00:12
Hello, Len.
Hello, Asami.
I guess good evening, really.
And let's do this thing where our bad podcaster would do,
which is trying to recover a semi-interesting conversation that happened off the record.
Hold on. I got it. I got this.
Let's, we can do this.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
I mean, we weren't even totally done with the combo, right?
We were not done.
It just that about five, seven minutes into conversation,
we were like, we should have turned this mic on.
Yeah, yeah.
So that's what we're doing.
But so maybe explain to the listeners what we were talking about.
Absolutely, yeah.
So what we were just talking about was at least pinned around this idea of language
and the way that certain words sound, right?
This was the origin point of it.
I believe the origin point was saying the word book, right?
And so in terms of book, the way that I'm saying it,
this is, you know, probably, and it can be hard to hear,
the American accent style, right?
Book. It's very plosive, did you say?
That was a word I don't use very often.
But yeah, that's sort of book.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Like there's a strength in the B sound.
Yeah, yeah.
And so if you don't have that sort of punch in the B sound,
well, it can come out sounding differently, right?
It might match with a different word.
And so I had actually just automatically heard book as bug.
And that was just something I could not stop.
It just happened.
Yeah.
And this put us on, I think, the track to not only talk about that in English,
which is, we didn't mention this, but which is a stress-based language.
So I put stress on different syllables, right?
And it shifted to the pitch accent, which is something in Japanese, right?
Of which I almost had the Japanese word come back to me.
And it's gone, though.
Um, that's fine.
So the pitch accent, right?
In Japanese was what we ended up talking about there.
Which we got into a little bit before starting and realizing we should have had our mics on
in that case.
Right.
So yeah.
Do you want to add anything to that?
Yeah, go ahead.
No, it's just that apparently the way I say book is
03:01
like one of the dead giveaways to many people that I'm not a native speaker,
or at least not a native American English speaker.
And, um, which is surprising to some or many of them, because I think the way I sound,
especially after living in the States for 10 years,
I think I sound like 70, 80% of the way American.
But just off enough that they know that I'm not from there.
And, um, and there are more obvious signs for that, right?
Like things like I always, always say I can't instead of I can't.
Because saying can't is requires more effort for me.
And I almost always say like Q instead of line or bin instead of garbage.
It's just a natural part of, you know, which one I learned first, I guess.
And American English, believe me or not, came sort of secondary after my
sort of heavier exposure to British English accent.
So, um, it's just like a funny transition.
And as a lot of bilingual people, or at least if you picked up English,
or any other language for that matter, as a second language, or even later, third or fourth,
I think they can relate.
Your accent is not very stable.
It gets influenced by people you're talking with.
It gets influenced by the people around you.
Um, and, and so like, I don't even know what I call my own accent.
And I think the most convenient one is the international school accent,
which, you know, I am from international school.
So what can I say?
And, um, there's that.
But, uh, so then you were talking about this concept of pitch accent,
which you learned from watching this guy's life.
Um, stream on YouTube?
Yeah, yeah.
So the discussion about accents that you were sort of experiencing and sharing, right?
This idea of maybe being able to tell that you're from an accent
that you aren't necessarily from that place.
I think there's more discussion we didn't get into about like, quote, unquote,
being from a place.
But, you know, okay, that aside for a second, that's also complicated.
Um, the idea there reminded me of a relatable live stream I've been watching.
Uh, so for anybody that's that might know it, it's Dolgan on YouTube,
who does a lot of pitch accent material,
06:02
but also is well known for his sort of comedy skits in both Japanese and English.
Um, and so I'd been watching his three hour, which is quite a long, uh, it's,
you know, it was a live stream.
So it's sort of normal to have it go for like over an hour more, more time.
Um, but it was a long one.
It was pre-recorded.
So I was watching it after the fact.
Um, and they were, or he was responding to a video about how, well,
how somebody had a very strong opinion that pitch accent was just a scam,
sort of quote, a scam.
But the live stream turned out to be sort of very interesting,
where Dolgan expressed he wanted to sort of frame this and talk about the points,
because there were some important ones in there.
Not just like a sort of bad or good.
Um, I mean, the fact that he obviously sells pitch accent learning material.
Right.
So like, consider, yeah, he was like, consider this as well.
Right.
I'm selling you a product at the same time.
So he has like, that's his thing.
