This post isn't meant to throw any shade or start a negative debate but i've been noticing something over the years.
Online primarily, people are really fixated on how people pronounce words in Japanese regarding pitch accent and other sort of things. Not everyone of course but a vocal crowd.
I'm a native English speaker and i've been told my pronunciation when speaking Japanese has gotten pretty good over time after being bad at the start which makes sense.
People who learn English come from very different backgrounds like people who are learning Japanese. They sometimes have such strong accents while speaking English but no one seems to care or say stuff like "You need to improve your English Pronunciation".
I've met hundreds of people the past year and they usually aren't English natives but instead of various countries. For example, I have some Indian, French, Chinese, and Russian, etc friends and when they speak English; sometimes I don't even understand certain words they are saying and I have to listen very closely. Quite frankly, it gets frustrating to even listen to but I accept it because I can at the end of the day understand it.
It's just that I know for sure many people here who are critical about people's Japanese pronunciation probably can't speak English as clear as they believe.
It seems like it's just accepted that people can speak "poor sounding" English but god forbid someone speaks Japanese with an accent; all hell breaks loose.
by japan_noob
22 comments
People on the internet like to think they’re better than everyone else, if you have 1000000 vocab in a language they’ll nitpick other things, pitch accent absolutists and input only absolutists are annoying
Yeah, I think there is a “lower standard” for an English accent since it’s a bit of a lingua franca. America for example is so diverse and I meet people every day with accents. A lot of them are even native speakers, but they just come from a different part of America than I. Or maybe they were born in Europe etc.
From what I understand, Japan is 97% ethnically Japanese, with almost everyone living there being born there. Everyone sounds the same, so an accent sticks out like a sore thumb.
That being said, I think a lot of the obsession with accent originated from Matt vs. Japan who is often hailed as “the end goal” for Japanese. And he holds great pride in his near perfect accent.
I think it’s because the majority of English speakers in the world are non native. When you live and speak English many of the people who you interact with are not native speakers. Especially in America where we are used to interacting with a hugely diverse range of people, we don’t care about accents as long as they are understood.
Contrast that with Japanese speakers..Japan is a much less diverse country than most (especially USA) and people aren’t used to interacting with non natives. Most people who speak Japanese speak it perfectly as natives and don’t hear non native Japanese on a daily basis.
This didn’t use to be the case. I took Japanese in college over a decade ago and there was no focus on pitch accent, even from the people taking the most advanced classes.
The difference IMO is that most people who learn English do it because it’s practical. So as long as you can communicate it’s fine if you have an accent. You’re probably in an Anglophone country for economic opportunity so you just need to be able to communicate.
But a lot of Japanese learners are doing it as a hobby/ because they have an interest in the language. There are gatekeepers who are basically saying “You’re not a real learner if you’re not learning pitch accent” which I think is a little ridiculous, but since we’re doing it out of interest and not practicality, we are aiming for a higher standard to fit in.
FWIW I think it’s worthwhile to learn pitch accent so you can hear it, these days if I’m studying vocab or even just listening to any Japanese I’m subconsciously picking up the pitch accents because I can recognize them. But I think striving for a perfect accent is kind of silly for the vast majority of learners.
I’ll never be able to even converse in Japanese. I’m happy that I can tell sometimes when they’re not translating an anime correctly.
I like getting to meet and interact with people from different cultural backgrounds. I’m pretty good with handling accents in English, but it’s been a really fun challenge at work getting used to all the different accents in Japanese I hear on a daily basis. If I was gonna be hung up on people’s accents, I’d have a hard time doing my job.
I guess if someone wants to hold themself to a high standard go for it, but learning how to work with non-native speakers and non-standard language is absolutely a skill you need if you wish to use any foreign language in the real world
That’s true. To be fair, English is a global lingua franca (lingua angla?), and Japanese is not. There is no “Indian-accented Japanese used among Indians in India”, for example. Japanese are also less used to speaking with foreigners who have differing accents than English speakers are. With that said, I don’t think it’s the Japanese who are so fussy about pronunciation, but rather other foreigners online. And you are right that many of them are very particular about how others pronounce Japanese, but don’t care much about how others pronounce English. Personally, I’m not into the pitch accent scene, although I do think that one should not just use one’s own native language’s sounds to speak in Japanese.
