I’m fluent in Japanese, but I’m helping out some friends who are beginner/intermediate. They’re getting good grammar and vocabulary from their textbooks and official classes, but they were struggling with how spoken Japanese doesn’t sound like what’s in their textbooks, so they asked me to help them with a dialogue, and that turned into a weekly spoken dialogue lesson. I’m not talking about slang, exactly, but differences like:
Textbook:
「太郎はよくわかっていると言った」
Spoken:
「太郎はよくわかってるって」
So things like “ている→てる”, “ては→ちゃ”, “言った→ゆった”, phrases like “だって…だもん,” natural places to drop “は” or “が” or “を”, that kind of thing.
The way we’ve been doing it so far is they’ve been bringing me dialogues from duolingo, and I go over them and explain the spoken language parts that they don’t understand. The dialogues have actually been *really* helpful. Very simple Japanese, but very natural, so they can focus on the spoken Japanese elements without getting hung up on difficult grammar or vocab.
However, apparently Duolingo has done something different recently and now there are no more dialogues, so we have no material to work with.
So here’s my question: Does anyone have any sources of *short*, *simple*, *natural* dialogues? If worst comes to worst I considered simply transcribing really short sections of サザエさん, but it seems like I might be reinventing the wheel and there could be a site that already has exactly what I’m looking for.
I don’t need any explanations about the dialogues (though, of course, if the site has an explanation that wouldn’t be a drawback, either), the dialogues just have to be short, easy(ish), and, above all, *natural*.
For reference, here’s one of the Duolingo dialogues we worked on:
ぴったりな 人
ビーは 友だちの エディ に 会いに カフェ に 来ました。
EDDIE: おはよう、ビー！
BEA: おはよう、エディ！最近、どう？
EDDIE: 実は、今晩 デートなんだ。
BEA: いいね！
EDDIE: うん、でも ちょっと ぐあいが 悪くて…
BEA: えっ、大丈夫？
EDDIE: すごく だるくて、さむけが するんだ。
BEA: う～ん。まずいね。お医者さん に 行ったほうが いいよ。
EDDIE: いや、大丈夫よ。それに、こんばん デートだし！
BEA: デートは また こんど できる でしょう？ それに、私、エディに ぴったりな 人 知ってるよ。
EDDIE: ほんと？
BEA: うん。背が 高くて、頭も いいよ
EDDIE: ユーモアの センス も ある？
BEA: うん。すっごく おもしろいよ。
EDDIE: 本当に ぴったりだね！名前は？
BEA: サントス 先生 だよ。いますぐ サントス 先生 に 会いに 行ったほうが いいよ。だって、病気だもん！