Should your 'Japanese voice' sound different?

oh so this is what you sound like in english.... i was always wondering.

I notice that Americans always have trouble saying place names such as "Yokosuka."

I like the video in general. But why didn’t you find more native pronunciations for the English parts?? You even mention it at the end so you should have noticed…

Thank you Dogen San this blew my mind!

I've noticed that when language learners speak Mandarin that they sound pretty good. I think it is because their tones have to be exact or no one will understand them.

I noticed that people who are willing to "play act" in their new language will have a more authentic accent. Some claim that it doesn't feel natural but that's what it takes.

When I speak Spanish my voice is higher and more nasal. (My first language is English. My second, Spanish)

My Best friend in highschool when she started talking in Japanese gets high pitched... But her native English and Korean sound the same. Her Mom (who is Korean) says it sounds fake, and her Mom who also speaks Japanese is trying to get her to correct her pitch, so she doesn't sound like an annoying little child.

I was teased a little bit for using a different voice when speaking Japanese, however I just explained that for different languages, I have to use different parts of my throat to get the pronunciations right. And so doing that happens to change my voice a little as well.

my mother tongue is spanish, and when i talk in english my voice goes deeper. i think it's because i relax more when i speak english? maybe because it's not the language that's spoken in my country, so i'm more relaxed idk

When I speak any other Language than English, I have such a　ｈｉｇｈ　voice 😂

A clear example of this is my name
In Japanese speaking style, Yu-Ji feels like two separate words almost
In English speaking, Yuji is more so spoken as one word

I speak 4 different languages and I have a different voice and in a way personality for each as it's easier for me to speak and remember the languages if I have a different persona.

Sounds more like a japanese vs a Chinese speaker

Dogen,Do you have instagram?

ok wow, now i FEEL tired

My Japanese professor was a male and I'm a female, which was not great for my accent😑

Japanese makes you speak in a higher pitch lol. But I think its also to sound passive/submissive, especially if you are speaking to a stranger.

the "japanese style" sounds artificial to me kind of like a really good AI voice. the "american style" sounded natural or comfortable.

The more I listen to Japanise spoken by Japanise the more I don't think the voice sounds like anything except a voice.

Me: おいコラ！

This was super cool! Thanks for sharing!

I'm a native Spanish speaker and the Japanese speaking style sounds more like if I were trying to say the words as a Spanish Speaker vs English Speaker.

Thank you im bilingual and im having this issue

I'm a Japanese Italian bilingual, teaching Japanese language. Thank you for the vid , an equivalent approach to my Italian students I guess will be useful

I like how your speaker also showed us the difference in the pronunciation of wa when speaking the word kawaii in both styles, even though we were focusing on the end of the word.

I’m learning Swedish on Duolingo, and my voice goes much deeper. I’m not sure why 😆

This subject is one of the reasons I prefer to sometimes approach language as a personality to be related to rather than an object to be studied.

I speak four languages and dabble in two more. Each of them requires you set your tongue, jaw, throat, and whatnot differently. So your voice changes indeed.

When I speak German I have a lower voice than when I speak russian. I'm a native speaker of both. And when I speak English, wich I learned mainly through ghe internet (immersion yk), My voice is even deeper.

more like accent imo. The way different languages pronounce vowels and consonants which follow different consonants or vowels. It's all taught tongue movements to make a sound.

I thought you were gonna say "yu ruku taiyado" 😂😂😂😂

As an American bilingual expatriate living in Japan for over 16 years, I find it very difficult to hear the difference in the female's enunciation between the Japanese and English style of speaking. The difference is so minute, it's practically non-existent. Not a great demonstration of how Americans and Japanese styles differ...

You can tell when a Japanese person has learned English only within Japan versus one that lived abroad for a time and picked up English nuances. Unfortunately, you fail to demonstrate that here.

I don’t know what she’s doing, but she’s not mimicking our students at all. The English accent in Japanese is subtle and mostly what I have trouble with is timing mora with my students.

She is really trying to go for the ultra lazy student that didn’t mean to take the Japanese class to begin with and is just being annoying for the sake of being annoying.

If you got students to make examples, that would be great, as native Japanese speakers have a very small range. Mimicking is a very rare talent in Japan.

I wonder if there's a video about the "vocal growl" that I noticed is very common with Japanese women and Japanese voice actors who have what could be considered a cute voice, instead of vocal fry they end their sentences with a sort of "growl", do you know about that? 🤔

can we get a male ver

this is SO interesting and the nuances between the concepts of two speaking styles are just fascinating. I feel like this is totally not about accent and feel the sudden realization. damn, it’s just really interesting, the whole language thing. thanks for doing this Dogen san.

No. I don't cringe at all when she switches her speaking style, and her voice is fundamentally the same, she is just altering her tone and cadence. Even then, I can immediately tell she is not a native speaking English speaker anyways, and she has to exaggerate it, so in the end I prefer her speaking English in a way that is natural to her.

Natives can identify non-natives effortlessly, so why struggle? Learn it properly but don't expect to sound local, and that goes for every language.

Every video you look thinner and thinner. Please take care of yourself.

YOUR NOT SUPPOSED TO LOSE YOUR NORMAL VOICE, this shows that when you learned and learn speach,
you dont learn the words and speak them
Your trying to imitate the voice your hearing itself,
and thisis very incorrect and why so many people sound generic

Hearing a female voice repeating to me « you look tired » 16 times in a row was a bit hard !

I used AI tool to translate Asmongold's speech to Russian, and even though the voice is similar, it just sounds different

Damn you, Dogen, damn you. I never realized I trailed off, but now I noticed it and now it's tormenting me.

Grew up bilingual and then learned English, my voice is definitely different, and I’ve been working backwards to make them more similar. I think bc I used French in school the most, my voice ended up quite academic and soft, submissive even, so I’ve had to train myself out of it.

Yeah but you don't have to sound THAT different. Like don't just do an impression of a Japanese person

Bilingual myself (native FR) i've always noticed this and it "makes sense" to me, but having it explained in a more tangible way is fascinating. Part of it i think is that difference languages have a different "flow" to them. The intonation, emphasis, inflextions, etc... for a given sentence tends to have a particular "standard" in each language aswell. And also that some of patterns of the speech (pronounciations, spaces, etc...) lends itself to having a higher or lower pitched voice or even personality depending on the language. There's just a feel to each sentence in different languages that i can't quite describe but i know is there, and trying to explain it is certainly frustrating haha. Neither the video nor what i typed here fully captures it.

But i definitely agree that the things you point out are part of it, the difference in vocal "techniques", the cadence/rhythm of the sentence, etc...

When I was 22 I was taking a 9 month immersion in Montreal in French. I told my host family that I thought that we become a different person when speaking another language. We invent a new character. They disagreed. I still hold fast to this idea. I still feel that I am a slightly different person when speaking French. I think that there is a central core to who we are. Then , we add language on top of our natural character as a vocal character. Like an actor who plays the same character, in a sequel production. This analogy is only a roughly accurate description, though. There is much more to it. Some people feel threatened when they consider this idea. I don't fully understand why.