From: colric@tartarus.uwa.edu.au (Colin Richards)
Subject: Re: nihongo no shaberu gaijin
Organization: University of Western Australia
Date: Fri, 14 Aug 1992 01:36:45 GMT

mrc@Tomobiki-Cho.CAC.Washington.EDU (Mark Crispin) writes:

>I've never been accused of speaking unaccented or non-stilted
>Japanese, except perhaps by certain of my friends who have an
>exaggerated opinion of my abilities.  I am all too aware of my accent
>and ungrammatical speech, and work consciously to stomp it out.  It is
>only recently that I have reached the point where I can spend two days
>in meaningful and extended conversation with a native Japanese who is
>completely unable to understand English.  I know because I recently
>did just that.

>However, I've observed any number of times how many self-proclaimed
>`fluent in Japanese' individuals are a good deal worse.  They may have
>a fair amount of grammar and even kanji down, but their pronunciation
>is atrocious!

>I suspect that there's only a dozen or so non-native speakers who can
>be considered to be truly fluent in Japanese.

This all depends on definition of fluent.  If you mean can speak it like
a native then there is probly only a few hundred (a lot more than 12
anyway).  But it is possible to be fluent in everyday conversation type
words but get lost when it gets to technical stuff,  there would be many
thousands of people who would come into that catagory.

>Very few native Japanese are going to make sense out of:
>	Corey wuh nine diskkuh?
>	Toily wuh dough-koe diskkuh?
>[actually heard out of the mouths of fellow hen-na gaijin in To^kyo^]

Sure, you hear it a lot, but everyone has to start somewhere, it would
be almost impossible for someone to have perfect pronunciation when they
only know a few words of Japanese!  Japanese is very hard for Americans
to pronounce correctly, because they are used to long vowel sounds all
of the time.  I know of some Americans who have lived in Japan for more
than 5 years and speak 'fluently' but still have trouble with the
pronunciation fo certain words.

>Bad pronounciation combines with a strict usage of the sentence
>pattern:
>	[watakushi | anata] ha nani-nani [desu | -masu].
>for every sentence, plus an inexplicable reluctance to use aizuchi, to
>create a set of sounds that does not sound at all like Nihongo to the
>average native Japanese.

This is true but if that is where someones Japanese ability is at then I
am sure that any Japanese person is not going to mind.  They would
usually admire the person for having a go.

>I cannot understate the importance of aizuchi and the other little
>meaningless words you add to your speech to make it more natural
>sounding and to cover for your mistakes.  An `ano....' or `ee-to' can
>open linguistic doors that `tabesaserarenakerebanaranakatta' (OK, I'm
>being facetious here) will not.

I agree that people who use aizuchi sound more natural than people who
don't, but I also think that you will start to use it when your Japanese
is at a level to support it.  You will sound even stupider if you start
with some prelearnt phrase and then continue with stilted broken
Japanese.

>If the question or its response is likely to be complex, try having a
>few startup patterns at your command that you can quickly rattle off,
>such as:
>	<appropriate number>-nen nihongo wo benkyo^-shinakatta no de,
>	mada heta nan desu kedo...

I wouldn't try that one though or you will get some strange looks as
they try to work out what language you are speaking!  If you wanted to
say "I have only been studying Japanese for N years so I am not yet that
good, but...."  then you would be better to say:
"N nen kan shika nihongo wo benkyo shite nai no de mada heta nan desu
kedo....."

>at this point your listener is probably going to respond with aizuchi,
>most likely `hai', since it's pretty obvious at this point that you
>have a request to make.

>Even in simpler situations, try more indirect (adult) speech.  When
>looking for something that you suspect is in the vicinity, instead of:
>	nani-nani ha doko desu ka.
>try:
>	Ano...nani-nani wo sagash'te'ru kedo.......

Seems pretty direct to me, harder to get more directly to the point than
that!

I guess that my main point is that the only way to sound fluent in any
language is to be fluent.  You can't fool people into thinking that you
are better than you are.

Colin Richards

Newsgroups: sci.lang.japan