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 52
At the Pharmacy in Japanese: Symptoms and Medicine
You do not need a doctor, you need something for a sore throat, and the person behind the counter is about to ask you four questions you have never heard.
9 min readExpressing Sympathy and Concern in Japanese
A colleague tells you their parent is in hospital, and the sentence you reach for in your own language turns out to be exactly the wrong shape in Japanese.
8 min readAnswering the Intercom and Deliveries in Japanese
A voice comes through a small speaker, compressed and fast, and you have about three seconds to work out whether it is a parcel, the gas company, or somebody selling a newspaper subscription.
9 min readRecommending Things in Japanese: Osusume and More
Recommending is one of the friendliest things you can do in a conversation, and Japanese grades it carefully, because a recommendation is also a small claim on somebody else's choices.
9 min readThe Japanese Part-Time Job Interview: Baito Questions
A part-time job interview in Japan is short, predictable and less formal than a graduate interview, and almost every question is about one thing: whether you can reliably turn up on the shifts they need.
9 min readWhen They Do Not Understand Your Japanese
The hardest moment in speaking a second language is not failing to understand somebody. It is watching somebody fail to understand you, and having no idea which part went wrong.
9 min readTalking About the News in Japanese
There is a point where you can talk fluently about your weekend and freeze completely on anything happening in the world, and it is the point where most learners stop sounding like an adult.
9 min readGiving Your Name, Address and Number in Japanese
You can hold a conversation and still be defeated by a counter clerk asking for your name, because a foreign name in katakana said aloud is a genuinely difficult piece of Japanese.
9 min readCalling Customer Support in Japanese
An automated menu, a hold tone, and then a very polite person speaking quickly about something technical. Support calls are the listening situation most learners avoid for years.
9 min readTalking to the Police in Japan: What to Say
Most conversations with Japanese police are entirely routine: a lost wallet, a bicycle registration check, directions from a neighbourhood koban. Knowing the vocabulary turns them from alarming into ordinary.
9 min readNoise and Neighbour Problems in Japanese
Japanese apartment walls are thin, tolerance for noise is low, and the convention is that you do not knock on your neighbour's door. Knowing what to do instead is the whole skill.
9 min readHow to Ask for Corrections to Your Japanese
The reason your mistakes persist is not that people cannot hear them. It is that correcting a guest's Japanese mid-conversation is socially awkward, so almost nobody does it unless you ask.
9 min readPractical guides
Turn Japanese knowledge into speaking confidence
Practice with Unihongo's AI Sensei in an immersive 3D classroom, with roleplay missions, pronunciation coaching, useful feedback, and learning games that build your vocabulary while you play.