⁩Japanese teacher's secret to fluency, with @NihongoDekita

Comments · 42

• WA

  @Waybeforethefame · 1 month ago

  Shes a great teacher! Ive watched dozens of her videos

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• SU

  @suginami0 · 1 month ago (edited)

  I really enjoyed this video. Sayaka is amazing. I minored in Japanese in college, and lived and worked in Japan for Japanese companies for many years, both in Japan and the U.S. I was frequently the only English speaking person at work. I ended up marrying a Japanese girl and we moved to the U.S. where we have lived ever since. I have been speaking Japanese now for over thirty years. I've found that the most difficult parts of learning Japanese are many things. One is the particles. Wa, ga, o, ni and de. Foreigners always struggle with these, much like Japanese struggle with the, a, and an. Wa and ga are particular problems. Wa and ga can sometimes be interchanged with each other, which affects the meaning. Ga can also be switched to o. Furthermore, In Japanese you can frequently omit the article. They are understood. Adjective conjugation is not difficult. They all conjugate the same. Adjectives like Kirei are the problem. as they don't conjugate, but use "na" instead. And jukugo, Japanese compound words, are probably the biggest problem. About 80% of the characters have two pronunciations. The other 20% of characters have three or more. The worst character is “ikiru”, “to live”. It has 20 different pronunciations, and it changes pronunciation based on each word. There are also many homonyms in Japanese, which makes it worse. For example, take Turn right or Turn left. You can put left turn and right turn and put them together to make a compound word . As a noun by themselves, right is migi, left is hidari, and turn is magaru. But when you put the characters together, left turn becomes sasetsu and right turn becomes usetsu. In English the pronunciation never changes. There are thousands and thousands of jukugo. Last, I agree when Sayaka talks about needing vocabulary and courage. There's no way around it. A lot of people hesitate to just say a word when in front of the native speaker, and the native speaker doesn't even have a change to guess, "you are speaking to a native speaker in English, and they should be able to guess what they are saying". That is so true, but there is a big difference. Americans are very used to hearing non-native speakers of English. We are used to hearing English spoken very badly, with bad pronunciation and bad grammar. It is part of my every day life here in Southern California. I hear English spoken by foreigners every day of my life, and I am used to it. But I have to say my experience and those of other Japanese language learners that I've spoken to: Japanese people have a very very very low ability to understand when a foreigner tries to say something when it is not said in EXACTLY the way the Japanese person is used to hearing it. They have no idea what you are trying to say. The average Japanese person has almost no experience hearing a foreigner speaking Japanese, especially in person. They have never interacted with a foreigner trying to speak Japanese. It is probably the most frustrating thing a Japanese learner has. In my experience, and I can't stress this enough, foreigners have a huge issue when trying to speak and be understood, but the average Japanese person has little to no ability or doesn't try to understand. However, if you are trying to speak and be understood by a teacher like Sayaka, and especially with a Japanese person who speaks English, they will certainly understand you, and help you say something in the correct way so that you can be understood.

  19

• CU

  @currencykey · 1 month ago

  Love and Miss Sayaka Sensei. I had the pleasure of being at a Japan meetup and it is a precious memory! Wish her all the best! ❤

  12

• MA

  @MasterFreeze000 · 1 month ago

  サヤカ先生！！

  8

• LO

  @locuryn · 1 month ago

  Sayaka-sensei is one of my favorite teacher-youtuber. I rewatch her Listening Practice videos all the time:hands-yellow-heart-red:

  1

• M0

  @m00nie_m00n · 1 month ago

  Great interview on both parts, thanks! ありがとうございました! Merci beaucoup!<br><br>(Also: how to spot a French person? Ask them to pronounce the name Avril Lavigne 😁)

  6

• AL

  @alannikander1987 · 1 month ago

  <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=REmospWrQc4&amp;t=300">5:00</a>. So just starting this video and I’m definitely very interested… You came to America as an exchange student through university… Years ago I had hosted a total of 29 Japanese students here in the states… Most of them were through the university exchange program… Super amazing people!

  4

• KE

  @kersten2245 · 1 month ago (edited)

  Great interview, Sajaka is awesome . It was great to hear her story after watching a lot of her content. Tobi, great work, having a host that is as calm and non-intrusive as you is very refreshing. Großartige Arbeit!

  4

• ME

  @Mee-v9c7o · 1 month ago

  So glad to see you upload again

• AN

  @AniRayn · 1 month ago

  <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=REmospWrQc4&amp;t=2970">49:30</a> - I swear I&apos;m not paid by them but: that&apos;s exactly what Migaku helps with. It eliminates much of the friction when watching shows in your target language. Especially lately they introduced a feature where a translation can be displayed right underneath the subtitle of the unknown word, so you may not even need to pause if in the whole sentence you only don&apos;t know one word it has a translation right under it. Migaku also has a built-in dictionary, just hover over a word and you get the translation and can even invoke an AI explanation in the context of your subtitle. AAAND it keeps a list of words that you know so when you load up a video it immediately shows you a comprehension percentage.

  1

• BR

  @briansmout6734 · 1 month ago

  A wonderful teacher.❤❤❤

• CO

  @commayours · 1 month ago

  she&apos;s so funny and interesting!

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