I’ve been learning the tongue positions, practicing them, imitating Japanese singers and people for months. But when I asked my close japanese friend for a final opinion on my pronunciation, she said it wasn’t very good.
The only phonetic I know I’m pronouncing right is my ふ sound.
I wouldn’t say I’m as bad as other people (I’ve heard worse), but it’s apparently not good enough.
Was there anything I was/am doing wrong?
I am unable to provide an example due to mp4s and such not being supported on my chromebook device. I do have this terrible male singing (I tried) of me singing matryoshka, so this is the only thing i can provide at the moment, it’s not my natural singing voice though [https://twitter.com/at\_chabosanchan/status/1603435724073828352](https://twitter.com/at_chabosanchan/status/1603435724073828352)
I would only like japanese peope to criticize it, since I want their general opinion due to my target audience being people in japan, I’m planning to be an utaite in the future (in japan obviously).
3 comments
Not Japanese myself, just another learner concerned with their own pronunciation:
I spent years studying pronunciation, mainly referring to Dogen’s Japanese Phonetics course available on his patreon. I went from sounding like a foreigner speaking Japanese to sounding like a foreigner who studied phonetics speaking Japanese.
It’s good to want to get better but in my experience:
1. You’ll never sound “Native” in a way that satisfies you, because what you’re aiming/hoping for is to one day record yourself, listen to the recording and hear someone else speaking, a new and different Japanese speaker who’d fit in with a crowd of people from the country
2. Getting good at pronouncing things is an important part of learning that is often overlooked BUT getting PERFECT at pronouncing things is a highly overvalued end-point by the people ( such as myself) who care about it. Speaking in a way that flows well and is easy to pick up to a native ear is good, speaking in a 100% naturalized way takes colossal effort for minimal returns
The audio itself: from what I could hear, you don’t sound half bad. That said, the music track is a little too loud so it’s hard to make out the specifics.
I’m not Japanese so I won’t make any sort of critique, because you specified wanting native feedback only and also because I’m no authority in either case.
Good luck with your studies, I can’t reccoment Dogen’s patreon enough!
I’m a Japanese person who wants to pronounce her English like a native speaker as well, but the road is not easy.
We have similar problems lol
I listened to you singing, but the music was louder than your voice, so I couldn’t catch your voice to criticize enough, but I think you’re doing pretty well.
As the songs by some 歌い手/utaite are really fast, it would be tricky to sing them properly even for Japanese people at the beginning.
My daughter is practicing singing those kinds of songs again and again every day while showering lol
As for just singing, I think you can improve your way of singing while you’re practicing the one song repeatedly and listening to it carefully again and again.
As for daily conversations, I think pitch accent can help you the most.
As the other person mentioned, I think Dogen is the expert on that.
Let’s keep up the great work 😉✨
Hire a Japanese voice coach (there are teachers on iTalki with musical backgrounds)