Tip: When learning a new word, or reading: 1. Pronounce it as fast as you… - Feed Post by KenjiSama
Tip: When learning a new word, or reading:
1. Pronounce it as fast as you can.
2. Read it out loud.
1. Pronounce it as fast as you can.
2. Read it out loud.
posted by KenjiSama
Comments 10
I would say accuracy - listening to the word and repeating it as is - is much more important than speed.
Native speakers talk at insane speeds....that's why I recommended speed.- Insane speeds? I've yet to hear a native speaker talk at insane speeds other than those who are intentionally trying to. This includes my Japanese wife, Japanese niece and nephew, father-in-law, and any of the hundreds of Japanese teachers I've worked with. And even if you want to learn to speak fast, keep this in mind, elementary kids speak slowly. Why? They're still learning. As are you. By all means, do what you feel is right, but as someone learning Japanese and someone teaching English, an emphasis on speed is not where you want to go.
Native speakers don't speak that fast honestly. And you can ask them to slow down for you as well and they gladly will to help you understand what they said. Trying to pronounce words as fast as you can will just end up with pronunciation mistakes that will become bad habits, but to each their own.- That's exactly my point - first, they don't speak that fast - not sure if you're getting that idea from TV dramas, or where - and whenever I see an ALT teaching kids in a game that makes them rush the words out so that "Saturday" becomes "srfhay" it just makes me angry. The same thing applies in Japanese. If you want to end up saying things in such a way that people can't understand what you're saying, by all means...
I'd say, rather than fast speed, an emphasis on steady speed is much more important (no matter how fast or slow you are speaking). What I mean is making sure each kana is pronounced for equal durations. So き and きゃ and ん and っ are all pronounced the same length (one mora / one beat); キー and ちゃん and って are all two morae (two beats).
Still, maybe not "as fast as you can" (as in ridiculously fast) but I think it's good to get used to speaking the word out loud at a speed you think sounds like normal Japanese talking speed. It is easy to encounter new words and only read out their pronunciation really slowly (especially people who are still getting used to kana), forgetting to think about how the word would sound when spoken at a norrmal pace. You'll probably be able to recognise more words you know when listening to Japanese if you are used to thinking about them at their sound at normal speed. You might also suddenly recognise that new word you are pronouncing from something you've heard before in an anime or wherever, which happened to me many times when starting out on JCJP. ^^
I think my Japanese friends before moving here spoke at a slower speed for me because when I arrived, I thought the people I spoke to spoke quite fast. It's not just me, obviously. I've read countless blogs of people studying Japanese who've felt the same. They've referred to it as talking at 100mph. I realized I just wasn't as good at listening as I originally thought. It takes some time, but that feeling definitely subsides.- Well, if you know very little, then your mind trying to catch up can cause that feeling. It's just a feeling, though, most people don't speak terribly fast at all.
can anyone help me? im having hard time with kanji. how do you know when to use onyomi or kunyomi? pls help me. i already mastered hiragana and katakana. reading kanji is very hard. pls help me. i want to learn. :(- Kanji isn't as simple, to be sure, but there are many websites to study kanji - once you get the radicals down, you'll find kanji to be one of the easiest parts of Japanese learning - or that's my experience, at any rate. Memrise.com, renshuu.org, Skritter... the list goes on.
