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As a beginner, I don’t get to practice my spoken Japanese very much, and I’m more than a little worried about the infamous(?) 外人 accent (demonstrated her by the wonderful Simon Brezhnev.) it seems like a lot of non-native speakers have real trouble with emphasizing the wrong syllables, or having other vocal quirks that make them sound hilarious to native speakers. I can pick out what Simon’s doing wrong, but the way he talks is a caricature; when 日本人 giggle at a real foreigner, I often have no idea how they sound different from a Japanese person.
It’d be really helpful if I could get native speakers to criticize my Japanese, like Lang-8, but an audio file or a video instead of a written piece. It’d be wonderful if there was a site like that, but if there isn’t, does anyone have suggestions?
I was thinking of doing something like Mika does, setting up a Youtube or NND account where I could post short videos about different topics, but I’m not sure how well that’d work.If anyone’s got any ideas about this, I’d love to hear them. =D
Livemocha has something similar to this, but it’s done as part of their lesson structure as an exercise. So you’re not actually speaking about whatever you want like in Lang-8, but just reading/translating what they ask you to for that particular lesson.
I agree, it’d be a good idea though. It’s very hard for many people to find a good language partner with whom to practise speaking, so that’d provide a good alternative.
Though personally, I’d have been far too embarrassed for it. It was hard enough for me to do it with writing on Lang-8, but actually recording myself bumbling my way through the language would be too much for me to attempt. :P
Well Pencil, this problem you usually have whatever language you learn. When I leant English I was living with a relative. At first, I was impressed about her English knowledge. About three months later,I realized that she pronunced English the typical way as she pronunced her dialect. Thus, I could hear the dialect of the villiage she was raised when she spoke English. That was so funny to realize. But then, the same happend to me. I go to a store, say a few words and clerks just used to ask: are you from Germany?
To get rid of that kind of effect you need to find a teacher who is able to tell you exactly, which part of your pronunciation sounds funny to Japanese and what to do, to change it. Usually, people speaking the same language have the same pronunciation schemes. That’s why you can tell, from which region some comes when speaking a foreign language. Thus, if you speak English, there might be special teaching material available how to speak Japanese properly.
Or you might want to consider a program like Rosetta Stone who offers speaking to the computer producing those zigzag speaking charts out of which you see what is correct compared to a native speaker and what needs more attention.
You probably also could use a tool like audacity, if you have sound files as well as the text to practice for a beginning.
Kind of the same way deaf people learn to voice a language.Good luck finding a method that suits you
record your voice on audioboo then link that to a lang 8 journal
you will still have an accent no matter what but of course that doesnt mean you cant imitate the way a japanese person speaks nearly perfect
you should try to just find some easy audio and try copying it exactly as much as possible. record yourself then compare that to the native audio. repeat
You can try sharedtalk.com You can chat and do videochat with Japanese speakers for free.
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