How to learn to speak Japanese. How to learn Japanese on your own from scratch? Mentor or language school
Have you ever thought about how a Japanese person sounds when he speaks Russian? Japanese language has limited quantity phonetic sounds, while other languages, such as English or German, and even more so Russian, have a much larger variety of sounds. So, the Japanese must diligently study those sounds that they have never used before.
To learn how to speak with the correct Japanese accent, you need to plunge into the language atmosphere, for example, go to study at a language school in Japan.
But for starters, you can use the following steps to try and speak like a Japanese with an appropriate accent.
Learning sounds
Let's look at some examples that will help improve pronunciation using the example of English.
1. Say "R" like "L". "R" actually sounds a little weird - it's a mix of "R" and "L", but it's not easy for the Japanese to pronounce this sound, so you can just say "Lu". So "Far" would be "Falu" (a very weak "u").
2. Say "A" like "Ai". So the "A" in "Are" would be a soft "Airu" (very weak "u")
3. Say "D" like "Do". So the "D" in "Cold" would be a very soft "Do" instead of a very soft "Duh" in English.
4. Say "L" like "Ru". So "Cold" would be "Corudo" (a very soft "u" and ends in "o") instead of "Col-duh" in English.
5. Change the hard "Th" to "S". Therefore, the word "Think" will be pronounced "Sink".
6. Change the soft "Th" to "Z". So "The" becomes "Ze".
7. Change the words ending in "S" or "Th" so that they end in "Su" or "Zu". So "Is" would be "Izu" or "Isu" and "Smith" would be "Sumisu". For example:
- "Hello, my name is John Smith" would be "Haruro, my naimu izu John Sumisu"
8. Replace "V" with "B". So "Very" is pronounced like "Bery".
9. Say "B" like "Bu".
10. Say "F" like "Hu". So "Fish" will be "Hish".
11. Break words into syllables. Instead of thinking about the pronunciation of "Carikter", try to focus on the pronunciation of each syllable of "Cah-lic-tel".
12. Try to say the sentence "It's very cold in here." It will sound "Ittsu beri korudo in hiaa".
Practice
In order to learn Japanese and its pronunciation, language practice is needed.
1. First, slowly connect the sounds, changing the pronunciation: “It's very funny” to “It-su be-ry hon-ey”.
2. Say the sentences out loud and speed up with a Japanese accent. For example, you could talk about what you did/are going to do today.
3. Listen to Japanese speaking English or Russian. It can be on video or in real life if you are familiar with the Japanese.
4. Repeat after them the pronunciation of words and phrases.
5. Write down words and phrases with accent on syllables to read these sounds.
6. Write down the phrase "Write it how it sounds", which becomes "Raito itto hau itto saunzu".
7. Start slow and speed up as you practice:
- Brilliant - bu-rui-rui-ant;
- Concentration - cono-sano-tu-re-sono ("no" has a very soft "o");
- Force -foa-su (very weak "u");
- Frapacchino-fu-rah-peh-chee-naw;
- Girls - ga-ars (gualrus);
- Hello - ha-ru-rō (very weak "u");
- Homework - hō-mu-waa-ku (very weak "u");
- McDonalds (3 syllables) - Ma-Ku-Do-Na-Ru-Do-Zu (7 syllables)
- Really - riiri (ruilrui);
- Screen (1 syllable) - Ssu-ku-rin-no (4 syllables).
Applying an accent
1. Make a performance, stand-up, skit or make a video where you will speak with a Japanese accent.
2. Use the new accent for fun and relaxation, in a pleasant, friendly and kind manner, don't be rude or mean.
- Record video with sound on your phone and listen. Study them.
- Make an audio recording (such as an MP3) so you can listen and learn on headphones without looking at the screen.
Warning
- Parody can embarrass or anger the Japanese.
Learning Japanese is becoming popular not only in America and Europe, but also in Russia. The peculiar culture and unusual language attract the attention of foreigners, but in order to understand the Japanese, you need to know their language.
You will need
- Japanese textbook for beginners, Japanese audio course for beginners, checkered notebooks, Russian-Japanese dictionary, Japanese-Russian dictionary
Instruction
Learning any foreign language starts with correct pronunciation his sounds. In Japanese, most of the sounds practically coincide with their Russian counterparts, but the pronunciation of some is difficult for a Russian-speaking person. These are the sounds r and sh. For their correct pronunciation, you need to study the articulation of these sounds (description of the correct position of the organs of speech during pronunciation).
Teaching speaking is meaningless apart from other sections of the language. So, in order to write down words and sayings, you need to master the Japanese alphabet. In Japanese, there are several alphabets and ways of writing characters. The simplest of these, romaji, is based on the Latin alphabet. This alphabet is not originally Japanese, it appeared in the 20th century and immediately became widespread for its simplicity and ease of use. Another alphabet necessary for writing words is hiragana. This alphabet can be used to write down all the words, it is with it that they begin training before proceeding to hieroglyphics.
