Learning Japanese

Why Japanese People Don’t Understand When Foreigners Speak Japanese

A deep dive into the possible reasons for a common complaint

A few days ago, I came across an Instagram reel that showed what happens “when a foreigner speaks Japanese in Japan.” Intrigued, I started watching it.

It was a video skit of two speakers: A man from the UK, saying レアチーズケーキお願いします (“Can I have cheesecake, please”), and a Japanese woman who said the same thing.

In the skit, the man was not understood. The woman was, even though they had ostensibly said the same thing.

The comments of agreement poured in.

• “It happened to me when I went to Japan. Why they don’t understand the same word when it comes out from a foreigner? 😅”
• “This literally just happened to me when I was trying to ask for directions lmao.”
• “I always experience this with my girlfriend, lol. It’s kind of annoying actually, 🙄.”

Is it Racial Discrimination?

Understandably, people started to say it was due to discrimination; Japanese people wanted to pretend that foreigners cannot speak Japanese.

• “I really don’t find it funny. I think it’s really sad how racism or discrimination is rooted in people☹️”
• “You mean they were racist and intentionally didn’t reply to him. Cuz what he said was so clear.”
• “This happens to me!! I say it’s because I don’t look Japanese, so they automatically assume they don’t understand me.”
• “It’s awesome to give the benefit of the doubt. In my experience, and in the opinion of my Japanese wife as well, they understand you and are being rude.”

But I don’t buy this reasoning.

I don’t look white.

For the most part, I blend in. And yet, I’ve also had Japanese people not understand what I am saying, especially when I get lazy and say something closer to “credit card” instead of クレジットカード(kurejitto kādo).

Or, when I mess up my pronunciation even if just slightly.

Others echoed my sentiment:

“I look Japanese, and most people expect me to speak it. I’ll try but I’m pretty bad at it, and sometimes I think I’m saying something the right way as it worked with some others, but half the time that same sentence isn't understood.”

“I’ve actually never had this situation even one single time. If your Japanese is good, people will usually understand you. Of course there might be some black sheep but most of the time it’s probably because of your Japanese if they don’t understand you.”

I responded to the comments, saying, “No, it’s not discrimination. I think it was difficult to understand him due to his intonation being a bit off.”

But one of the commenters was not going to have any of that. He dropped a comment under my comment.

“What’s your JLPT level?”

Is it Your JLPT Level?

I wrote back, asking him “Why do you need to know my JLPT level?”

The JLPT, or the Japanese Language Proficiency test, goes from N5 (the lowest low level) to N1, the highest level.

He replied again, saying “The JLPT is a gauge of your understanding of the Japanese language.” Now, I am usually a very patient person, but I started to get annoyed.

“Well, if you really want to know, I’m N1.”

I started to write in Japanese.

「私は日本に住んでいます。打ち合わせやメールはほとんど日本語でやっています。答えになっていますか？」

“I live and work in Japan. Most of my meetings and e-mails are done in Japanese. Does that answer your question?”

I think the JLPT (Japanese Language Proficiency Test) is a poor gauge of Japanese language pronunciation. It does not test your spoken or written proficiency.

Needless to say, one’s JLPT level should have nothing to do with whether you are understood or not.

Is It Simply Down to Pronunciation?

Others quickly suggested that it was down to pronunciation.

“THIS!!!!😂 every time my husband says “I’m from France” (私はフランスから来ました), Japanese people are like ????? For foreigners, it’s super easy to mispronounce katakana words which makes their intonation/pronunciation sounds a little weird or hard for Japanese to understand.”

“It’s not about them being judgmental or this guy trying his best. It’s a thing that happens all the time. Intonation and pronunciation are important.

Now we’re getting somewhere. I agreed and jumped into the argument.

“His intonation and timing are off. Since Japanese people are not used to hearing a wide variation of pronunciations (unlike in English), they were likely thrown off.”

The debate wasn’t going to stop there. The same guy who asked me about my JLPT level responded again. He wrote with utmost confidence the following words.

Japanese is not a tonal language. Intonation should not matter. Pitch does not matter. 橋 and 箸 are pronounced exactly the same.

I was amazed.

橋 and 箸 are pronounced exactly the same?

