Hello, so in Japanese I can more or less describe an occasion or something that happened in a given moment. Things get a little bit tricky for me when I need to string a series of events together, but I think I can still get by ok. What really trips me up for some reason, is verbally telling a story with any kind of he said/she said dialogue in it. Particularly dialogue that might be somewhat “in the heat of the moment” and not just a simple A said B said.
The following paragraph is how I would typically describe an exchange (or more like debate) in English. But if I tried to convey in Japanese the same cadence of feelings or tensions that occurred during the exchange, my brain defaults to some robot sounding mess.
Me (in casual English):
Yesterday we had a conversation about money. I told her it’s better to stay where we are and save, but then she was like “we need our own space because we have no privacy here!”
Then I said “I understand what you mean but we only need to stay for six more months” but she didn’t really wanna hear it and just said “I’m stressed, I don’t want to talk about it anymore.”
Me (in casual Japanese):
Aは_____と言った。
そして、Bは_____と言った。
そして、Aは_____と言った。
(Some broken mess that ends up sounding very textbook and stuttery, and actually not very casual I think)
Are there any guides or books out there that might focus on learning this sort of casual or very loose way of “dialogue-heavy storytelling” (for lack of a better term)? Any insight would be immensely helpful. I feel like this is really keeping me from reaching that next level. Thank you for reading.🙏
1 comment
If it’s casual Japanese how about instead of と言った, try ってゆった. It’s a more colloquial way to say it and should work even if you say it many times.
Also, instead of そして you can try substituting with その後 or それで. Another good one to make it flow is それでさ. Use the sa very sparingly if you arent familiar with it though.
Hope it helps.