Maybe a native Japanese can answer?

Hi guys,

I recently made my first trip to Japan and absolutely loooooved it!
Traveling with my son we spent most of July in the country.

I made an effort to learn some basic Japanese before arriving - just essentials, maybe about 100 words / expressions or so.

Most of the time I was understood when trying to use my limited Japanese but occasionally, I would be looked at as if I was speaking Martian lol The facial expressions seemed to look like they had no idea what I was saying rather than not knowing the answer to my question.

I assumed it must have been my poor pronunciation but when I bumped into an American who had lived in Tokyo for about 25 years, he asked to hear me speak Japanese and said that he was impressed with the clarity and said that no one should be unable to understand.

Both happy I was doing ok and confused as to why so often it would appear I was not understood he shared his opinion that maybe locals were caught off guard not expecting a foreigner to speak Japanese. He used the analogy of the "talking dog" which I found quite funny :)

His explanation however didn't seem to make sense as I'm sure there are many foreigners who can speak Japanese and based on his opinion, surely he would experience similar instances himself being a foreigner?

I just find this interesting and wonder if anyone would like to share their opinion / comments on the matter :D

I share his view that maybe the people you talked to were caught off guard, simply not ready for Japanese being spoken by an apparently foreign visitor. Another possibility is that they were not Japanese - nowadays I see many (probably) Chinese, Koreans, or Thais, both those living here and those visiting. You could have talked to some of them, who were simply not expecting it either :)

Glad to hear you enjoyed yourselves here by the way :)

hi AK - thank you very much for sharing your thoughts! - wow, that's so cool, why didn't I think of that. that's funny. yes, I guess some of the people may not have been Japanese :D :D

The same thing happens to me whenever I speak German, lol. I agree with the foreign resident as well as AK, so the following stories are just to add to that.

Years ago, a group of us made a questionnaire about a theme related to international relationships. Just so that it would be read by as many people as possible, we wrote Japanese, the romaji version of it and the English version of it on one piece of paper.

When we (Japanese-looking Japanese) showed it to the locals for them to answer, most people literally backed off thinking it was all in foreign language. Too much alphabet scared them away until we explained that it's romaji.

Something more personal: I professionally transcribe unedited interview tapes, and often bump into a point where I could understand nothing. After taking time figuring it out, I usually find out that it was just one or two words or names I didn't understand. Then suddenly the tape sounds very clear to me. Tapes also start sounding clearer as I reach the final part of it. On the other hand, when I know that I still have two hours worth of untranscribed conversation left on the tape, everything often sounds foreign.

Funny how stress can play tricks on you, and funny how easing it is so effective.

https://goo.gl/ZaR9Uh

as mentioned sometimes they may get shocked went blank when out of the blue a foreigner approached them speaking Japanese.
They just cannot comprehend that. Unless they are used to you speaking Japanese, it may take a while for them to adjust and understand your Japanese.

this also happened in other country.

The above youtube clip 'But we're speaking Japanese' do hold some truth to it.

hi uco and guest. very interesting uco and another very good point that i had not considered :)
guest - i will check out the youtube link now.

guest,

OMG that clip was awesome and funny - i feel soooo much better now for seeing it. thankyou! hahaha

I've had similar experiences to the OP, and I agree its probably the stress of expecting to have to operate in a foreign language that makes the listener hyperfocused on English so much that they don't realize its Japanese being spoken.

It makes sense because I've also been on the other side of it where a Japanese person speaks to me in English, but my mind was so set to expect Japanese that I simply couldn't understand their perfectly competent English.

Japanese person: Where are you from?
Me (internal monologue): I think its something about clothes, but what's a yufuromu

Oh yeah! I love that Asian actress from that video series! And it reminds me that every time I travel on a Korean flight, the cabin crew keeps speaking to me in Korean no matter how much Japanese I speak to them.

I don't know Korean, by the way, and I have no Korean ancesters as far as I know, but come to think of it I seem to dress differently from the other Japanese on-board (although every Japanese person I've encountered rightly see me as Japanese). The crew would ask meal requests in Japanese to all the other passengers, and when they come to me they ask it in Korean, so I kinda answer in English which is my second language......

And here's another video from a slightly different perspective. Be sure to watch it until the end.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jrAS3MDxCeA

hi uco,

thats interesting and funny about your experiences in flight :)

i did watch the youtube you linked but alas, my japanese is not good enough for me to understand - i got the jist though i think.

ronnie :D

my japanese is not good enough for me to understand - i got the jist though i think.

Ronnie, I think you did understand the whole video. The point is that the Japanese dialect he's speaking is not fully comprehensible to the average Japanese (even though it's subtitled), and that's why no matter how hard we try, most of us Japanese cannot swallow the fact that he's not speaking in French (even though we take it for granted that the lady is speaking in a countryside dialect).

And I love the fact that this guy seems to be so accepted in that Kobayashi-shi society ;)

Also this summary may be interesting what foreigners are thinking re: Japan, Japanese, behaviors, culture, etc.
http://news.mynavi.jp/tag/foreigner/
Google translate.