Had a reminder this week about my pronunciation problems. I wrote about this ages ago, and how inportant it was, and then promptly completely forgot about it for a year or so.
It seems that when it comes to Japanese I can kid myself that the pronunciation is so simple (at least compared to Chinese) that I don't need to think about it. Not so!
I've also mentioned before that when you really try to speak as if you are a native speaker, almost mimicking the native speakers I guess, success seems to become easier to come by. Tonight I was concentrating on doing this in my Chinese language exchange, and I could see my Chinese partner's positive reactions to what I was saying.
10 minutes later however my concentration had slipped, and I was back pronuncing words with a British drawl. My language partner's face had dropped, I could see the pain in her eyes.
Goddamnit! It's bloody hard work learning these foreign tongues. There's so much more to it than learning new words and grammar. You really have to live and breathe the language. You have to mold your mouth around the thing again and again to achieve a modicum of success.
This may sound a little defeatist, but the challenge is not motivation for me. Just technique and opportunity. I need to work on both.
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