Hey all! I’m still pretty early in in my Japanese studies, and I’ve been reading around various resources. An idea that I came across on Reddit was that reading should be avoided until a certain level of listening comprehension is reached, otherwise one’s ‘internal voice’ for reading Japanese would be incorrect due to the brain filling in sounds in an unnatural matter (as it has been exposed to less Japanese).
Anyways, I’m a little worried about that. I’ve started reading some basic materials, but I don’t feel like I have enough knowledge to know whether or not my internal voice is ‘correct’. How would I know when I’d be ready? Thanks.
If you’re worried about your internal voice being incorrect, you could try graded readers which come with an audiobook. That way you could listen along to a native speaker at the same time as reading.
I’m a bit dubious though. I understand the reasoning, but surely this applies to everything? Should you not read the example sentences in a grammar book until your listening is good enough? How can it get good enough when you haven’t learnt any words?!
I’m sorry but i find the reasoning is, in a way, wrong. Yes your ‘internal voice’ could be wrong but that doesn’t mean it will stay wrong. It will change and gets better the more you listen and read
As someone who recently started trying to read, this has not been the case for me at all. I don’t actually have an “internal voice” yet, since I still have to think about what I’m reading enough to process it. If a word does just pop up when I see it, it’s specifically because I’ve already heard it spoken enough to make that connection.
Not only that, but my English internal voice doesn’t sound remotely natural either. It doesn’t even sound like a real voice, and only conveys enough information to get the meaning across. If that’s the case even for my native language, I don’t see why I should be concerned about it in Japanese, I suppose.
I think what you read in reddit probably was refering to those looking for this perfect pitch accent and native like fluency… and yeah, probably recreating how kids learn (listening a lot first and then reading) could serve to achieve this higher goal.
So yeah, in the long run if you read a lot and don’t practice listening … well, your speech will “suffer” …
I don’t think it’s even a valid concern actually; I simply don’t see the scenario where you start from scratch learning a language thinking in a perfect “native” accent as a main goal… specially in a language like japanese having so many other aspects to care about before reaching something resembling fluency …
I can’t speak for everyone in general, but that hasn’t been the case for me when learning English, German, and now Japanese. Reading has never been anything but helpful for learning, for me at least. You may obviously have to practice pronunciation separately later if you just focus on reading, but learning to read first has never made doing that any harder for me.
I also don’t really feel like I have a consistent “internal voice” though. It’s likely to change depending on a bunch of different stuff, or sometimes just isn’t much of a voice at all(i.e. I don’t really always think thoughts “out loud” like if I were to say them, it’s more just the general ideas sometimes)!
Well it is for me at least. I’ve tried multiple times to explain to people what my internal reading voice sounds like, and I can’t do it, because it doesn’t have any of the properties of an actual spoken voice at all.
The best way I can put it is that it’s almost completely monotone and conveys the idea of speech more so than an actual sound. Unless I go out of my way to deliberately imagine some kind of inflection being put in, it’s just not there.
I read a lot (not saying you don’t), so maybe in order to not get bored at some point I started giving more energy to the voices, characters, etc.
It also helps a bit in getting to know the characters and their personalities for me.
I mean, that makes sense, but I don’t think I could do that. Even if I know how a particular person or character’s voice sounds 100%, I still don’t actually read their dialogue in their voice unless I make a very deliberate effort to do so, which slows me down to the point of it being agonizing.
That’s a lot of W per M.
I guess I see your point, I just don’t (and really didn’t think most people did) read too fast when it comes to entertainment or learning.
It definitely depends on the person. Every now and then I’ll remember a scene from a movie and try to remember what that movie was. Eventually, I’ll remember that it was actually a scene from a book I read a while back. So, for me, reading gets translated into visual scenes while other people have a completely different internal voice. Neither is wrong, it’s just how we take in words.
I can answer that for you: your internal voice is wrong.
But the good news is that that’s probably the case for everyone. Unless you were fully immersed and actively practiced pitch accent, there’s basically no chance you’re getting the pronunciation, pitch accent, and timing of everything right. I don’t think that should deter you from reading though.
Even my English internal voice is probably wrong. Heck, while we’re at it, my Portuguese internal voice is not that great either, and it’s my native language.
…
Is that a thing?
