Name: How I Learned to Speak Better Japanese || 10 yrs ago vs. today [Part 2]
Uploaded: 2020-06-08T07:10:59.000Z
Duration: 15 min 3 s
Description: Thousands of YouTube videos with English-Chinese subtitles! Now you can learn to understand native speakers, expand your vocabulary, and improve your pronunciation...

Hey guys! I'm Loretta and welcome to my channel KemushiChan.....blehhh

Past simple

In my last video which was way too long ago

I shared a secret file folder where I used to keep all of my audio diaries, where I would practice Japanese.

"Konban wa. Kyou wa ichigatsu juunana-nichi..."

So as promised, today is Part 2 of Embarassing Myself...for the Sake of Learning :P.

Konban wa! Kyou wa ichigatsu juunana-nichi. (Good evening! Today is January 17th.)

Kyou kara wa, maa, kyou mo, yukkuri (Starting today, today, we.., I'm going to take my time)

atarashiku benkyou shita kotoba wo tsukatte (and use the new Japanese words I just learned)

benkyou shitai to omotteimasu. (I want to study those today).

Good! This already sounds a lot smoother. These are probably phrases I use all the time in the audio diaries.

The only thing is that there's a lot of 'EETOO' (umm...)

People think that if you talk fast in a 2nd language

then you must be good, and that's not neccessarily the case.

Instead of just saying "um" all the time, I could've just taken a breath

to slow down a bit, and that would've been totally fine.

Seiji toka, seifu ni kanren aru kotoba toka (So politics, and government related words)

muzukashii to iu yori mo (they're difficult yes, but more importantly,)

sugoi tokuteiteki na kotoba wo benkyou shimashita. (I learned some real specific words.)

"SUGOI TOKUTEI janakute, sugoku". or "hijouni". Not "REAL specific, but really". Also, "extremely" works too.

"sugoi" when it should be "sugoku", that's a casual way of speaking that I still do today.

"Sugoku" is an adverb and we use ADVERBS to modify verbs!

tatoeba, kyou no nyuusu houkoku. (Let's take today's news report as an example.)

kyou no nyuusu dewa, seiji no kaikaku no houkoku ga arimashita. (In today's news there was a story about government reform.)

HAHA! matta houkoku to kaikaku wo tsukaimashita! (Haha! I used the words for REPORT and REFORM in a sentence!)

Hontou ni wasuretakunai kotoba wa, sono, maa, kaikaku (So, I really don't want to forget these words. Well, you know, "reform")

kaikaku to kaishi desu ne. "reform" and to "begin".

"Shiai wa kuji-kaishi desu." So iu kotoba to (The game will begin at 9. Words like that and)

kaihatsu mo. ato, hyouka mo wasuretakunai desu. ("develop", and also to "rate/evaluate" are words I don't want to forget.)

I was really into using iKnow.jp , which would slam you with N3 N2 is words.

I knowww kaikaku. I used that so much in YouTube videos.

Like "kyouiku no kaikaku wo suru hitsuyou ga aru to omoimasu." (Saying like, I think we need to reform our education!)

So what's happening now is that I'm just TRYING to use these words in Japanese

because I have no chance to use them otherwise.

tatoeba, ookii kaisha...ookii kigyou ga (For example, a big company...er, a big corporation)

atarashikute chiisai kaisha ni toushi suru.  (Makes a new investment in a little company.)

The point is, I wanted to use these verbs that I had learned.

I wanted to talk about "invest" because that's a cool, fun word.

You can tell I don't know what I'm talking about because

you don't say "ookii kaisha" or "ookii kigyou", you say "daikigyou" in Japanese.

"chuushoukigyou", a small or medium-sized business

bencha-kigyou (venture), sutaato appu kigyou (start-up)

You don't even say a big company invests into a little company

it would be "baishuu", to actually buy-up the company.

The point is that, I didn't know how to use these words in a sentence

So this is just me tryin to use the word "toushi suru".

Watashi ha yotsu no kaisha ni toushi shiteimasu. (I've invested in 4 companies.)

Yep. Just like a I thought. so "Toushi suru" is a verb more commonly used with individual investments.

When a company invests in another company, this can be a "buyout" or an "acquisition"

and there are words for that in Japanese. "Baishuu" (buy-out), "baikyaku" (to sell a company).

but in this case I actually had an example that I wanted to use.

So when I found the word "toushi suru", I clearly had made a note of an example sentence to learn with it.

sekkyokuteki ni ganbatteiru ne! I'm really giving it my all, though!

watashi wa nihongo kyouiku no kanren aru kaisha wo tsukuritai. (I want to make a Japanese-learning related company).

desu kedo, sou dekiru tame (However, for me to do that)

nihongo kyouiku ni kanren aru kaisha ga watashi no kaisha ni toushi suru hitsuyou ga aru. (A bigger Japanese-learning company would need to invest into my company for that to happen.)

toiu iikata de tsukaitai to omotteimasu. (I want to be able to talk about it like that.)

Wow, I had some big dreams back in the day!

Nihongo kyouiku - kei no kaisha. A company for learning Japanese.

Not, "sou dekiru tame" it's, "sou dekiru you ni"

[Trying to rephrase it better] Nihongo kyouiku-kei no kaisha wo tsukuritai n desukedo I want to make a company for Japanese learning

sono hitotsu no houhou toshite so as one way to do this,

nihon no kaisha ni baikyaku suru koto wo mezashiteimasu. (I'm working towards selling my company to a bigger Japanese company.)

Ato wa nan desho... (Was that about it then???)

sono gurai desu ne. Ja, bai bai. (That's about it then. Ok, bye.)

This is only about a year after the file that we first watched.

The way that I'm speaking at this point, this is 2011, about 7 years ago.

In terms of fluidity and the ability to glue words together

That's here, with "mochiron", "yappari", "maa", "eetou".

Those filler words are there, gluing sentences together like I still do today.

And what was missing was a lot of collocations.

For example, knowing that a company does not invest into another company, it acquires it.

Just known what words are usually paired with what other words.

In English, we have words that sound unnatural or a bit weird

these are often dictated by collocations.

For example, you can say "turn off the lights"

and you can say "shut off the lights", but you don't say "close the lights".

"Shut" and "close" basically mean the same thing but why can you only use one with the words "lights" ?

The best way to get familiar with collocations is to listen to more natural speech.

For example, if I want to be able to speak about business and companies

then what I should do is start listening to podcasts that talk more about business news

start listening to actual news clips every morning

honestly, just listening to the news, just brief news

would've probably been the best thing to do at that point.

So you find your topic, find the way to say that word in Japanese

So business for me is "keiei", "gappe" for mergers,  "baikyaku" for corporate sales

if those are the words I wanted to study then I should just google those

find clips that talk about it, maybe even on YouTube.

and just listen to those, you know, keep clips of those!

I have a whole folder of audio clips from Bilingirl Chika so that I could imitate her

because she speaks very clearly and it's very good to listen to

but for more senmon yougo (technical terms)