Oh yes, a LOT, i’ve seen instances when people don’t even “understand” the word ketchup just because it’s not pronounced “correctly” and i have lots of more examples like that, so short answer is yes
As other people mentioned, English is a de facto global lingua franca and we are used to hearing all sorts of accents and other imperfections.
English, however, also has a shitload of phonemes (possible syllables) and tends to absorb pronunciations from other languages wholesale, so there are a lot more sounds that occur in the language anyway.
Japanese has about 80 syllables that are more or less always pronounced the same way (ignoring pitch accent), so it is a lot more _jarring_ to hear vowel sounds that are not one of the small handful that come with the language.
For instance when seeing dubbed anime, and a voice actor reads “shuichi saihara” in the most American accent possible, “SHOO-EE-CHEE SAI-HAW-RAH”, it’s really grating to an ear accustomed to how Japanese _should_ be pronounced.
I think it varies from person to person and community to community, but I feel like Japanese students of English are also pretty hard on each and themselves about their English pronunciation (as well as Grammer).
Why is it such an alien concept that pitch accent actually matters? It’s not a fussy nit pick it’s part of the language and words sound strange in the wrong pitch accent, that’s the end of it. Pitch is not the same as having an accent, pitch is the flow of speech. It would be similar to speaking English with all the wrong stresses and trust me that is weird and uncomfortable to listen to. It’s not snobbery it’s learning the actual bloody language as it’s spoken.
I don’t understand why this topic keeps coming up like a Hydra…some people care about their pronunciation, some people don’t. This is a learning sub. From what I can see, valiant effort has been expended trying to set learners up right, from the beginning, if they choose to care.
Edit: In answer to your question OP, in my work, I have older coworkers who do not like to listen to heavily accented English. They will make assumptions about the level of intelligence of the person they are listening to. It’s not right, but it happens.
>People who learn English come from very different backgrounds like people who are learning Japanese. They sometimes have such strong accents while speaking English but no one seems to care or say stuff like “You need to improve your English Pronunciation”.
I don’t really agree with this, I am from a non English speaking country and people around me are at very different levels (it mainly depends on how much English media they consumed) and usually those who have a better pronunciation get a lot more compliments than those who have a really strong accent. Those who have a near native level accent usually get a lot of praise when they pull out their English.
Of course, no one will say to anyone that he or she needs to improve their English pronunciation because that’s seen as rude, but many would definitely appreciate it if the people they are talking to were easier to understand. Even when I am in meetings in my job and someone has a really strong french accent I would appreciate it if they had a better pronunciation, I don’t mean perfect native pronunciation but at least getting rid of the thick accent, because it stand in the way of the message you’re trying to get across. But listening to a perfect american accent or british RP accent sounds so good on the ears, it’s immediately noticable, and I at least (and would guess most natives too) just inherently prefer to listen to that version of English than for example my English (which I think is really clear but still has a noticable accent).
>It’s just that I know for sure many people here who are critical about people’s Japanese pronunciation probably can’t speak English as clear as they believe.
Does it matter? People here are learning Japanese not English, so naturally, they are not working on their English pronunciation. I really don’t see how this relates to learning Japanese, having mastered English is not a prerequisite to studying Japanese nor is it hypocritical to try to have a very good pronunciation in JP while your English pronunciation sucks.
>It seems like it’s just accepted that people can speak “poor sounding” English but god forbid someone speaks Japanese with an accent; all hell breaks loose.
That’s a really skewed world view. Have you ever been to Japan? You will find many indians working in konbinis etc. and most of whom have a really strong accent when speaking Japanese (though they usually are quite fluent). No one says anything really, I had a discussion with a Japanese native the other day about the topic and she says she doesn’t mind really and it’s something you have to accept when coming to Japan.
Of course, in learning communities you will find more people trying to nail pronunciation, and honestly I don’t think it’s a bad thing, at the end everyone can decide for themselves how important it is for them and to which degree to integrate pitch accent etc. into their studies. I at least am very happy and thankful all this pitch accent knowledge and theory is around and so easily accesible these days.