Right.
It's part of his like Patreon.
Oh, like he sells a tutorial.
Yeah.
So he specialized into that niche.
And so upfront in this one and in other videos, he's like, this is what I do.
Right.
So like, think about the ideas we talk about in your own way.
Yeah, put it in a context that he has a monetary interest.
Yeah, so like, I'm not obviously going to be like pitch accent is bad, but also,
and then the rest of the video was, you know, I think a pretty good,
at least, you know, obviously spread towards things being important for pitch accent.
But it was a nice discussion.
I think a couple of the points that I liked were mentions,
all in regards to the places you're from and the accents changing and stuff.
And like, people can change how they want to sound if they find a way to do so.
Pitch accent is one way to do it.
You mentioned the NHK book, right, that you'd seen before,
like that trains for this type of thing.
And so it's just another aspect.
Yeah, it's just another aspect of language, though.
But it's like voice training.
You can do those things if you so wish.
You'll have some, maybe some range, right,
plus or minus that you get out of doing that particular practice, that particular study.
But in essence, it's just one feature.
If you don't want to study it, you don't have to.
You might be able to get similar outcomes doing something related.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And I also think the whole point, I guess, of pitch accent and accents in general,
is that it's not necessarily essential in making your point come across.
09:02
Or like, it's decorative at the end of the day, you know,
and that does not interfere with your logic or your basic communication.
It's just that some languages are more sensitive to the pitch and or accent or pitch accent.
And maybe Japanese is one of those.
I can't tell because I speak Japanese since I was born.
But like...
It requires a different level of analysis.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Maybe.
And there's tonal language, right, like Mandarin and Cantonese,
which, you know, separates their sound in tones and use different tones to convey different meaning.
And like, to me, that's really hard also.
And we're not going to get into the technicalities of like,
what is tone and what is pitch and what is pitch accent and whatnot.
But like, I think it's just interesting that somebody sort of dedicated
a good chunk of their lives sort of honing, you know, because...
And I also think, like, I want to sort of put this on a public wavelength,
semi-public wavelength, that it is kind of like a cliche of
Japanese people who are learning English as a second language,
they can get a little self-conscious about pronunciations.
And I think...
And therefore accents, right?
And there's undeniable Japanese accent.
I think there is definitely there, right?
That seems to be common across all of them.
But I also want to stress that it's really not that big of a deal,
because, again, it doesn't interfere with your communication
or like logic if the listener, the person on the other side is actually listening.
I think what does get in between, though, is like the self-consciousness of it all.
And knowing that you don't sound, quote unquote, right.
And that gets into your head and that makes you mumble,
or that makes you more monotonous.
And actually, English is like intonation-based language,
like messing up the intonation of the sentence,
like where the inflection happens,
really makes it hard to understand the logic of the communication,
like logic of the sentence.
So like you being conscious,
not knowing how to pronounce like particular sound really well,
and knowing that that word is, that sound is coming in your sentence,
12:01
and then you get mumbly and you get nervous,
like that's more interfering to the entire communication
than the fact that you cannot pronounce R's and L's very well, for instance.
That's usually never the problem.
It's the worrying part.
It's the nervousness part that makes the other person go,
what did you say, right?
And then when you are asked, what did you say,
you get like even more self-conscious,
like, shit, I didn't say it right.
And then the vicious cycle begins.
Yeah, I can only feel slightly triggered.
Yes, that's something I always thought about when it comes,
when I hear people complain,
or when people praise for my pronunciation
or like my relatively clean sounding English.
I'm like, I mean, I'm just lucky,
but like that's not really,
that's just like very small facets of my English.
And I think English is more sensitive to the intonation of the sentence
than the individual sound.
I think languages like Chinese is way more sensitive to the sound,
like individual sound of the words.
Then, you know, because it's tonal,
the Cantonese has nine tones per sound.
Like, do you have to have a perfect pitch in order to like speak fluently?
Do they even know if they're speaking in a right tone?
There are so many questions that you've just brought up,
but that weren't necessarily framed as a question
that I'm not sure where to start.
That's so good.
It's okay, we can stop this episode right now,
and then recollect and start a new recording.
That's it for the show today.
Thanks for listening and find us on X at Eigo de Science.
That is E-I-G-O-D-E-S-C-I-E-N-C.
See you next time.
