Question, who has regular communication with a Native Speaker?

Do what I do, and use Whatsapp voice messages.
Your utterances can be as short as you like,
correcting is very easy for your partner and most importantly
you have plenty of time to think about what to say (and how to say it)

Text messaging was the best invention ever. I hate calling people so much…

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just talk with people I met on LINE mostly. My grammar and vocab tend to be insufficient, and apparently because my vocabulary has 99% come from WaniKani I talk really weird lol.

Still fun, and interesting to see how a friendship dynamic can differ across the seas.

Sadly, I lost her to lung cancer about 5 years ago and miss her to this day.

Oh man I’m sorry to hear that.

Where do you guys find tutors, and even more so, where do you guys find friends? I can’t really see how you just… find someone to talk to.

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Lots of suggestions here. I found mine through Japan-guide.

https://community.wanikani.com/t/Language-Speaking-Practice-Websites-for-finding-a-speaking-buddy/16897/8

Upstate New York? That’s where I am too. But yeah, finding language partners for anything is a bit of a hassle here. I’ve done iTalki before for Russian and Swedish, but it wasn’t too helpful, since it’s difficult to manage the other person’s expectations, and to match levels a bit so it seems more fair.

I found a professional tutor on Italki (though she now doesn’t tutor online anymore except for me and a few other students she kept)

HelloTalk (for friends). It’s a phone app.

I mostly talk with native speakers using LINE, but I’ve tried Skype too. For me it’s been a little difficult to find anyone to practise with, cause the ones I’ve been talking to tend to use English as soon as they can tell I’m not fluent in Japanese. They’re all very nice people, but it doesn’t really help me improving. Luckily I’ve found a nice girl that is helping me now. We even went out for coffee when I was in Tokyo a few weeks ago. It was really fun! :smile:

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I use HelloTalk very infrequently, but the other day I made friends with a Korean fanartist. Neither of us can write in the other person’s language, but both of us have some proficiency in Japanese. So now we’re talking to each other in Japanese. It’s a bit funny, but I’m glad for the opportunity that knowing Japanese presented both of us. No speaking practice so far but I’m looking to get back into Japanese classes this Fall, and hopefully I’ll find someone there to practice with on a regular basis.

Otherwise I’m a shy person who usually doesn’t have much of import to say :frowning:

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Same same same same same, if I can’t schedule/order it online, I pretty much…don’t. xD Luckily I live in an area where I can pretty much do that without a lot of problems. Phones were invented by the devil, I’m pretty sure.

I’m also very introverted and I have a lot of the same thoughts/worries, so I haven’t started any conversation-type things yet. I’m awkward as hell in real life unless I already know you from something or we have a place/job/TV show obsession in common. Text-based things or asynchronous voice messaging like Heiopei mentioned would probably be ok to start out, but I don’t really know what I would talk to random people about? (Even if we assume that I have an amazing grasp on the language, which I definitely don’t). I feel like everything in my life is either too personal or too boring and not worth talking about. I also feel super awkward asking random strangers personal questions (I don’t know why, but it’s always felt rude to me).

At least I can be kind of sarcastic-weird-funny in my native English, but I wouldn’t even have that going for me in Japanese. I imagine all my conversations going like this:


*awkward silence *
Other person: *slowly puts down the phone and walks away *

Sorry, this has turned into me ranting about my lack of social skills, which is probably not that helpful.

Timbo has kind of touched on this a little bit, but for those of us who are socially awkward, what did you talk about when you were first starting out? I just feel like I have nothing to say, and no one would want to keep talking to me. Do any of the language learning apps/websites let you look for conversation partners based on interests, or is it just blind luck?

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I’m with @windupbird and @DaisukeJigen.

I hate talking on the phone even if it’s with someone I actually enjoy talking to. Talking to a stranger in a language I struggle with? No way.

I’ll get there one day… Luckily my main desire is reading Japanese and speaking is last on my list of goals. Still a goal, though.

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I used to be the same about talking on the phone, but after getting a job in business sales and having to call people, that fear went away.

Just like eating new food, just try it enough times and you will eventually like it. I used to say I was just awkward, but really that was just a crutch so that I would not grow.

I had a pen pal for a few months, but she had a bit of difficulty finding time in the day to write back to me after a while. She was really busy with her translation and teaching positions, especially during exams. But during those months that we did communicate, I really enjoyed myself and learned more appropriate grammar and vocabulary than I otherwise would have. I’m really bad about studying grammar, so these email responses were about the only times I “studied” it.

Ha, funny to see people mentioning Amagasaki. I live in Kobe, and I’m in Amagasaki right now. It’s where my girlfriend lives. When we’re together, I only speak Japanese, so it’s solid days of speaking practice every week. And we use Line during the weekdays.

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I’ve noticed it’s usually really hard to get constant practice with native speakers unless you’re living in Japan. Personally I’m one of the select few which has managed to surround myself with native speakers daily without having to live in Japan. Just by being exposed to speaking and listening everyday my Japanese skills have advanced at such an unbelievable fast pace. From barely being able to put together a sentence, I have went to being able to hold conversations on very complicated concepts and really being able to enjoy the language.

For those of you wondering how I got my self in this situation. I’m currently a student at a University, I am a member of a Japanese club at my University. I recently finished my Computer Science degree at the University, at this time I was living at home ( about 50 mins bus away from the city). This really restricted my times in order to connect with the Japanese people that do live in my city, also plus the fact I was focussing on my computer science degree at the time.
I only recently moved out into the city, and decided I wanted to go on exchange to Japan and the only way of doing this was taking up another degree. The student accomodation I moved into to allowed me to meet a lot of the Japanese students which further allowed me to connect with more and more.

I only went into so much detail because I feel there are a lot of you here who might want to achieve the same thing in your own city, and can’t afford to go to Japan straight away. I also want to push the belief that you can speak fluently even if you don’t live in the country. I’m not sure about the number of exchange students from Japan which come to my state compared to other countries and regions but I don’t think it’s that large.

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Oh my god, man, phone calls yes, but I never encountered anyone who had the same haircut anxiety as me before! I luckily managed to age out of a lot of these phobias after I hit 30 or so, but still good to know I wasn’t alone. Also the grocery store used to make me really anxious, to the point of getting the shakes. Anyway, it gets easier eventually. Also, to the point of the thread, I have class with a native once a week, and also live with a different native, though I still am not confident enough to try any serious Japanese with the gf. Sometimes she talks at me and I can kind of understand, but that’s it.

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I chuckled too! One of my friends I talk to once a week lives in Amagasaki. She grew up in Kobe.

When we talk she uses standard Japanese to help me learn, but she also makes a point to teach me Kansai-ben too.

How do you deal with dialect with your girlfriend?

I generally speak standard dialect, but I strategically use kansai-ben for humor now and then. The unexpectedness of it can be useful.

Do you have an example of how you use it for humor? You have piqued my curiosity.

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