【英語の発音入門】発音が下手でも外国人に英語を伝えるコツとは？

I want to tell you this, but is it okay for Japanese pronunciation? Hello everyone, I'm Roy Nishizawa, an English doctor. On this channel, I'm sharing an unconventional learning method that makes difficult English easy to understand. Mr. Roy, the pronunciation of English is so different from Japanese that it's difficult, isn't it? If the pronunciation is not good enough, you can't talk to foreigners, can you? No, that's not true. I can talk to foreigners. Oh, is that so? So today, I'd like to talk about pronunciation. First of all, I've never been good at pronunciation. Of course, it's better to be good at it. It's better to have an easy-to-understand pronunciation than a difficult-to-understand pronunciation. If you can pronounce beautifully, smoothly, and have a cool pronunciation like a native speaker, you'll be more confident. But after all, the sound of English is quite different from Japanese, so you need to practice to master the pronunciation properly. It's hard enough. Today's theme is how to get along with such English pronunciation. First of all, let's talk about the theory of idealism and the theory that should be there. Pronunciation is the first thing you should learn in language studies. For example, French. French is a very difficult language to pronounce. If you learn French at a proper school, you'll start with the pronunciation. You'll be beaten from there. It's good to learn from the sound. It's the same with children. Babies are born with ears that can hear all the sounds that appear in the language. Like R or L in English. Like the sound of the throat in French. In Bhutanese, it's called Zonkago. Gato, Vidakononga. This is a different sound. And in African languages, it's called Chitauchion or Klikoon. That's what's in the language. Anyway, there are a lot of sounds in the language. Children can learn the language from their ears. That's why it's ideal for adults to start by learning from their ears by doing the pronunciation first and knowing the sound. In fact, there are research results from the University of Hawaii that show that learning pronunciation makes it easier to improve. It's divided into grammar-focused groups, vocabulary-focused groups, and pronunciation-focused groups for international students. And when we looked at the level of improvement, we found that the pronunciation-focused group improved the most. But that's just the ideal. If you want to start learning English from scratch, you can start with pronunciation. But it's too late for everyone. Oh, well, I know to some extent. That's right. A lot of Japanese people have already learned English without doing pronunciation. And of course, today is the youngest day of my life, so I'm going to start with pronunciation. That's one way to do it. But there are three problems. The first problem is that people who are not good at English suddenly want to do pronunciation. I don't really want to do it. And the second one is, is it okay to just improve pronunciation? Even if your pronunciation is good, you can't speak it. And the third one is, where do you want to go? For example, should I aim for native pronunciation? Even if you say native, there are American and British people. So the pronunciation is completely different. Some people may think that you don't have to be like a native. How far do you go? How far do you get? There's a problem like that. There are a lot of problems like that. So what should I do with my pronunciation? It's important to think about that. First of all, it's a matter of timing when to learn pronunciation. You can learn it when you want to do it. In other words, there is no problem with postponing. It's already too late. It's a waste of time to think that pronunciation is not good. But when you postpone pronunciation, Then you don't have to do anything. There's one thing to be careful about. That is to make a loud voice. When Japanese people speak English, their voices tend to be very small. There are two reasons for that. One is that they don't have confidence in English. There are a lot of people who think that this English is correct. And because they don't have confidence, their voices get smaller. And one more thing. This is a Japanese story. Japanese is a language that is difficult to speak loudly. This is the difference in breathing. Japanese is basically called formal breathing. It's easy to breathe in your chest. This is because Japanese is a language that resonates vowels. Like ah, ta, ka. Most of the vowels sound like ah. This is because Japanese is a language that resonates vowels. So you don't have to breathe loudly. It's a language that's easy to hear. But English is a language that resonates consonants. For example, ts, p. You need to make these sounds resonate. Then you need a strong breath. Then it's called formal breathing. You need to breathe strongly in your stomach. The breathing is different. But it's hard to change it to formal breathing. First, let's speak in a loud voice. Let's make a loud voice. I see. Just making your voice louder makes it easier to understand. On the contrary, if you practice pronunciation a lot, For example, you can pronounce the R sound well. But there are people who say, You're often asked to repeat it, right? I wonder if those people still have a bad pronunciation. I try to pronounce it desperately. It's not like that, it's just that my voice is small. Oh, I see. That's why