日本語の道

Girl Talk

In a recent post, I discussed a few points I'd like to focus on when speaking Japanese. My language exchange partner has spread further light on the matter.

When talking about point ③, I had claimed that my Japanese wasn't particularly feminine because I don't use words which only women tend to. But that isn't the only issue: certain types of intonation, problem ①, can make you sound feminine.

For example, I said the following to my language exchange partner:

「簡単な文章作って」

She said that because I inflected not just the く, but also the て in 作って, my request sounded slightly feminine! Aha! I feel a step closer to understanding how to improve my spoken Japanese.

3 Points

There are three points I'm going to have to watch out for when I speak Japanese:

①Intonation
I've been told that my accent is good, but some people accurately comment that my intonation can be awful. I'm not sure how to improve this without people pointing out to me when I use strange intonation. If I recorded my own voice I wonder if I could spot strange intonation myself? Probably not all of it.

②Getting Excited
Of late, I've noticed that for some strange reason I am far more excited and enthused when I am speaking Japanese compared to English. Shouldn't it be the other way around? In any case, in doing this I can rush speaking and use a higher pitch than when I speak English. My language exchange partner kindly pointed this out. I'd like to use my natural voice in Japanese, which perhaps means calming down a tad?!

③Masculine vs Feminine Speech
This is a minor point because I believe my Japanese isn't really heavily masculine or feminine. I know most of the major differences and the only reason I am listing this point is because recently one person commented that occasionally I sounded a little feminine - I'll watch out for this but it must be her mistake!

Boku

ぼく, as in 'I'. Young kids often use this, as do older adults (sometimes after おれ) or when being a little less 'rough' than when using おれ.

What I never knew was that accent can play a role with this word. I've been told that ぼくwith a rising intonation is how an adult would say it, while a child would use a more flat accent. How come nobody ever told me that before?

とにかく

とにかく, meaning 'in any case,' or 'anyway'. I just love the sound of this word!

本当に日本語？

In Japanese, sometimes I come across words which don't sound Japanese at all, and I am not talking about katakana words. I think I'll start noting them down, just for reference.

The most recent of such words, though I'll have to check the accuracy of the word, is ある程度　（あるてえど）. 程度　（ていど） means 'about', but what is more interesting is the sound of the word. To me it sounds Italian. After asking a Japanese friend they told me that altogether, ある程度 means 'up to around that much' or something to that effect.

There are other examples, but not many come to mind right now. Oh, how about ～ぱなし。That definately doesn't sound like a typical Japanese word.