Hey! I'm Loretta from KemushiChan!
I recently moved to Japan
and almost everyone around me is asking
"How does your Japanese already sounds so natural
if you only just moved here?"
There are a lot of different parts to this answer
and I hope to get to them all
but today I want to focus on a specific tool
that I've been using recently to sort of
iron out the kinks in my sometimes unnatural Japanese.
"How to speak Japanese more naturally"
The truth is, I actually feel the opposite.
as soon as I moved here I started learning
how many awkward things I actually say
that being said, smoothing it all out
is something I've always been trying to do with Japanese
So today I want to focus on
one specific tip that I've been using recently
and a specific tool that I've been using
to get things smoothed back out
and ready to go!
The tool that I've been using most recently
is an app called HiNative
I had it originally in my American phone
but I never transferred it to my Japanese phone
there are a couple phrases that I've been trying to use
that I'm pretty sure I haven't been saying right
and the guys from HiNative reached out to me
and asked if I would introduce it to you guys
so I figured today was an excellent opportunity
to redownload it, get right back on track
and show you how I like to use it.
In a nutshell, you ask a question
and a native speaker will respond pretty quickly
and let you know if what you said sounds close to native
or natural or not.
They have a huge selection of languages
so its not just for Japanese
but in my case, I'm specifically concerned with Japanese
so let's go ahead and get this set up!
(Download!)
The reason I really like this app is because
its not a translation app.
I find that the key to sounding really natural in language
is to forget about trying to directly translate your language
and by learning how to match up words
the way that they usually are in that language.
I made a video about this almost five years ago
but the word for this is actually COLLOCATIONS.
or "rengo" in Japanese.
It's the idea that
certain words tend to always pair with certain other words
and when you fail to match up these pairs
is when you give away that you're NOT a native speaker.
So let's go ahead and get this set up
and see if I sound natural enough.
First things first, let's set this up
with my native language...
and the language that I'm trying to learn...
Japanese...
my screen is set in Japanese just because my phone is
but this is basically how it is set up.
Once you log in you can either ask,
"How do you say this?"
"Does this sound natural?"
"Please show me an example sentence with ~~"
"What does this mean?"
and "What is the difference" between A and B?
I first want to start out with just
"How do you say this in Japanese"...
So the first thing I want to check for is the word for frizzy hair
Japan is about to enter into the rainy season
and my hair is going to explode!
"My hair gets.... fluffy puffy???"
"A little afro-ish" ???
My hair gets really frizzy during the rainy season.
You know what i'm talking about!
(Ask!)
Let's go ahead and ask this...
Let's do another one
I want to try saying this one in Japanese
and lets see if I sound natural or not
I'm assuming "not".
The phrase I want to say is
"Give your dog a bath".
"Let her... into the bath???"
"Give the dog the tub...???:
...this is just so wrong!
Whatever, let's just see if that sounds natural
(Ask!)
Pretty sure the answer is no...
Only 9 Minutes Later
One answer just came in!
So they first answered my second question
about my dog!
He said it's unnatural!
Very unnatural...
I knew that was coming. So...
"I gave the dog a bath."
Gotta keep her clean!
Oo, and we got our first answer!
so, "my hair get's really frizzy during the rainy season"
My hair is very curly and frizzy
apparently "kusege" is the word for frizzy hair?
My hair type is curly and frizzy
so during the rainy season it get's really frizzy.
To get curlier or frizzy...
Your frizzy hair gets even curlier.
Or another option is,
My hair is naturally curly so
it get's really bad during the rainy season.
The frizziness gets even worse
I kind of like that one, like it's so bad.
Totally dried and fried.
OK I can remember that...
So, that's how I use it as a learning tool.
obviously you can ask for translations into Japanese
but I prefer to try it myself first
and let them sort of correct you
but with this they can tell you how natural or unnatural it was
and specifically how to fix it.
It's a free service so that's really helpful
But if you want to speed up the waits and get a richer experience out of the app
they did just release a new premium version of the app
and what you get with that is
in addition to all these ridiculously good features
you also get priority on your questions
you get access to voice recordings
so that if you don't just want to read the answer
and get better access to audio resources
there's that and a bunch of other features as well
so if you're looking to focus on more natural language
and not just textbook style language
I definitely think this is a great resource for that.
Woo! I'm locked and loaded!
OK, so that's all for today!
If you like this video
please LIKE, SHARE and SUBSCRIBE for more!
I'll see you guys next time!