Speaking and pronunciation
Practical guides on speaking, grammar, pronunciation, listening, and study planning, written for learners who want to use Japanese in real life.
Speaking and pronunciation · Page 45
How to Plan the Next Japanese Sentence While Talking
The gap between your sentences is where fluency is won or lost, and it exists because you only start planning once you have stopped talking.
7 min readTalking About Abstract Topics in Japanese
You can describe your weekend fluently and go silent the moment somebody asks what you think about something, and the gap is not vocabulary.
7 min readJapanese Drills or Conversation: How to Split Your Time
Learners who only drill can produce perfect sentences nobody asked for, and learners who only converse repeat the same errors fluently for years.
6 min readSpoken and Written Japanese Are Not the Same Language
Learners who study from books often speak in sentences that are entirely correct and unmistakably written, which is its own kind of accent.
7 min readHow to Prepare for a Specific Japanese Conversation
You have one important conversation in Japanese on Thursday, and the useful preparation is not the same as ordinary study.
7 min readDo You Need to Lose Your Accent in Japanese?
Nobody needs to sound Japanese, but everybody needs to be understood, and those two goals ask for very different amounts of work.
7 min readJapanese Conversation Topics to Handle Carefully
Most awkward moments in Japanese conversation come from topics that are perfectly ordinary where you are from, and from questions you thought were friendly.
7 min readJapanese Mistakes That Accidentally Sound Rude
The mistakes that get you corrected are rarely the ones that matter; the ones that matter are the ones nobody mentions.
7 min readWhen Japanese People Switch to English on You
You opened in Japanese, they answered in English, and the conversation you were going to practise with has quietly disappeared.
7 min readWhen to Switch to Casual Speech in Japanese
Staying in polite Japanese with someone who has become a friend is its own kind of distance, and learners often stay there for years.
7 min readWhat to Do When You Run Out of Things to Say
The conversation did not stop because your Japanese failed; it stopped because you answered the question and had nothing queued behind it.
7 min readSpeaking Japanese in Izakayas and Other Noisy Places
Your Japanese was fine in the café and useless in the izakaya, and the difference is not the drink.
7 min readPractical guides
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