I’m visiting Japan for the first time and traveling with my fiancé, who is fluent in Japanese. We are also visiting his family here in Fukuoka and I have learned that certain words just get me blank stares. They own a little store so I asked what their regular closing day by using the word “teikyuubi” and they just looked back and forth at a each other lol – too nice to say “wth did you just say”
I am a beginner and but have been fading pretty well. Also, I obviously get a lot of grace from them but anyone find any other words taught by Pimsleur that seem to be unknown or perhaps too formal to a point that they are just not recognized by Japanese people? Hoping to catch these in advance and also curious about other people’s experience
5 comments
Idk 定休日 is a pretty common word – at least for me who’s usually too lazy to meal prep and tends to order out for lunch at work. It’s definitely not some obscure word that the average Japanese person doesn’t know.
Is it possible that your pronunciation or intonation isn’t quite right and they just didn’t understand you? On the rare occasions I’ve been able to talk to native speakers Ive had to repeat myself on words that seem so simple. Normal I’m sure, but frustrating.
定休日 (teikyuubi) is a very common word you could expect anyone to know. But vowel length and intonation are very important, they probably couldn’t understand your pronunciation. The opposite would be like when Japanese people go abroad and say “makudoNArudo” or “hottodoggu” and think people are messing with them when they don’t understand it as “McDonald’s” or “hot dog”
I mean, hard to say without knowing *how* you did it. Especially since you’ve mentioned you’re a beginner.
First off, how did you phrase it? 定休日はいつですか (teikyuubi wa itsu desu ka) is about as standard as you can get, but did you phrase it differently? How much experience do you have with pronunciation (I know full well just how different it’s possible to get it without practice)?
And even beyond that, remember, even if you got it correct, that doesn’t mean they’ll immediately think to answer back. After all, beginners are fairly obvious, and even if you get the question off correctly, they could just as easily be looking back and forth thinking ‘would he understand the answer?’
Not to mention, sometimes 定休日 is written quite plainly on the door before you come in. So they might be thinking ‘it was written when he came in, could he not read it?’
There’s a lot of variables to consider here beyond just ‘one specific guide has one specific word that’s useless’, especially since said word is absolutely something I would expect most Japanese store staff to be able to understand.
Only thing left is to upload audio to see if it’s an issue with pronunciation, which is what I suspect it is.