Have been trying to learn Japanese language for the past few weeks. Apparently, I was subconsciously immitating not only the pronunciation, but also the pitch of the teacher in the videos that I was watching. The teacher was a female and I’m a male. I tried to pass of a few phrases with some colleagues who were visiting from Japan and utterly embarrassed myself. Luckily, they just laughed it off and was cool about it.
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Well, tell us more. What did you say? How did they react? Can you share an example of something you were imitating?
If you’re only a few weeks in you were bound to screw something up, so no big deal.
Honestly, that’s super common since a lot of Japanese language teachers are women, so don’t feel too bad about it!
It’s natural that a student would mimic their teacher’s speaking patterns, but Japanese has the added wrinkle that there’s a bigger difference between male/female speech than with many other languages.
A similar thing happened to me (female) when I was living with a host family and someone asked me if I was a very “sporty type.” But that was just because I had unconsciously started mimicking my host family’s daughter, who was a sporty high schooler.
A funny thing that sometimes happens is that gay male foreigners end up talking more “manly” than their straight counterparts, because the straights imitate their wives’ speech and the gays take after their boyfriends.
Of course not a rule bc gay Japanese guys often speak femininely. But still funny.
Oh no! THE SKY HAS FALLEN!
What’s with these facebook quality shitposts recently?
Many years ago I was talking with an old timer who was stationed in Japan in the 1960s or so. When I told him I was moving to Japan in the near future, he told me that a bunch of his army buddies took Japanese lessons during their time here, only to get laughed at that “they spoke like women” when they went out on the town. He explained that the teachers were all women, and didn’t bother to tell the students that there are some major differences (particularly in word choice) between male and female speech patterns. I really appreciated the heads up!
This is super common, even for in class lessons.
That’s a part of the language I’m not really fond of. I’m kind of a tomboy, so I’m not really looking forward to having to choose between sounding super soft and feel awkwardly against my character, or be laughed at/frown upon for sounding out of place manly to them(?).
I don’t think that’s embarrassing, you were putting time and effort into another language, that’s a really great polite thing. And the female pronunciation would be something almost all beginners (and probably beyond!) would miss ☺️☺️
Don’t worry about it. That’s great you can laugh it off.
This issue of mimicking something strange doesn’t just happen to beginners, so don’t feel embarrassed.
My uncle has been speaking feminine-like Japanese for multiple decades now, since he mainly spoke Japanese to his mother (my grandmother) and nowhere else. Unlike my mother and the rest of her siblings, he was born in the US. He rarely watched Japanese media and preferred to use English.
I was also born in the US, but unlike my uncle, I did mimic my father’s Japanese, rather than my mothers, but I only spoke it at home, or when visiting family in Kyushu where my father is from. I only found out later in my teens that my Japanese was a bit weird, when I started to visit Tokyo more often where my mother is from. I had made some friends there, and one night they pointed out some of the odd things I would occasionally say. My Japanese was peppered with things a middle-aged Kyushu guy would say, but specifically a middle-aged guy from a tiny fishing village (which is where my father is from).
I was embarrassed like you, but it wasn’t that big of deal, since I knew my Japanese was not perfect to begin with since English is my dominant language. Although it was kind of a shock though to realize you’ve been speaking a certain way for all your life and never knew about it, so at least you found out fairly quickly.
Meanwhile, I sometimes sound too masculine because I live with my Japanese husband.
Don’t worry, this is the kind of mistake that, as a Japanese-learner, can just be a nice teaching/conversation point when you’re speaking with native Japanese. It’s nothing to be overly concerned about because you’ll learn with time!
I learned Japanese with 17. From 15 year old girls.
I’m 34 now. Guess what my Japanese sounds like?
Different problem but along the same vein…
I got to the point where I could read halfway decently and began reading Japanese Manga. I was in the US and didn’t have classes or native speakers available. After years of mainly on reading Manga, I got laughed at a lot when I finally did get to meet and speak to Japanese people because I talked like Shonen protagonist. I’ve spent years remedying that but still tend to say things like ‘sugee’ instead of ‘sugoi’.
Happens to everyone, I used to greet with ごきげんよう before I understood the nuances of the phrase.
I literally did this my first time in Japan. I knew my mistake and immediately corrected it… But I’ll never say atashi again. These are profound learning experiences, just don’t be hard on yourself.
Now you can have fun with speaking that way on purpose when you want to 😅. I recommend adding the beginner level of the podcasts Nihongo con Teppei and Japanese with Shun to your learning rotation to get some male voices/speakers in the mix to imitate.
A quick way to get a sense for masculine/feminine ways of speaking would be to watch Aggretsuko (on Netflix, in Japanese)- episodes are short, but you have a good cast of characters to compare to each other.