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 49
Japanese for Farm and Agricultural Work
Farm work in Japan often comes with a dialect, an early start and a boss who explains by demonstrating.
6 min readJapanese for Salon and Beauty Work
A salon appointment is an hour of conversation with someone who cannot leave, which is either the hardest part of the job or the best practice you will ever get.
6 min readJapanese for Doctors Working in Japan
Clinical Japanese has two halves: the technical vocabulary you can study, and the plain Japanese for explaining it to a frightened patient.
6 min readJapanese for Office and Administrative Work
Administrative work is the most keigo-intensive job most learners will take, and almost all of it is the same forty phrases.
6 min readOndoku: How Reading Aloud Builds Japanese Speaking
Reading a Japanese page silently teaches your eyes. Reading the same page out loud teaches your mouth, your breath and your ear, and it is the cheapest speaking practice available to someone with no partner.
9 min readHow to Sound Natural in Japanese, Not Like a Textbook
Most learners are not held back by grammar mistakes. They are held back by producing grammatically perfect sentences that no Japanese speaker would ever say out loud.
10 min readNihongo Jouzu: What It Means and How to Reply
You say four words of Japanese and someone answers nihongo jōzu desu ne. Whether that feels good or slightly deflating depends entirely on knowing what the phrase is actually doing.
9 min readHow to End a Conversation in Japanese Politely
Learners spend months practising how to start a conversation in Japanese and almost no time on how to leave one, which is why so many end with an abrupt sayōnara and a slightly puzzled listener.
9 min readHitorigoto: Japanese Self-Talk Practice That Works
You cannot always find a conversation partner, but you are available every minute of the day, and the learner who narrates their own life in Japanese speaks several hundred sentences a week that nobody had to schedule.
9 min readHow to Explain a Japanese Word You Cannot Remember
Fluency is not knowing every word. It is what you do in the two seconds after you discover you do not know one, and that is a skill you can drill directly.
9 min readJapanese Follow-Up Questions That Keep People Talking
You ask what someone did at the weekend, they answer, and then nothing. The problem is almost never your grammar. It is that you prepared one question and no second one.
8 min readJapanese Voice Messages, Voicemail and Phone Greetings
A conversation gives you feedback every few seconds. A voicemail gives you none, which is why a learner who chats comfortably can still freeze at the beep.
9 min readPractical guides
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