BTW, I like the beta versions of the practice section in the Premium package.

Sorry for the late reply! I would agree with Naomi that rather than speaking ‘artificially slowly’, the native Japanese speakers here at JPod speak very clearly - much more clearly than a lot of people will do you the favour of speaking in ‘real life’! It also helps that most of our teachers here are female: I don’t know about you, but I have always found and continue to find women far easier to understand in Japanese than men!

Shimezawaさん

Very, very good point! The 漫才　(manzai) comic dialogues are excellent practice too! Old-man Japanese is the bane of my existence… I actually used to have a part-time job in an izakaya in Yokohama, which was the best way bar-none (no pun intended, groan) to acclimatize myself to native-speed (slurred, drunken, slangy…) Japanese

Basically, everyone at JPod is speaking artificially slowly. If you’ve not heard full speed native Japanese, check out some of the TV clips over at YouTube. The situation gets even more dire when, for example, you are in a tiny dive bar in Osaka trying to understand the drunken ojisan speaking to you in Osakaben over the din of the other customers It takes a lot of time, patience, and practice to accustom your ear to full speed native Japanese but it can be done.

You spelled “shikari” but it’s actually しっかり”shikkari”.-I’ve also checked the PDF. It also said しっかり “shikkari”
I think we’ve explained it in a different lesson, but some people put a slightly longer pause at the small つ part to add emphasis.
I don’t think the voice actor is doing anything weird.

Regarding speaking speed, I personally didn’t find Jessi’s speech was fast at all, it’s quite a natural speed in a conversation. Some people speak faster than the others.
Yuichi and I (by the way, I’m not Mayumi. I’m Naomi) are language teachers so I have to admit that we speak like teachers-we speak more clearly. However it doesn’t mean we speak artificially slowly.
It’s just that you probably wouldn’t speak like you normally do in front of the microphone or in the classroom.

Thanks for that. The question I had with ’shikari’ wasn’t the meaning, but the way it was said in the dialogue. If you have a listen you’ll hear that the word was split into two, which made it sound like two unique words, not one. I was wondering if that was normal or just the voice actress doing something weird.

Speaking speed is an int eresting one, as my experience with real Japanese speech is (as you would expect) limited. Still, I’d say 99% of the comprehension problems related to speed (rather than unknown vocab/grammer) I’ve had have been from a few JPod voice actors! Would you say Mayumi and Yuichi speak artificially slowly?

6. Noted. Sorry about that, it must have been frustrating for you - we’ll definitely have a look at the vocab issue. I’ll also pass on the message about Jessi’s speaking speed - although as I mentioned before, it’s good for your comprehension skills to practice listening to native speed speech, even if you can’t quite catch it all yet. Listening to artificially slowed-down speech is indeed easy and comfortable, but if you get too used to that speed, then it will cause problems for you later on…

Anyway, I hope I answered most of your questions (and sorry about the split post!). Please let me know if anything else needs explaining in more detail

First of all, はじめまして 　I’m Kat, a new member of staff at JapanesePod101.com. よろしくお願いします！Now, I’ll try to answer your questions as best I can!

Thanks for your feedback on the lesson, and on our voice actor. You may find him a little difficult to understand (I used to find men much harder to understand than women in Japanese; possibly because 95% of all Japanese language teachers are female…?), but that’s the best possible preparation for actually coming to Japan and interacting with ‘real’ Japanese people! (Although having said that, no language course in the world adequately prepares you for Old Man Japanese… )

1. ‘Sa’ is a sentence ending particle meaning ‘y’know’ which you definitely don’t need to panic about: it adds no extra meaning to the sentence and is basically just a habit of speech. It was originally masculine, but now some women use it too. You can also use ’sa’ in the middle of sentences (girls in particular do this nowadays) and it acts as the equally irritating Japanese form of ‘like’. For example: なんかさぁ、昨日さ、先生に怒られてさ、ちょーむかついたんだけどさぁ！　’Like, yesterday, I like totally got yelled at by my teacher, and I was like SOOO annoyed, by the way!’ (Disclaimer: For example purposes only. PLEASE do not talk like this in Japanese! )

2. しっかり　is an adverb meaning ‘properly’ or ‘thoroughly’. The spelling is correct. What word were you thinking of…?

