you have to do every day though. It can get to be a bit much unless you're really into it. A slightly "less efficient" study method that you actually do is always better than a "perfect" study method that's stressful to maintain and risks you not studying at all.

Anyway, the biggest thing is #3.

You need lots of exposure to natural Japanese in lots of situations.

The easiest way to ensure that is to use a comprehensive resource that will make sure you get that exposure while always being sure that you can understand it.

Keeping these things in the back of your mind while going through a resource that builds up your understanding while providing you natural sentences, audio, and lets you know what's natural to say vs what sounds like a textbook from the 90's should do the trick much easier than a resource that ignores the above.

NativShark is one of those resources. Just gotta hit this button and you're on the journey to speaking Japanese more naturally:

If you don't have an account yet, you can make one for free here:

In short

The more you keep progressing in Japanese, and with the right resources and a bit of focus, you'll find yourself speaking more naturally in time.

And keep in mind, the more practice the better. I try to speak with friends as much as possible.

And before I really started making Japanese friends, I would keep a journal that I would write about my day in Japanese (usually I typed on a keyboard instead of handwriting). Because natural phrasing is the key^^

Just keep in mind that you take a step closer to your language goals every time you press this button:

Good luck! Feel free to ask questions about this topic in our community (you have to have a Discord account to join, so be sure to make a Discord account one so you can join the community!) if you have any, or simply would like to share your experience!

Speaking of the NativShark community…

Weekly writing prompt:

You're buying some food and drinks at a conbini. As you go up to the register, the staff says something to you but you completely missed it and have no idea what they said. You tell them…

Post your responses here and let's talk about them!

Feel free to ask for help if you want to say something specific as well. Both myself and other learners will be in there offering advice and help~

Submit prompts you want to see here.

Great job from everyone on last week's prompt^^

We saw lots of ways to combine sentences into longer ones in there, which is a common pain point as we start our journey.

It's really helpful to use things like から and けど when making longer sentences! You might be able to turn 3 short sentences into a really long one with just those alone.

Here's some NativShark lessons about them:

から:
The particle から

けど:
Content markers

How to say "but"

っていう

You might already know っていう generally but if you're like me, then you'll be learning this usage as you read this.

Turns out we can use っていう at the end of a sentence when talking about information that is different from what one might expect it to be.

I had no idea haha. But now that I think about it really hard, perhaps I've heard it around but not consciously picked up on it? Either way, I definitely couldn't have pulled it out of my brain to use it.

This is why I still study with NativShark every day, even though I passed the N1 more than 4 years ago ^^

The above screenshot comes from this lesson from Unit 73 in Phase Three, which I highly recommend checking out!If the above Japanese is difficult for you, all you need to do is keep hitting the Study Now button, and you'll understand it when you get there. Especially when using a study resource like NativShark, you'll be fine as long as you show up as much as you can.

NativShark goodie bag

4 new Units from the content team, hot off the press~

New Phase Three Units

New Podcasts Episodes:

The Konnichiwa Podcast

Mochi Mochi - Spotify

Thanks for reading and happy studies!

- Ty & the NativShark team