Speaking Tips
Pronunciation
Here are a few simple things that you can put into practice from any level of study. These won’t increase your fluency, per se, but they will make you sound more natural and friendly to natives by eliminating some of the “textbook robot” patterns that can be difficult to escape from
Shorten Your Vowels
Japanese vowel sounds produce the same sounds as “long vowels” in English, but their actual spoken length is about half that of an English long vowel. Of course you can speak slowly, but try to keep the lengths of your vowels uniform and smooth, it’ll make it much easier to differentiate double vowel sounds, like the difference between an 狼 (ôkami, a wolf) and an おかみさん (okamisan, an old dame, an elderly female proprietor).
Destress Your Syllables
English is a very rhythmic language, with very noticeable stress accents. Japanese has a rhythm too, but it is not punctuated by stress, but rather shifts in pitch. Pitch accent is a rather advanced topic, but you’ll probably pick up quite a bit of it through exposure. One thing that most people have to consciously make an effort to address, however, is eliminating habitual stress accents while speaking.
If you ride the train, I’m sure you’ve noticed the recorded English announcers butchering the pronunciations of the towns compared to the Japanese voices. They’re speaking for the tourists who will never learn Japanese and won’t recognize the natural pronunciation. But you’re not a tourist, you live here, and natives will certainly appreciate your attempts to mimic a more natural, unstressed, speaking style.
If you have a great deal of difficulty removing stress completely, try speaking as though only the first syllable of each word is stressed, as it’s far less conspicuous than a stressed middle syllable. Over time try to phase that out too.
If you ride the train, I’m sure you’ve noticed the recorded English announcers butchering the pronunciations of the towns compared to the Japanese voices. They’re speaking for the tourists who will never learn Japanese and won’t recognize the natural pronunciation. But you’re not a tourist, you live here, and natives will certainly appreciate your attempts to mimic a more natural, unstressed, speaking style.
If you have a great deal of difficulty removing stress completely, try speaking as though only the first syllable of each word is stressed, as it’s far less conspicuous than a stressed middle syllable. Over time try to phase that out too.
Practice your ラぎょう (the "Japanese R")
There are a lot of misconceptions about the “Japanese R sound.” Some people think it is rolled, like the Spanish R, which is absolutely not the case. Others think that it is sometimes pronounced as L and other times pronounced as R depending on the word, which is also incorrect. The method for producing the Japanese R never changes, but the way that it actually sounds does vary slightly depending on the pitch and following vowel. If you can learn how to produce the sound consistently you will be much easier for natives to understand, and many words will become much easier to say.
The method for producing a Japanese R is actually closer to the English D than it is to either L or R: it is a quick tap of the tongue against the front of the hard palate, specifically against the ridge located just behind one’s upper front teeth – probably the same location, or slightly above, where you put your tongue to make a D or T sound. Unlike D and T however, there is no “plosive” pronunciation, you do not let out a burst of sound but simply tap the tongue and continue into the vowel. For American English speakers this is very similar to the sound found in the middle of “water” and “butter.” The placement of the tap is the same for every vowel, but the direction the tongue falls while moving into position for the vowel will vary, which is why it will sometimes have an “L-ish” sound and other times have an “R-ish” sound.
Once you get used to producing this sound, you may find that it becomes difficult to distinguish from your ダ行(ぎょう), or D sounds. You’ll say だくてん and someone will think you said らくてん. Simply practice pronouncing your D sounds a bit harder than you normally would in English and you’ll be fine. Try making your D and T sounds against the back of your teeth instead of your gums to further differentiate them if necessary.
The method for producing a Japanese R is actually closer to the English D than it is to either L or R: it is a quick tap of the tongue against the front of the hard palate, specifically against the ridge located just behind one’s upper front teeth – probably the same location, or slightly above, where you put your tongue to make a D or T sound. Unlike D and T however, there is no “plosive” pronunciation, you do not let out a burst of sound but simply tap the tongue and continue into the vowel. For American English speakers this is very similar to the sound found in the middle of “water” and “butter.” The placement of the tap is the same for every vowel, but the direction the tongue falls while moving into position for the vowel will vary, which is why it will sometimes have an “L-ish” sound and other times have an “R-ish” sound.
Once you get used to producing this sound, you may find that it becomes difficult to distinguish from your ダ行(ぎょう), or D sounds. You’ll say だくてん and someone will think you said らくてん. Simply practice pronouncing your D sounds a bit harder than you normally would in English and you’ll be fine. Try making your D and T sounds against the back of your teeth instead of your gums to further differentiate them if necessary.