When teaching Japanese, both in speaking and writing, you will encounter interesting feature. The Japanese language is syllabic, that is, syllabic, and all words are divided not into sounds and letters, but into short syllables.
The Japanese language has another significant difference from Russian or any other European language. A clearly distinguishable stress in words is absent in the speech of the Japanese, and instead of it there is a peculiar melodic stress. The selected syllable is pronounced above the rest, and the centers of statements are accompanied by smooth transitions. Such melody in speech is often a great difficulty in learning.
When learning to speak, remember that you need audio recordings of native speakers. The more information you absorb by ear, the faster and easier you will be able to correctly pronounce words and phrases in Japanese.
Japanese culture is slowly taking over the world. Japanese cuisine, Japanese comics and cartoons, Japanese writers, Japanese martial arts and Japanese music - all this attracts the attention of young people. Many people in different countries there is a desire to learn Japanese in order to better understand Japanese culture. If you are also interested in how to speak one of them, read the article below.
Instruction
Contact language centre. The most effective solution for learning any language from scratch is to go to a language center to learn the basics of the language. There you can get acquainted with the spelling and pronunciation of native speakers. This pleasure will not be cheap, but the effectiveness of the classes will be much higher than you would teach it yourself.
Listen to Japanese pronunciation. In order to improve your pronunciation, you should get carried away watching anime in the original with subtitles and listening to Japanese music. Listen to the native speakers and try to imitate the sounds. If at the same time you can still understand what you are talking about, then this will be an ideal picture for you.
Communicate more often with the Japanese. To be able to speak, it is not enough just to know the language. To do this, you will need language practice. Another question is how to find it. It is possible to go to Japan and fully immerse yourself in the Japanese language and Japanese culture, but it is quite expensive. And not everyone will be able to drop everything and leave, someone is kept by the family, someone is working.
So you need to invite the Japanese to your place. There is a fairly well-known community on the Internet called ‘Couchsurfing’. Its meaning is that after registration, you can go to any country and live for free with any member of the community, while getting acquainted with the culture of the country. In addition, you can host any member of the community from any country as a guest. Including from Japan.
This is where you can practice your conversational Japanese and learn the various subtleties and nuances of the language.
note
Japanese alphabet with translation into Russian. Modern Japanese has two syllabaries: hiragana and katakana. For example, the expression "bon appetit" in the Japanese hiragana alphabet is written as follows: and pronounced as "itadakimas". And this means “sorry” in Japanese and is read as “sumimasen”. Japanese katakana alphabet.
Useful advice
How to start learning Japanese? Probably, like any other language, from the alphabet. But in Japan there are two of them, namely Katakana and Hiragana. Katakana is generally used to write words that are of non-Japanese origin, i.e. borrowed from other languages. Katakana is also used to write the names of plants and animals.
Those who learned a foreign language at school, and then spoke with native speakers, probably noticed that the spoken language is different from what we are taught. This does not mean that we are not taught correctly in school. We are taught the basics of the language, taught to correctly compose phrases, and build speech from phrases. This may not be colloquial speech, but you can’t keep up with colloquial speech, and school skills will help us at least guess what the person is talking about. And how can we master natural conversational speech?
I'm currently in a close conversation on Twitter with Masayuki from Japan, who periodically corrects me to make my speech sound like a natural Japanese woman. This is usually limited to the use of particles (for example, but instead of Yes) or colloquial synonyms (for example, syaberu instead of khanas). Of course, I pay attention to this, but I'm not particularly worried. As a non-Japanese woman, it is difficult for me to determine that this way the phrase will sound in Japanese-Japanese, and this way - in Gaijin-Japanese. I rely more on the effect of imitation. I noticed that when I talk a lot with a person, I begin to speak in the same manner, use the same words as he does.
I encountered the effect of imitation when I decided to practice my English in ICQ (it was 2003). I found a girlfriend in America and began to communicate (and we still communicate). I was crazy about her English. It was not the English that I was learning. He was not incomprehensible, he was a little different.
Zadornov laughs that English language- this is the language of information: you can’t say love you I there, etc. - everyone probably heard it. But they have nowhere to go, they have no cases. I don't know about British, but American English was not so strict. The girlfriend deftly rearranged the members of the sentence, and those words that should, in theory, go at the end, easily went at the beginning. And I realized that in colloquial speech strict rules are unprincipled and began to speak just like her. But not because “but don’t care, and so it will come down, he will understand”, but out of imitation.
It's the same in Japanese. Words or sentences may be interchanged, some may be omitted altogether. Here you can only remember some phrases or principles for constructing simple sentences. For example, often the final verb is used in the form of a noun:
Instead of core then core wa tigaimas ka?