> Online primarily
Well this is your problem lol.
I’m a learner of 3 languages (English, Mandarin and Japanese).
I’m extremely critical about my English and Mandarin pronunciation, to the point where I’m trying to get both of them to sound as close to native as possible. Japanese is lower on my priority list in this regard.
Perhaps in 5-10 years when I reach a level in English and Mandarin that I’m satisfied with, will I finally begin to obsess over my Japanese pronunciation. But not until those 2 languages are taken cared of first.
How many Japanese people do you know that can speak English with an accent identical to a native English speaker? It’s extremely rare. Most Japanese who speak English well still speak it with a heavy Japanese accent, but they are never criticized for it.
I believe this is a common issue in many language learning communities. In Brazil, for instance, it’s not unusual too see people poking fun at the accents of other Brazilians when they speak English, even when their accent is perfectly fine
Depends on where you go in English I suppose. Dutch people do like to mock a Dutch accent that’s too thick, or exists in any capacity when speaking English.
I think it mostly comes down to that native speakers themselves rarely mock accents in their language, but learners can be quite competitive. Some Dutch people will even ridicule other Dutch people who speak English near native-sounding because they don’t speak it with an R.P. accent. Frans Timmermans or bust.
I mean, language learning is a hobby for me so I’d like to sound as good as I possibly can in a language ig.
Most people don’t learn English because they’re a fan of the beauty of it and would like to master it though.
I’d say learning the basics of the pronunciation of any language is good enough if you just want to use it as a tool. Like belittling people due to their pronunciation or outright discouraging people from learning an aspect of Japanese pronunciation seems a bit much. At the end of the day it is your call, do whatever to fulfill your goals.
The way I see it, Natives don’t care, simply by the fact that you can speak an “understandable” amount of Japanese/English ETC, you get a pass in the eye of natives as you have made an effort. Now non-native speakers on the otherhand, I.E. the people you see on the internet complaining about pitch accent, think more along the lines of “I’ve made the effort to learn Japanese, I know about pitch accent, I understand the grammar…ETC” so they subconsciously and sometimes not subconsciously see themselves as superior to you, and feel they have a duty to inform you of this fact. It’s the same for learning anything, for example there are good drivers(natives) and drivers who think they are good(non-natives) one of these two is far more likely to try and tell you about how you are driving “wrong”, can you guess which.
P.S. This does not apply to all Non-native Japanese speakers, just the vocal minority.
EDIT: Also just to add, I have witnessed Non-native English speakers correct other non English speakers on mistakes, but normally it’s a massive mistake that would cause a misunderstanding, not in a “your accent/pronunciation is wrong” but “that word is entirely wrong in the context you mean”, But as you said “I can at the end of the day understand it.” this is why I say “Natives don’t care” because we’ve spent our whole lives absorbing every way something can be said, so we can gather what a non english speaker means from context, one would assume the same is true of Japanese, as long as you’re mostly correct I’d assume natives can put the pieces together and let it slide.
Yes they are. They worry about things like intonation and stress in English to sound more natural. To many people, learning is competitive.
Personally I like learning pitch, it seems daunting at first but after a few initial efforts you begin to pick it up naturally so it’s free real state basically.
But I think that no one cares except hardcore language learners. And it’s never okay to point it out to people unless they ask for your opinion or maybe if they say something stupid like “my Japanese is perfect”.
I just use it as a measure of how seriously people take Japanese tbh.
For example when I listen to my Japanese teacher at uni mess the pitch of a basic word like 島 and not distinguishing between the よ and じょ sounds when speaking (for example pronouncing 読む as じょむ) welp I in my head can’t help but doubt their authority to actually teach, but I’m not gonna be a smartass and point that out because I probably make a lot of mistakes when I speak too, it’s something that’s always going to backfire.
TL;DR it’s noticeable but at the end of the day who cares. I was watching a video by oriental pearl the other day and when she spoke JP her pitch was clearly off, but people can understand her perfectly and she probably prefers to spend that time practising her other languages like Chinese and Korean. It’s a personal preference in the end and Japanese people are going to be happy (most of them) just by you taking the effort to learn a bit of the language and are certainly not gonna criticise you on ur pitch.