Business Communication in Action 実践ビジネス英語
Hello everyone. こんにちは。みなさん。
Hello and welcome to the show.
This is Heather Howard.
Let's take a look at conversation at work.
Accent Reduction Training (6)
Talk the talk
S: Now in our current vignette, the H & B staff discuss
accent reduction training in which people work to bring themselves
closer to an American accent in English.
Have you ever done anything like that with Japanese, Heather?
H: I have, actually.
Some things I did is part of my Japanese classes in college.
Others I worked out of my own.
But I have taken various steps over the years to bring my Japanese
closer to the way people in Tokyo speaking.
One example involves the "te" sound.
When we make the "te" sound in English, our mouth tends to widen,
stretching out to the side.
However, I noticed that native speakers of Japanese drop their
jaws down when they say "te", making a shaper, shorter sound.
So I made a conscious effort to pronounce it that way.
With definitely a case of practice makes perfect,
first I had to think about it every time often
saying words over again the correct way.
But now I automatically drop my jaw down when I say "te."
S: Hmmm. Interesting.
What else have you worked to adjust in your Japanese speech?
H: The particles "ga", "wa", and "o"
also give non-native speakers trouble.
We tend to put too much emphasis on them.
And they jump out from our speech like Jack-in-the-boxes.
So I came up with a mental training of thinking of
all these particles as part of the word before them.
And that naturally deemphasizes the particle, makes it softer.
So I end up saying, "Mizu o kudasai", instead of "Mizu O kudasai."
Also a lot of foreigners say, "desuga."
But in that case, the proper sound is "desu nga."
There's an n sound in there.
That's one I learned from a Japanese teachers in college.
S: Hmmm. What else did they teach you about natural Japanese speech?
H: One thing they particularly emphasized was the pronunciation
of loanwords from English.
As native speakers of English, the other students
and I tended to say words like "bus" and "table" in their
original pronunciations, but our teachers would always tell us
no, that's wrong, those are not the Japanese words.
It's "basu" and "tehburu."
S: Have you studied any other languages besides Japanese?
H: None for anywhere near the same length of time
or with the same dedication.
I took some French in middle school as a required course,
but I must confess I was not very good at it.
I've always been grateful that Japanese didn't require me
to memorize whether words were masculine or feminine.
In more recent years, I've tried my hand at a little Italian and German.
But I spent so much time with Japanese
that it's affected my efforts with other tongues.
Somehow I feel that all foreign languages are Japanese.
And I filter them through what I've learned about it.
That's why my husband laughed and laughed when we are
practicing some Italian together before our honeymoon to Italian.
He told me I was probably the only Caucasian woman
in the world who spoke Italian with the Japanese accent.
Apparently my intonation was very level
without the usual ups and downs of Italian.
That's all for today.
Always a pleasure. Bye, bye.