They will say core then core wa chigai ga arimas ka (aru ka)? Is there a difference between this and this?
Or I noticed that if the sentence reflects the past tense, this past tense goes as if inside the sentence, and ends its linking verb in the present tense
For example, in Japanese there is a construction had to do something in two versions:
…sieves koto ga aru and …sura koto ga atta.
So the Japanese would rather say …sieves koto ga aru. Or, for example, kita n des instead of kimashita.
Of course, this manner of speaking is not an axiom. Sometimes they say this, sometimes that. Everything will not fit into your head right away, so the only way out is to communicate more and get used to it. And do not worry and be afraid that you will say something stupid to the Japanese. If you did not learn stupidity and swearing, then everything will be fine. And if something is wrong, then you will always be corrected.
Against the backdrop of endless English-language dictionaries and phrasebooks, I wanted to see something new. Even for those who will never go to Japan, I think it will be interesting to taste the words of the country of the Rising Sun.
List short phrases that can help in the conversation:
- Yes_________ Hi
2. No_________Iie
3. I understand _________ Wakarimas
4. I don't understand _________ Wakarimasen
5. Thank you_________Arigato
6. Please_________Before you save
7. Please (offering) _________ To: zo
8. Please (request) _________ Onegai Shimas
9. Sorry_________Sumimasen
10. It's okay _________Give jobu desh.
11. Let's get started!_________SA: HAJIMEMASE:
12. Good morning! _________ OHAYE: GOZAIMAS
13. Good afternoon! _________ KONNITHI VA
14. Good evening! _________ KONBAN WA
15. How is your health? _________ OGENKI DES KA
16. Thank you, good_________ ARIGATO: GENKI DES
17. How are you? _________ IKAGAG DES KA
18. How long have we not seen each other! _________ HISASIBURI NE
19. Please!_________BEFORE: DZO
20. Goodbye! _________ SAE: A
21. See you soon!_________MATA OME NI
22. See you!_________DZYA: MATA
23. See you tomorrow!_________ME: NICHI OME NI KAKARIMASE
24. See you tomorrow! _________MATA ASYTA
25. I beg your pardon_________GO MENG NASAI
26. Can you help me?_________O NEGAI ITASIMAS 27. Sorry to bother you _________ SUMIMASEN DESITA
28. May I come in?_________HAITTEMO Ii DES KA
29. Thank you very much!_________TO: MO ARIGATO: GOZAMASITA
30. Not worth a thank you_________BEFORE: ITASHIMASHITE
31. It's okay! _________ ARIGATO: GENKI DES
32. Congratulations!_________OMEDETTO:
33. Thank you for your help!_________ GOKEKEKO ARIGATO: GOZAIMAS
34. Thank you for the invitation!_________ GOSE: TAI ARIGATO: GOZAIMAS
35. Thank you for everything!_________ IROIRO TO DO: MO ARIGATO:
36. Thank you for the wonderful gift!_________KEKKO NA: PUREZENTO ARIGATO: GOZAIMAS
37. Pleased to meet you!
38. My name is _________ WATASI NO NAMAE WA DES
39. Write your first and last name _________ ANATA NO NAMAE TO ME: DZI O KAITE KUDASAI
40. Here is my business card
41. Very nice to meet you _________OME NI KAKARETE TAIHENG URESIY DES
42. Let's get to know each other!_________ DEVA SE: KAISIMAS
43. Meet Mr. _________SAN O SE:KAISIMAS
44. I want to introduce you to Mr. _________ SAN O SE: KAISITAI NODES
45. Allow me to introduce to you Mr. _________ SAN O GES: KAI ITASIMAS
46. Do you speak English?_________Eigo oh hanasemas-ka?
47. I don't speak Japanese _________ Nigongo wa hanase-masen
48. Please speak slower kudasai
49. Goodbye_________ Sayo:nara
50. Good night _________ Oh yasumi nasai
51. Take care of yourself _________ O ki o tsukete
52. And to you the same _________ Kochira askance
53. How do you use it?_________Kore about doyate tsukaimaska?
54. What is it? _________ Kore wa nandeska?
55. Where is the toilet?_________About toire va dokodeska?
56. Where is...?_________...wa doko desk?
57. What time is it? _________ Nanji desk?
58. _________
59. you (you) _________ anata
60. he_________carz
62. she__________kanojo
63. woman _________ josei
64. man _________ dansei
65. wife _________ okusan
66. husband _________ shyujin
67. daughter_________musume
68. child_________kodomo
69. son_________musuko
Of course, learning Japanese from scratch does not happen at the snap of your fingers, and it takes a lot of time to devote to it - just like any other foreign language. But although it cannot be learned only after watching the anime, it is easier to learn than it seems at first glance. Why this is so, and not otherwise, and how to learn Japanese step by step - we tell for beginners.
