Speaking to my friend last night, she told me that I sound like a foreigner when I speak Japanese. Bad news! I haven't paid much attention to pronunciation when speaking Japanese because when I started out, learning the pronunciation of the Japanese syllabary was pretty straightforward, so I think there was a tendency to imagine that I had it mastered it and ignore this aspect of communication.
Japanese pronunciation is much flatter than English. My pronunciation has a rising and falling intonation to it, so it doesn't feel natural to me to speak in a flat tone - it's something I have to concentrate on when I do it.
I was trying to think about speaking like a robot to make my pronunciation more Japanese, but you can take this too far - you don't want to talk through your nose and end up sounding like a Dalek, however tempting this may be.
Anyway, I was reminded of the Flight of the Conchords, and their song, The Humans are Dead. It's pretty funny.
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