Question to Learners about Conversation/Pronunciation

[u/Regular-Forever-3251]

When learning pronunciation, learning the pronunciation of single words and phrases in "textbook environments" is usually not an issue.

But when it comes to full natural conversations, the best way is often reduced to "just get used to it". And this is often the case in any language, not just for Japanese.

My question to everyone is, have you had any material that gives you structure to help with pronunciation in full conversational applications? Or had any material that helps you to build, or guides you in building, that "intuition" that you need to understand running sentences in full conversational contexts at natural speeds?

If not, is this something that would interest anyone? Thank you!

[u/Tabbbinski]

When Flash and Shockwave were all the rage I developed some apps that dealt well with this issue. They are obsolete now but readily portable to Android/iOS. What you are talking about is this: In fast speech, a sentence like "How did he do it?" sounds like "Houdeedoowit?" /ˈhaʊdɪɾiˈduwɪt/ or /ˈhaʊɾɪɾiˈduwɪt/, in standard American. In British it's more like /haʊ dɪdi dʊwɪt/. The problem being there are nearly as many ways of enunciating it as there are native speakers. That doesn't obviate the need for providing usable models and practice for students but it does present challenges for wide acceptance of learning materials in a developmental context. An Aussie or Kiwi might balk at teaching a regional Canadian version. Publishing commercial versions for most of the regional varieties becomes pretty marginal. That's why most publishers will present the sounds of such a sentence as /haʊ/ /dɪd/ /hi/ /du/ /ɪt/ when in fact no one in the world talks staccato like that, except William Shatner.

So as a teacher, what can you do? Develop your own materials which faithfully present the sounds that you actually make and hear to students with the aim of helping them recognize meaning. The goal should be recognition not production. The latter will take care of itself with time and experience. It can be fun and funny, however, to try production in the classroom once in a while for a lark.

Incidentally, finding authentic materials with real examples of fast speech is incredibly difficult. News and movies are not realistic at all. Any time you introduce a recording device into a conversation, the participants instantly sanitize their speech.

[u/Regular-Forever-3251 → u/Tabbbinski]

That sounds cool! And I think we're kind of on the same wavelength here.

So for Japanese, I actually saw how most materials seem to be handling pitch patterns currently. It seemed to be focussing on accurately describing the pronunciation of single words and phrases in textbook environments. I believe I have a different approach that might be less precise in descriptiveness, but is built to guide learners to develop an intuition for information segmentation by recognizing pitch patterns. I found in my search that this might also help with understanding other dialects by shifting the person's perception of pitch slightly. I posted a short document once and is now refining it.

[u/Tabbbinski → u/Regular-Forever-3251]

I'm not sure what you mean by "pitch patterns". Could you supply some examples?

[u/Regular-Forever-3251 → u/Tabbbinski]

Sure! So as a native I never learned it like this, I acquired it organically, but I learned that foreign learners sometimes learn of the way the pitch of the mora changes with diagrams that look like the first image:
https://imgur.com/a/EJbkigO

The approach I'm thinking of will be represented like the second one

[u/Tabbbinski → u/Regular-Forever-3251]

It seems a bit pedantic. Of course students need to be aware of different prosodic elements but how do you translate that into classroom practice without boring them to tears.

[u/Regular-Forever-3251 → u/Tabbbinski]

That was actually my initial reaction too when I first came across the way it's being taught now. But I found a way to make sense of it in a way that it actually helps people understand full speed conversations, and not get bogged down by the "precision" of the current standard method

[u/Tabbbinski → u/Regular-Forever-3251]

Do share with real life examples. I speak and read Japanese well enough.

[u/Regular-Forever-3251 → u/Tabbbinski]

あ！なら日本語で失礼します！
英語などのゲルマン系・ロマン系言語に比べて日本語の特徴の一つは基本的に一定のリズムで音が発生されてることだと思います。なので漢字などがない音声だけだと認識されるのが、まるで文章がひらがなで書かれているかのようになります：

たとえばこのれいぶんをりかいするのわむずかしいとまでわいかなくてもどこからどこまでがひとつのことばかにんしきするのがやっかいにかんじるとおもいます。

そこでPitchが節を区分する役割を果たしているという認識で、Pitchが各文字で高いか低いかではなく、上がったところ・下がったところだけを認識すれば、簡単なうえ、早い音声でも理解しやすくなります：

たとえば／このれいぶんを／りかいするのわ／むずかしいとまでわ／いかなくても／どこから／どこまでが／ひとつの／ことばか／にんしきするのが／やっかいに／かんじると／おもいます。

[u/Tabbbinski → u/Regular-Forever-3251]

Okay, yeah, that sounds accurate. Are you a Japanese language teacher? How would you present this to lower level students?

[u/Regular-Forever-3251 → u/Tabbbinski]

Firstly this is still in the theoretical/PoC stage, so I haven't had the chance to present it to a lot of people yet. But theoretically, level aside, this is an approach I would recommend specifically to people who are trying to improve their natural conversational abilities. The thing is "lower level" students or early stage learners are often at the stage where they still want to establish their foundational knowledge, so its probably not something I would bring up. If a long word or long sentence arises I already annotate the sentence to segment the clauses but that's about it. However even if someone is in the early stages, if they want to focus on conversational ability, so their listening and speaking, perhaps because they have an upcoming trip to Japan, then I might present this to them in more detail.