I can't hear the other person. There are quite a few cases like that. Is the volume of the voice that important? English has a lot of confusing sounds. If you don't make a loud voice, you can't tell the difference. You can pronounce it later, so make a loud voice. I think it's good to try this alone. And let's say you're actually going to pronounce it. If you actually do it, you can think of three directions. Which direction do you want to go? I hope you think about this carefully. The first direction is to aim for native pronunciation. I used to do this a long time ago. Oh, you did it. Originally, I was in the English department. There was a class called pronunciation correction. It's because I didn't do well. I was beaten from the basics. And I practiced hard while singing. There was a time when I practiced hard to aim for native pronunciation. Oh, there was a time like that. But thanks to that, I was really confident. On the plane back from studying in the United States for a year, I was mistaken for an American by the CA. Oh, that's amazing. It was a really happy experience. The direction of aiming for native pronunciation is... It may be a very motivated way. Because I'm trying to do all the pronunciations. I'm trying to make everything sound like a native. So this is where you're going to be particular about your preferences. It's going to be in that area. I don't think it's a good way to recommend it to everyone. If you want to learn native pronunciation, If you think it's cool, of course you should do it. It's not for everyone. I have a friend named Naoki Ogawa. He's a native pronunciation specialist. He knows British English perfectly. I wonder how particular he was. In Japan, American English is more popular. In that case, you have to be very particular about British English. Second, aim for international pronunciation. This is an approach to erasing Japanese-sounding names. For example, the pronunciation of R sounds like a light. Make sure you don't touch the bottom and say it like a light. For example, C, C, this distinction. There are some Japanese people who are not good at this. Make sure you can distinguish these places properly. There are some Japanese-like habits. Clear it. If you do that, you'll get a little bit of an international pronunciation that's different from Japanese. For example, there are only five vowels in Japanese. You have to be able to distinguish English more than twice. That's what I'm aiming for. You can do this by holding down the points to some extent. It's a relatively easy approach compared to the native pronunciation I mentioned at the beginning. Even so, it's a Japanese-sounding pronunciation. If you do it from the Japanese around you, you'll be able to see that the pronunciation is good. It makes me feel good. In that sense, it's a pretty recommended approach. And the third direction is to be proud of Japanese pronunciation. The first native pronunciation and the second international pronunciation are... It's an approach to get out of Japanese pronunciation and become a cool pronunciation to build confidence. The third Japanese pronunciation is... It's an approach to be confident in your Japanese pronunciation. I'd like to tell you this, but... Japanese pronunciation is okay. You can be confident. People often say that Japanese people are bad at pronunciation and English is bad. But it's the same in every country. As long as you don't learn English pronunciation properly, everyone is bad at English pronunciation. It's a matter of course. For example, if you're French, you'll be fluent in French. When it's red, you use your throat to say it like this. When it's a hotel, you can't pronounce the H sound, so you say it like this. If you're Korean next door, you'll be fluent in Korean. Instead of the F sound, it becomes the P sound. For example, if. If you want to say more, you can say it like this. In the exam, there's a word called TOFL. That's TOPL. It sounds a little cute. Other than that, I'm not good at the sound of E. It's the sound of E. TAXI There are a lot of Koreans who say TAXI. That's how every country has its own way of pronouncing it. And they make fun of it. Japanese people can't tell the difference between L and R, so they make fun of it as a joke. But it's a little naive to say that's why Japanese people are bad at English pronunciation. Every country is bad at pronunciation, and everyone is making fun of it. Oh, I see. That's why you can be confident. Other people in other countries are confident in their own language. I'm glad I was confident. That's right. It's okay to keep the Japanese pronunciation. If you say that, I think you'll get a lot of criticism. I'd like to introduce you to three points that will make it easier to understand even if you keep the Japanese pronunciation. I'd love to know. The first is the accent. In Japanese, there's a high and a low accent. For example, HASHI Changing the accent of the high and low tones makes it a different word. In English, we use a strong and weak accent. For example, DESERT DESSERT DESSERT in food DESERT DESSERT There are different places where you pronounce it strongly. In Japanese, if the accent of the high and low tones is different, you can hear it raw. For example, when you say you eat rice with chopsticks, you eat rice with chopsticks. Oh, that's right. You can hear it raw, right? Yes, I heard it raw. In English, if you make a mistake in the accent, you