I replied, “They are clearly not the same. And you don’t have to believe me. Search these using Google Translate. If you can’t hear the difference, listen to it 100 times a day for 30 days until you hear the difference.”

Surprise, Japanese Has Pitch-Intonation

Beginners to Japanese are quickly told that Japanese has no tones as in Chinese. Perhaps learners take this to mean that intonation doesn’t matter.

This might be because speakers of non-tonal languages cannot fully grasp what tones in languages are supposed to sound like. If you can’t hear tones in a language, can you be expected to hear the difference?

Chinese languages and Thai and other tonal languages have tones.

Japanese has pitch accents. Specifically, Japanese has four patterns of pitch intonation.

• Head-high (pitch starts high and drops)
• Middle-high (pitch starts low, goes up, and drops)
• Tail-high (pitch starts low and ends high)
• Flat (no discernable pitch change)

A good place to start learning about Japanese pitch accents is Dogen’s YouTube video for English speakers. Obviously, intonation varies across dialects, but Dogen’s video uses examples from Standard Japanese.

Non-Standard Pronunciations Are Difficult to Understand

Bear in mind that only 2.2% of the population in Japan are non-Japanese. Most Japanese people are likely not used to foreign accents, especially if they are not in the major cities.

Japanese also has a large number of homophones (words that sound exactly the same but have different meanings) due to Japanese having a very compact number of sounds. It also has words with meanings that completely change if you just slightly mess up the timing or the pitch. Take for example the following words.

• Individuality, 個性（こせい)ー kosei. Pronounced with a falling pitch, and “ko” is pronounced quickly.
• Structure, 構成（こうせい）ー kōsei. Pronounced with flat intonation, and with the “ko” having a stretched timing.

From personal experience, foreigners also often have a difficult time with katakana words. I’ve often not been understood, especially when I speak English loan words. The reason?

「発音きれいすぎて、わかんなかったよ。」

Your pronunciation was too clean (meaning, sounding too much like “English”), so I didn’t understand it.

Messing up either the timing or the pitch dramatically alters the meaning of the words. In contrast, English is a much more globalized language with a much broader variety of accents. Many people learn English as a second, or even third language. This means that globally speaking, people are more used to hearing a wider variety of Englishes.

Plus, English is fundamentally a stress-timed language. The meanings of distinction of words do not depend so much on pitch and timing as much as they do in Japanese.

Is Online Learning to Blame?

Nowadays, with the rise of the creator economy, all kinds of social media platforms are booming. Japanese language “teacher-influencers” are certainly getting very popular on platforms like Instagram.

These teachers create short reels and post them on Instagram and attract a sizeable following. Some of the content is very creative and certainly very educational. They often eschew traditional methods and opt to teach “casual Japanese,” or “real Japanese” rather than textbook Japanese.

On one hand, it’s great to get more people interested in languages. It’s fun. It’s accessible. You get to learn about casual forms of Japanese not usually taught in textbooks.

Yet, I’m ambivalent about learning Japanese (or any other language) in this manner. The downside is that it’s not easy to get a strong foundation in grammar. You often might not have a teacher to correct your pronunciation. And you don’t get to practice with classmates, which helps to build speaking confidence.

Perhaps the Dunning-Kruger Effect is to Blame?

Above all, how do you know you are wrong without direct feedback? How are you supposed to get better if you cannot even tell the difference between 橋 and 箸?

How do you start to improve if you think, incorrectly, that there’s no pitch in Japanese?

The Dunning-Kruger effect is the cognitive bias in which people with limited expertise in a particular field overestimate their abilities. In this case, the person who replied to me thought too highly of his Japanese skill — perhaps because he was consuming tidbit-sized Japanese language material on Instagram.

Are the complainers perhaps overestimating their language ability?

And could this be linked to the growing popularity of social media language “teacher-influencers” who promise to teach you Japanese via online methods? At one end of the extreme, I’ve even seen ads run by “language schools” that promise to help you master Japanese in two months.

That’s just false advertising.

© Alvin T. 2022

For more articles on learning Japanese, please check out the following articles, also written by me:

The author is an editor of Japonica, a Japan-focused publication, but also writes on a wide variety of topics. His key topics of interest are society, culture, modern work, creator economy, and cryptocurrency, with the occasional fictional story, creative piece, or personal essay. Discover his most-read stories here.

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