Mastering Japanese Pronunciation: Overcoming Common Challenges
Getting beyond the basics
A Silver Lining
Japanese has a reputation for being a difficult language to learn, but thankfully, there’s an upside. It’s actually one of the easier languages to pronounce. You shouldn’t have too many problems making yourself understood.
This is great news for beginners. However, pronunciation can be hard to perfect for advanced learners who already communicate successfully. People generally don’t like to correct you much. Besides, it’s usually annoying if people stop you in the middle of a fast-paced conversation to tell you, for example, that your ‘n’ is a bit off.
Improving Pronunciation
If you want to improve your pronunciation, it’s helpful to ask a Japanese teacher to give you feedback and advice. However, sometimes you can get great tips from a fellow non-native Japanese speaker.
About 16 or 17 years ago, I worked with a Spanish English teacher at a high school. I had been in Japan for about 5 or 6 years by this point and was pretty fluent in Japanese.
We had a good working relationship and she knew I was open to constructive criticism, so one day she told me that my ‘t’s and ‘d’s sounded a little funny. It…
