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 53
Your First Day at a Japanese Workplace
You will say about eight different fixed phrases on your first day at a Japanese company, and knowing them turns a nervous morning into a set of small, manageable exchanges.
8 min readAt the Dentist in Japanese: What to Expect
A dentist asks you questions with their hands in your mouth, which makes it the one medical setting where you genuinely cannot ask them to repeat.
8 min readExchanging Contact Details in Japanese
You have had a good conversation, it is ending, and now you have about five seconds to decide whether to ask for their contact details and how.
9 min readMaking Plans with Friends in Japanese
Agreeing to meet is easy. Agreeing when, where exactly, and what happens if one of you is late takes a set of phrases that most learners have never practised.
8 min readJoining a Club or Circle in Japan
A circle is the fastest route from studying Japanese to using it, because it gives you the same people, on the same day, every week, talking about something you already care about.
9 min readJapanese Language Exchange: How to Make It Actually Work
A language exchange is free, human, and unreliable. This is the structure that stops it drifting into English and turns each session into material you can actually study.
15 min readJapanese at a Convenience Store: The Full Counter Script
The convenience store counter is probably the Japanese conversation you will have more often than any other. It is six fixed questions in a fixed order, and once you can answer all six without thinking, daily life in Japan gets noticeably easier.
15 min readJapanese at a Supermarket: Labels, Aisles, and Checkout
A Japanese supermarket asks you very few questions, but it asks the same ones every single visit. Learn those, plus the words printed on the label, and the weekly shop stops being a guessing game.
17 min readJapanese at the Gym and for Playing Sports
A gym is one of the easiest places to start speaking Japanese, because the same twenty sentences cover every visit. This is the sign-up conversation, the machine vocabulary, and the lines that get you onto a local team.
17 min readJapanese with Children: Home, Nursery, and School
Speaking Japanese with a small child uses a different register from the polite Japanese in your textbook, and the day around that child comes with its own script at the nursery door.
14 min readWatashi, Boku, Ore: Choosing How to Say I in Japanese
Japanese gives you several ways to say I, and each one tells the listener something about who you are and how you see the room. The most useful skill, though, is knowing when to say none of them.
15 min readHow to Say You in Japanese Without Sounding Rude
Textbooks teach anata as the word for you, then Japanese speakers spend all day avoiding it. Here is what they use instead, situation by situation.
15 min readPractical guides
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