3. The sentence ending in もたせる　was 自分の食べるものについて考える機会を持たせるのは、本当に大事なことだと思うよ。 持たせる　is indeed a causative; it’s the causative of the verb 持つ　(もつ）, which means ‘to hold’ and more broadly ‘to have’. So the literal translation of this sentence would be: ‘I really think it’s an important thing (本当に大事なことだと思うよ) to provide [children] with opportunities to think about their own food [自分の食べるものについて考える機会を持たせるのは]. Do you see how 持たせる、 which literally means ‘to make [someone] hold [something]’, has been translated as ‘provide’ (or in the dialogue translation, as ‘create’)? You’re literally ‘making children hold thoughts about what they eat’ - or ‘providing them with opportunities to think about what they eat’.

4. 登場人物　（とうじょうじんぶつ）　means just ‘characters [in a scene/play]’ or ‘dramatis personae’, if you’re familiar with that phrase; it can also encompass the meaning of ‘characters entering’, yes, as 登場　literally means ‘appear’ or ‘come on stage’.

5. ねんに (年に) means just ‘in a year’. So Jessi said 年に五回、

Firstly I should say that I find one of the voice actors really tough to follow. He’s the guy who spoke the line “：わたしは、さんせい。こどもにじぶんでおべんとうをねんに5かいつくらせるんでしょ。” He’s been voicing JPod lessons for a long time and I’ve always struggled to understand him as he talks very, very quickly and tends to slur words together quite often. I usually need the transcript to work out what he’s saying!

That aside, I have questions!

1 - What does ‘daiji sa’ mean? I know ‘daiji’ means ‘important’, but what does the ’sa’ on the end mean?

2 - The way this sentance - “でも「べんとうのひ」のよさをしっかりせつめいして、ほごしゃをあんしんさせればいいんじゃないかな。” was read totally threw me. It’s said with “しっかり” as two seperate words “shi”, and “kari”, with a *long* pause between the sylables. Is this normal?

3 - “もたせる” is a causative veb, but what was the original? The translation is to ‘think of’, but isn’t that “kangaeru”?

4 - After dialogue banter - “toujou jimbutsu” means “characters entering the scene”?

5 - Jessi said “shougakusei ha, itsu mo kyuushoku wo tabeteiru kara, dialogue de, nen ni gokai bentou no hi wo tsukurou to iu koto wo hashi atta n’desu ne”. What does ‘nen ni’ mean? And please Jessi slow it down a notch, Yuichi and Mayumi speak at just the right speed.

6 - The vocab was (again!) missing many words which were in the lesson specific vocab list. Of the 15 listed, you guys only mentioned 6 of them in list form, then went on to add another in depth. That might be a new record…

As general feedback, I found this lesson pretty difficult. There were several words which, as far as I could remember, were new, and unexplained in the vocab list. Words like ‘ichibu’ threw me at first too, until I could get access to the dictionary and work them out. The line by line was a life saver, but even then the amount of new words made this pretty challenging. Also a comment for Jessi - you are talking quicker and quicker these days, now far ahead of Mayumi and Yuicihi and aproaching Sachiko levels at times. As Sachiko needed to be played at half speed to be understood by humans, this isn’t great news! Please slow it down a touch! Thanks!

As general feedback, I found this lesson pretty difficult. There were several words which, if they had been introduced before, I had forgotten them, or they were just new and unexplained. The line by line was a life saver, but even then the general difficulty level of banter has been rising considerably lately and is now well outside my comfort zone. In a way that’s good, but it also means I miss big chunks of the after dialogue banter completely, and as they aren’t transcribed it’s tough to work them out manually. If you go much futher at this rate, you’ll lose me completely.