can hear it in another word. So it's DESERT or DESERT. It's not a level where you can hear it raw, but you can hear it in another word. There are people who distinguish between strong and weak accents. For example, in English, it's PHOTOGRAPH. The first one is PHO. PHOTOGRAPH But when you become a photographer, in Katakana, it's a PHOTOGRAPHER. That's a PHOTOGRAPHER. If it's a photo, it's a PHOTOGRAPH, but if it's a photographer, it's a PHOTOGRAPHER. It's different when it gets stronger. So if you say PHOTOGRAPHER here, you probably won't understand it well. On the contrary, if you can get the accent right, you can understand it without saying PHO at first. You can understand it that way? Because there are no other words like that. PHOTOGRAPHER You can hear the word PHOTOGRAPHER. That's amazing. So just being aware of this accent will change the ease of understanding. The second point is the consistency of pronunciation. Especially the accent. Tony, can you pronounce these three words? The word HET, which represents a hat. The word HUT, which represents a hut. And the word HOT, which represents hot. Please pronounce it. Well, the hat is HA. And the hut is a little difficult. I've heard of U, so it's HA. I don't know what HUT is. And HOT is HOT. Please say it in order. HUT, HUT, HOT? You don't understand it well. First of all, this is the reason why you can't understand it. And you don't understand it well either. And you pronounce it while saying HUT, U, HUT. Then you can't pronounce it with consistency. You don't understand it, so the other person can't understand it. And the correct pronunciation of HUT is HUT. But you can pronounce it as HUT. If you say something extreme, you can pronounce it as HUT. But in that case, you can pronounce it as BUT. And you can pronounce it as LUCK. It's written in U, so it's easier to understand if you pronounce it with consistency. Does consistency mean that? The other person understands the rules and listens to you. The other person responds to you. That's why it's easier to understand if you pronounce it with consistency. This is an extreme example, so it's easier to understand if you say HUT, BUT, LUCK. If you say LUCK, it's okay if you can pronounce it with consistency. And the third point is the pronunciation of L. Everyone says that it is difficult to distinguish between L and R and that they cannot pronounce it well. The pronunciation of R is fine as it is. There is a Hebon-style Roman alphabet. By the way, Tony, do you know who made the Hebon-style Roman alphabet? No, I don't know at all. It's Hebon. Hebon? That's why it's Hebon-style Roman alphabet. Is that so? Is it Hebon-style because you made it? In the Hebon-style Roman alphabet, Mr. Hebon put the letter R on the Japanese LALILULELO. That means it's close to the sound of R. The Japanese LALILULELO is a little off. So it's a little different from the English R. But this is also within the scope of R. For example, if it is a Russian alphabet, it is written like this. It's like red. That is also judged to be R. So red is also judged to be R. In other words, you don't have to practice the pronunciation of R. Of course, it is better to do it for international pronunciation or native pronunciation, but you don't have to do it desperately so that everyone can't hear the pronunciation of R. More importantly, the pronunciation of L is more important. The sound of L is completely different from the sound of R, and this is not in Japanese, so it is better to practice this properly. I would like to explain in another video how to pronounce L in detail, but in any case, as a way of thinking, instead of sticking to the pronunciation of R, let's do L. That will be much easier to understand. Even if you say that the Japanese pronunciation is fine, it is better to practice the sound that is not in Japanese. If you can't do that, it will be difficult for the other person to distinguish between you and the other person. Yes, so I talked about the overall image of pronunciation. There is already a place where it is too late, so you don't have to do it in a hurry. If you want to do it, do it. There are three directions, so I hope you can aim for the one you like. Of course, I have never passed the pronunciation test. So if you want to do it, I hope you will try it. I want you to be more confident. If you can be confident in your Japanese pronunciation, that's fine. I think there are some people who want to be confident by being able to pronounce like a Japanese native. That's also a matter of preference and particularity, so it doesn't matter if you choose what you like. Anyway, I want you to be able to speak English with more confidence. Thank you for your story today. There was a fixed concept that English conversation had to be good at pronunciation, but I feel like I was saved. First of all, I would like to think about how much I want to improve my pronunciation. Thank you for your uncommon story today. Thank you for watching the video today. If you think this video was helpful even a little, please subscribe to the channel, rate it highly, and leave a comment. And I would be happy if you could write in the comment section what direction you would like to improve your pronunciation. Also, if there's anything you can't pronounce well, please let me know. I would like to use it as a reference for future videos. See you in the next video. This was English doctor Nishizawa Roy. See ya!