Hi Everyone,
I'm posting this on behalf of my partner, who doesn't use reddit. I am a native Japanese speaker who is with an English-speaker (learning Japanese on-and-off for 7 years, I would say their level is A2ish level EDIT a2 for spoken, for writing it’s closer to B2, They can read and write most things I send and we can have text conversations even when I text dialectally.). I grew up speaking both English and Japanese, but Japanese is definitely the home language, and I would like to at least speak some at home.
Our main problem is that we're hitting a wall in speaking Japanese at home, mostly in comprehension. When I speak easy, simplified Japanese, I am mostly understood; but it is when I start speaking "normally" that comprehension gets down to mostly 0, and a lot of tension starts. By "easy" Japanese I mean Japanese with the noun-verb-object all in there, repetition of pronouns, and other forms of Japanese that is easy to follow; but to be honest I know this is "easy" Japanese and to my ears it sounds unnatural. I am also speaking somewhat formally – I natively speak dialect, and so my "dialectless, sanitized Japanese" just sounds formal, even when it's supposed to be casual. A lot of my dialectless Japanese conversation, especially at the casual, familial level I am talking at, ends up relying a lot on context, and my partner really struggles with understanding this. It doesn't help that my partner is on the spectrum, so 空気読む and ellided pronouns/grammar structures with things missing, already becomes a challenge.
One example of this is when we were talking about payment with a trip, and my partner thanked them for paying for the majority of the meals while we're out. I whispered on the side that "こっちの方が払ってるけどね," and they didn't understand. I thought it was because the restaurant was loud, so I repeated it a bit louder, then a bit slower, when they still didn't understand. Finally after 4 times of this they said "yes we paid for dinner??" meaning they thought I meant that I was the one paying the dinner. I got a bit frustrated and told them to drop it, but the convo continued and I told them I meant that "we paid more for the majority of the meals, actually" (which is the translation of the above sentence). They then got frustrated and said "how does that work?" and I explained the grammar as best as I could, to which I got the reply of "How would of known you meant "more" and "the dinners?" without the words being said? (ie もっと)." It makes sense – in English, "we paid, actually" (which can also be another literal translation of the sentence) does mean we paid for the dinner. But in Japanese I would argue it was pretty clear that I mean that "We've paying more for the majority of the dinners." Which of course, like many things in Japanese, is context. There have been many more cases like this, which have basically spanned many years; and this is also not limited to things I've said, but more generally in other contexts as well.
The TLDR of that is: "I can understand that someone is there, and something happened, but I don't know who, and I don't know how much and how exactly the verbs all link up." It's almost like a classic German sentence, except you completely missed the final (important/main) verb, and instead of just the verb it also applies to the subject and also the object.
At this point I can tell they are getting frustrated, and I definitely am getting frustrated because it feels like I can't talk to them about anything in a language that means a lot to me. They in fact told me that Japanese used to be fun and now is becoming more of a source of frustration and they're starting to dislike it, because it feels like they have to now learn the context/空気 as well as the language. And well, that made me scared. I don't want to have to give up speaking Japanese, and sometimes there are things I want to express to them in Japanese, and I don't know to what extent they understand me. It just makes me…stop using the language at home, which I didn't want to happen. I grew up with Japanese = home, and it frankly feels strange speaking English at home, even if that's the language I exist now day-to-day. Not to mention, if we want to have kids some day, I'm worried I won't be able to pass on the language at all, either. I don't really know of any success stories of kids who were raised OPOL but the dad didn't speak Japanese – they all ended up becoming heritage speakers, and not very well tbh.
This is probably a better post for r/relationships , but I thought this sub might have some ideas for my partner as well.
What are ways to improve spoken Japanese, especially when it comes to the more contextual side of the language?
Thank you!! ありがとうございます。
by RadiiRadish