“No one in Japan understands me when I speak Japanese!”
No one?
No one at all?
Are you sure?
Seriously though, let’s look at a few reasons why this might be happening…
Location
Because, location matters! Are we visiting a very rural area where people are not really using standard Japanese? Perhaps they are not expecting to hear our Tokyo-learned dialect?
Experience
But, they might not have the experience! Are we speaking to children who may have never heard a non-native Japanese accent and so haven’t had the experience to train their ears?
Challenges
And finally…Are we speaking to the hard-of-hearing, the shy, the nervous…
Summary
We can see that there could be many reasons why the person we spoke to did not understand us, because, actually, this problem is very common…Check out this video
So as the video illustrates:
1) Perhaps we do not look Japanese and so the listener just doesn’t expect to hear Japanese coming from our mouths!
I faced this on many occasions. I remember approaching someone to ask for directions and after every word I spoke the listener told me “英語分かりません” ”I don’t understand English”… I was speaking Japanese!
Let’s look at it from their point of view, if they had never spoken to a foreigner before they might have gone into “frightened bunny mode” closed off their mind and frozen, thinking “I won’t understand” and there you go…they couldn’t understand.
2) Maybe the person heard us speaking English first and then did not realise that we switched to Japanese and so the listener is not expecting Japanese. Simply put, they just cannot hear the Japanese words as the brain expects English.
3) Now it is entirely possible that although we have been told by Japanese friends that our Japanese accent is good, they may be used to hearing foreigners speaking Japanese or they be being kind. It may actually be because we need to improve our Japanese accent.
So how can we speak more like a native speaker? We need to listen to a Native speaker and mimic them.
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A good article Jess! This happens to me often here in Scotland when I speak English. (I am Japanese, I look Asian.) They even have a frown on their face before I speak!
From my experiences though, I would say that this tends to happen if the listener are not used to see your appearance (race), their stereotypical brain has already decided that you don’t speak their language. “Us and them” thinking. I perfectly understand every single word you say so don’t blame yourself! It’s almost like “fight or flight” situation and they had the flight reaction towards what’s happening to them. It’s their way of thinking rather than language itself.
Yes! I completely agree to everything you said, I definitely a fight or flight response. It is interesting that you have had the same experience in Scotland! It surprises me because Scotland is considered to be so multi-cultural. I guess we still have a long way to go…