What are the common signs that a person speaking Japanese is not a native speaker?

7 comments

1. I dunno, maybe when other native speakers can’t understand them 🤣😂

   Jokes aside, for most language learners accents are the hardest to get rid of and the easiest to tell. If someone can speak a language without any identifiable accent, then it’s very unlikely you will be able to tell they aren’t native speakers

2. pitch accent, some phonetic sounds like ふ、い行、らりるれろ

3. Non-native speakers tend to overuse “I” and “you” when a native would omit it because it’s implied.

4. The overuse of “ne”, “yo” and “da” at the end of the sentence

5. Vowels (long/short distinction, etc. Also, particularly with English, two major vowel shifts mean that our sense of how long vowels work is skewed; however, this is usually gone by the time one gets used to kana, so this being a problem marks someone out as ***really*** beginner)

   Geminate consonants (the small っ)

   Accent (this is not in reference to a lack of a set pitch accent pattern, as several native dialects also lack this feature. This is more referring to when someone is completely oblivious to the existence of pitch, and in the worst case scenario, maintains stress accent)

   Over-reliance on grammatical features common in your mother tongue (varies by speaker. Western speakers sometimes overdo pronouns, Chinese speakers overuse の for adjectives)

   edit: forgot consonants. Everyone knows that ‘r’ is different (sort of), but other than that, ‘f’ is also bilabial (done with the lips), where English ‘f’ for example is labiodental (upper teeth and lower lips).

6. Inappropriate usage of keigo (or lack of) and general absence of onomatopoeia (very few non-native speakers get this down).

7. Depends on the persons native language and level in japanese.

   Unnatural language constructions (directly translated from L1)

   Heavy accent

   But in general if they’re good, I’d say pitch accent slipups.