The Japanese that is spoken between learners
In a great many Japanese workplaces the shared language between foreign staff is Japanese, because it is the only language everybody has in common. Two colleagues from different countries will speak Japanese to each other all day, and for many residents this is where the overwhelming majority of their speaking practice actually occurs.
This is rarely discussed in learning material, which assumes the other party is a native speaker. It is worth taking seriously on its own terms, because it is the real situation for a large number of learners and because it is genuinely productive.
It also tends to be underrated by the people doing it, who often describe it as not real practice. It is real practice; it simply covers some things and not others.
What it does well
Learner-to-learner conversation is unusually good for fluency, because the anxiety is low. Nobody is judging your Japanese, both of you are making mistakes, and the shared situation means there is always something to talk about. Learners who freeze with native speakers often talk freely with colleagues.
It also produces volume, which is the resource most learners lack. An hour a day of comfortable conversation compounds, and the retrieval speed it builds transfers to conversations with anyone.
- High volume, because it happens as part of the day rather than being arranged.
- Low anxiety, which means you actually speak rather than avoiding it.
- Real communicative need, which is a better prompt than any exercise.
- Practical vocabulary, learned in the situation that requires it.
- Turn-taking and repair, practised constantly and with real stakes.
How errors circulate
The main limitation is that nobody in the conversation knows which parts are wrong. A shared error can pass between colleagues and become the local norm, and because it is understood by everyone who uses it, nothing pushes back on it.
This is not a reason to avoid speaking with colleagues. It is a reason to have some corrected input in your week, so that shared habits get checked against something.
| Error type | Spreads? | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Particle errors | Easily | Understood anyway |
| Pitch and length | Easily | Nobody hears the contrast |
| Register flattening | Easily | Everyone uses one level |
| Invented compounds | Sometimes | Useful, so they stick |
| Word order | Rarely | Breaks comprehension |
| Wrong vocabulary | Rarely | Someone eventually checks |
The top three are the ones to watch, because they are all comprehensible when wrong, which is exactly the condition under which an error survives.
The register that never gets practised
Colleagues speak to each other at one level, usually a plain polite register that works for everyone. That means neither keigo nor genuinely casual Japanese gets used, and both are needed elsewhere: keigo with customers and management, casual speech with friends.
A learner in this situation can be fluent and comfortable in a middle register and quite unable to move up or down from it, which shows up sharply the first time they face a customer or a manager.
| Japanese | Romaji | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| お疲れさまです。 | Otsukaresama desu. | Standard between colleagues |
| これ、お願いします。 | Kore, onegai shimasu. | Neutral request, colleague level |
| かしこまりました。 | Kashikomarimashita. | Needed with customers, rarely practised |
| 承知いたしました。 | Shōchi itashimashita. | Needed upward, rarely practised |
| それ、やっとくよ。 | Sore, yattoku yo. | Casual, rarely practised |
| ちょっと無理かも。 | Chotto muri kamo. | Casual refusal, rarely practised |
Correcting each other, carefully
Mutual correction between colleagues works when it is explicitly agreed and fails when it is not. Unsolicited correction reads as criticism, and there is the additional problem that a learner correcting a learner may simply be wrong.
Where a group does want it, keeping it narrow and mutual works best: one feature, both directions, and no correcting in front of others.
| Japanese | Romaji | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| お互いに直さない？ | Otagai ni naosanai? | Shall we correct each other? |
| 今の言い方、合ってるかな。 | Ima no iikata, atteru ka na. | I wonder if that phrasing was right. |
| あとで調べてみよう。 | Ato de shirabete miyō. | Let us look it up later. |
| 自信がないけど、たぶん…… | Jishin ga nai kedo, tabun... | I am not confident, but probably... |
| 日本人に聞いてみよう。 | Nihonjin ni kiite miyō. | Let us ask a Japanese person. |
| みんなこう言うよね。 | Minna kō iu yo ne. | We all say it this way, do we not. |
The last one is worth noticing when you hear yourself say it. Everyone in the group saying something is not evidence that it is correct; it is evidence that it spread.
Adding the piece that is missing
The gap is specific and therefore easy to fill: this practice gives you volume and fluency and cannot give you correction or register range. The answer is not to speak less with colleagues, which would remove the best thing about your situation, but to add a small corrected component.
A short daily spoken session with an AI Sensei in Unihongo's immersive 3D classroom does that directly, and the session report is the part that matters here, because it names errors that no colleague would ever flag. Shared habits show up there whether or not everyone around you uses them.
Register is the other half, and it can be practised on purpose: run the same exchange once in keigo and once casually, which is precisely the range colleague conversation never asks for.
Keep the colleague conversations. They are giving you the volume that learners elsewhere struggle to find, and volume is the hardest thing to arrange.