What makes Japanese easy to learn
Time to dispel a few myths about the Japanese language and prove that learning it can be quite easy in many ways. For example:
Learning kanji just got a whole lot easier
What scares Japanese beginners the most is the kanji, or Chinese characters used in Japanese writing. However, now they can be learned much faster thanks to the development of technology and the emergence of smartphones and special applications. One has only to learn romaji - the order of romanization of Japanese syllables - and you can look up kanji on the Internet, an online dictionary and type them on your computer using tooltips.
Japanese writing is not only hieroglyphs
In addition to Chinese characters, each of which can represent single word, in Japanese there are two more writing systems, that is, two alphabets - hiragana and katakana. They are symbols with which individual syllables and words are written. At the same time, mostly words of non-Japanese origin are written in katakana, and Japanese words for which there are no kanji are written in hiragana. They are much easier to remember, and subsequently distinguish in the text, read and write.
Lots of borrowings from English
Good news for those who study English: words borrowed from it are quite large group Japanese vocabulary. For example, wife ("wife") in Japanese was transformed into waifu, news ("news") - into nyuusu, etc. Of course, in Japanese these words are pronounced a little differently than in English, but their phonetic pattern is very similar. Once you learn the rules of Japanese pronunciation of foreign words, you will notice English borrowings without much difficulty.
Easy pronunciation
And since we are talking about pronunciation, it is quite simple in Japanese. In fact, it contains only 5 vowels and 14 consonants. Many sounds even almost coincide with the sounds in more familiar English, for example, konnichiwa can be transposed to English transcription how . Japanese pronunciation is easier to learn because there are no diphthongs - a fused combination of two vowel sounds (like [əʊ] in the English word tone or like in the German word Reich), or a confluence of consonants (like in the word "hello" or the word angsts) . Also, unlike many other East Asian languages such as Chinese, Thai, and Vietnamese, Japanese is non-tonal.
Noun gender? Did not hear!
French, Italian and other Romance languages are complicated by the presence of two or even three genders of nouns - masculine, feminine and neuter. But when you try to learn Japanese, you don't have to torture yourself by cramming noun forms.
Syllables are only pronounced one way
Again, compare Japanese with English, where the same combination of sounds may differ in pronunciation in different cases, for example: apple, vary, able, where the sound [a] in different syllables is pronounced as [æ], , . Learning Japanese in this regard is much easier, since all of its 45 basic syllables are read in only one way and nothing else.
How to Learn Japanese Fast - Tips for Beginners
If you still do not know how to learn Japanese, or rather, where to start learning it, then pay attention to the following instructions. In it, we briefly described the main steps that will help beginner students who want to learn the language on their own, structure the information received and organize the learning process.
- You need to start with writing, namely the syllabary alphabets that we mentioned above - hiragana and katakana. This is how they look:
The most effective way to learn these alphabets is by constant repetition, as we did in school with the multiplication table. Learn spelling, pronunciation, and romaji for each alphabet at the same time.
- Choose a Japanese textbook to follow next. It is the textbook that will help you not only randomly learn words and phrases, but also gain an adequate understanding of the structure of the language, learn the most common vocabulary, master grammar and other rules.
Try to find a complete Japanese textbook: along with workbook, tasks, test answers and audio files to help you practice pronunciation and listening comprehension. Minna no Nihongo, one of the the best textbooks which will help to learn Japanese for beginners.
- The next step is to learn kanji. Just memorizing the hieroglyphs will not work, so you have to find good literature, which will help you understand the principle of their formation and suggest colorful examples - without context, there is nowhere. Start by studying graphemes - these are the constituent parts of hieroglyphs, the “bricks” that each of them is made up of. Learn them - and memorizing kanji will be much easier.
We advise you to take “1000 hieroglyphs in aphorisms, proverbs and sayings”, “Japanese-Russian educational dictionary of hieroglyphs”, “The path of a tailless bird” by A.I. Talyshkhanova, “Japanese for the soul. Kandzya essays" by A.M. Vurdov. For those who know English, the book by James Heisig "Remembering the Kanji" (James W. Heisig "Remembering the Kanji") in 3 volumes is also suitable.
- Continuing to study kanji with new vocabulary and strengthen grammar, start watching anime, films with subtitles - watch first with Russian, and then with Japanese. Read in Japanese: You can start with a children's manga that uses simple phrases and pictures, and then move on to more complex ones. When knowledge begins to allow, go to Japanese newspapers and books. Learn more about manga with which you can learn Japanese in the video:
- And, of course, try to find yourself a Japanese interlocutor. If there are none in your city and you cannot go to Japan, use social networks to study foreign languages, mobile applications, Skype, etc. - there are a lot of possibilities.
We hope this guide has answered the question of where to start learning Japanese and made it easier for you to understand it. We wish you success in your studies!
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