A Little Accent Please

So I was talking to a friend in Japanese the other day and I was telling the story of how funny it was during the time I was growing up whenever my mother would butcher the English language.

I am not exactly sure why I thought a Japanese person would find this funny but I did. Given how hard it is for most people to learn English I guess I thought they could somehow relate.

So there I was, a native English speaker speaking Japanese in Japan with my American accent, trying to imitate someone who is a native Japanese speaker trying to speak English in America with a Japanese accent.

I am truly confused

It actually helps me out more than you would ever know. When I can’t express what I am trying to say in Japanese, I will switch to English but using my mother’s accent that I grew up hearing. When I do this, it is much easier for the Japanese to understand me. It really has little to do with the accent and more to do with me switching the English over to something that can be pronounced in Japanese.

If that doesn’t work, I go heavy into the Marcel Marceau pantomime routine and if that doesn’t work then I am resigned to only eating in restaurants that have plastic replicas of the food in the front window.