Speaking, pitch accent and writing Japanese

Everyone agrees input matters. On output, well-known learners disagree, and all of them have succeeded:

The author of A Year to Learn Japanese (opens in a new tab) tried both extremes across four languages. The language they had read the most in, Japanese, was the one they could express themselves in most precisely; but the one they'd spoken from day one, Russian, was the one they felt most comfortable speaking. Their conclusion: input builds what you could say, and only speaking makes it come out smoothly.

A reasonable default: immerse first, start low-pressure speaking once you can follow simple conversations in what you watch, and speak sooner if you're moving to Japan or simply want to.

• Get the sounds right. The pronunciation section covers the handful of sounds that give English speakers away.
• Record and compare. Pick a short line from something you like, record yourself, listen to both, and fix one difference. Repeat every week or two.
• Shadow. Speak along with audio a split second behind the speaker, copying rhythm and melody rather than just words. Not everyone rates it, but it's a good way to find sounds you can't make yet.
• Script your self-introduction. Write what you'd say about yourself, have a tutor or exchange partner correct it and record it naturally, then practise along with their recording until it's smooth. It feels artificial, but you'll say it in every first conversation, and it takes the fear out of the first one.
• Learn a few lifelines. もう一度お願いします (once more, please), ゆっくり話してください (please speak slowly), 〜ってどういう意味ですか (what does ... mean?), 日本語で何と言いますか (how do you say it in Japanese?).
• Know plain from polite. The sounding natural chapter covers when to use which, and the casual forms you'll hear back.

Where to find them

• Tutors on italki (opens in a new tab) and similar sites: paid, patient, and there to help. For early conversations you don't need an expensive teacher, just a patient one.
• Language exchange: apps like HelloTalk (opens in a new tab) and communities like the English-Japanese Language Exchange Discord pair you with Japanese speakers learning English. Free, but half the time is in English and quality varies.

Early conversations

The first few will be full of “I want to say this and can't.” That's the point. Your only goals are to get through them, note what you couldn't say, and bring one new thing to each session. You'll improve quickly at first, partly because most of the fear turns out to be unfounded.

Getting more out of them later

Once small talk is easy, it stops teaching you much. A Year to Learn Japanese suggests three habits:

• Prepare: bring questions from your reading, retell a story you watched, or argue a position on a topic within a time limit.
• Prime: keep a list of words and patterns from your input that you want to try out, and use them.
• Flag: note what you struggled to say, then watch for how native speakers say it in your immersion. Output gives your input direction.

English marks words with stress (loudness and length): university. Japanese marks them with pitch instead: each word has a pattern of high and low across its beats. In Tokyo speech there are four pattern types, and a handful of words are told apart by pitch alone:

How much does it matter? You'll be understood with mistakes, because context almost always makes the word clear. But pitch is a big part of what makes an accent sound foreign, and it's much easier to learn early than to fix later. Accents also differ by region (Osaka's is famously different), so “correct” usually means Tokyo standard.

Resources

• OJAD (opens in a new tab), from the University of Tokyo, is free: it shows the pitch of thousands of words and all their conjugations, with audio, and its Suzuki-kun tool marks the pitch of any sentence you paste.
• kotu.io (opens in a new tab) trains your ear with minimal pairs, so you can check whether you actually hear the difference.
• Kaishi 1.5k can show pitch accent on its cards, and Yomitan can show it in lookups with a pitch dictionary.
• Dogen's course on Patreon is the best-known structured course; it's paid.

Writing sentences is output, like speaking, and the same advice applies: it follows input, and it improves with feedback. A short daily diary corrected now and then by a tutor or exchange partner works well; so does writing messages to people you actually talk to.

Writing kanji by hand is a separate skill; see the kanji chapter. Typing is what you'll use day to day, and the kana chapter explains how.