How To Speak Faster In Japanese

When you start speaking in Japanese you are going to notice that you seem very slow, especially compared to the native speakers and this can be annoying.

It is perfectly normal as a beginner, but you will of course want to get faster, which you can …it will just require a lot of practice.

I will go through some ways you can practice, to make sure you are actually getting faster and improving your speaking skills.

Why Are You Slow When Speaking Japanese?

If we are going to look at how to get faster, we should really look at why we might be slow in the first place, as this is going point out some things we might need to work on.

A lot of your slowness will just come down to inexperience and not being comfortable with the language.

When you look at your Japanese studies, ask yourself how much speaking have you actually done. Even if you do a lot …it’s not a lot. Compare it to how much speaking you have done in your own language, you probably haven’t even done a fully days worth of Japanese, so of course you are going to lack experience.

Then if you pair this with the fact you are not super comfortable with the language, as you have not really being learning it for so long, then of course this is going to result in you being slow.

You haven’t reached reach that subconscious autopilot level yet, and this means all your speaking is a bit more conscious. You need to stop and think about what you’ve heard and then try and think about what to say in return.

Your brain needs a few seconds to find the right words and place them in the right order and this takes time and then add in the fact you are worried about mistakes and insecurities and suddenly your Japanese is quite slow, it doesn’t flow in the same way as a native.

However, none of this is really a problem, it can all be fixed and you can get faster.   

Speak More, To Get Faster

If you want to get faster at speaking in Japanese …speak more Japanese.

It sounds too simple, but this is really all you need. As I mentioned, you just have no experience with speaking in Japanese, so the more experience you can get, the better you become …which means just speak more.

I know some of you will be thinking that you talk a lot in English and while that may be the case, it is not the same as Japan. Your tongue has to move in a totally different way and you have to produce a completely different sound system in Japanese, so speaking in English doesn’t help you with Japanese.

You have to get your mouth physically moving in a different way for Japanese and this takes time to learn and to get comfortable. The more talking in Japanese you can do, the faster you will become.

Speak Out Loud When You Are Alone

An easy way to get more speaking practice is to just speak to yourself, out loud when you are alone.

This is going to feel stupid at first, but it does work. You need to train your mouth how to move, which means you need to move it. You can’t just say a word once and master it, you will need to say the same words over and over again.

Think about English, you probably repeated the same words over and over again as a kid and each time you got slightly better. This type of repletion is needed in Japanese and you are just going to find it easier to do this on your own.

You don’t need to worry about mistakes as you can say very simple things that you know are correct. Even saying single words is enough and is something I have done to get my pronunciation right. 

The more you can repeat stuff, the more your mouth is going to get comfortable making the sounds, so just start talking to yourself, it will speed up your overall speaking abilities.   

Speak To More Japanese Natives

Speaking to natives is kind of the end goal, but you can still do it when you learning and it really is one the best ways to rapidly improve.

This is going to be stressful and overwhelming, but once you realise it’s not too bad you can start to enjoy yourself and you will notice that pretty quickly you can get comfortable with talking. You will spot all the gaps in your knowledge and you can either fill these or work around them, but either way you are going to notice that you improve.

This is going to lead you to just naturally speaking faster and reaching that “normal” speaking pace that you want, rather than the slow, broken type speech you started with.

Speaking to natives is tough, but it is incredibly powerful, simply as it forces you to improve.

Do More Shadowing

Shadowing is also another great way to improve your speed. All you need to do here is copy some audio and try and sound exactly like it.

You don’t need to think about what to say, you just copy what you hear. The goal is to copy the pronunciation and also the speed. If you can match this, then you are talking at the same pace as a native and while you are not forming the language yourself, you are training your mouth to know what it feels like to speak at the correct speed.

This will translate over when you start talking by yourself and you will naturally find your speed increases when you train with shadowing.

Try and Stop Translating In Your Head

A lot of your slowness in Japanese can be down to the mental processing you have to do before speaking, which usually means you are translating in your head.

It is common to form a sentence in English and then try and convert it into Japanese and this has a number of issues. The first being that you need to think of the words and their general order, but the bigger issue is that many things do not directly translate, so you end up trying to translate your English into a sort of Japanese concept, then into the actual Japanese language itself.

All of this takes too much time and effort and the sooner you can stop this and just think directly in Japanese, the sooner you can start talking a lot faster.

Really if you want to progress in the language you need to do this, the fact that it will make you seem faster is just a nice bonus.

(You can read more about – How To Think In Japanese)

Increase Your Vocabulary

You should also focus on increasing your vocabulary if you want to get faster at speaking. This may seem like it is not related, but it very much is.

As you soon as you start speaking, you will quickly realise you are not sure about what word to use, or what is more likely is that you will realise you do not know the word you need …this is going to result in those awkward pauses and increasing the strength of  your vocabulary is going to remove that.

If you know the words well, and know many of them, they will just come to your mind quickly. Just think about your English, you know it so well that you just open your mouth and words fall out, the stronger your Japanese vocabulary gets, the more likely this is going to happen for you and everything will feel a lot faster. 

Spend More Time Listening To Japanese

Being able to speak at the same speed as a native means you need to know what this sounds like, so doing a lot of listening in Japanese is going to be very helpful.

Listening is like the road map you need in order to speak correctly and at the right tempo, so it is going to be very worth your while focusing on this. Your brain is going to be subconsciously building its understanding of what you need to do when you have to speak yourself, so do not neglect your listening.  

Spend More Time Reading In Japanese

Reading is another form of immersion that you should be doing a lot of and it will also help your speaking seed.

These two things may seem unconnected, but they are not. The more you read. The more you will be training internal voice and while this is only half the process of speaking, it is still important to train this.

Everything you read will getting your brain used to “hearing” the language and “speaking” it internally and when you do actually start speaking all this practice will help the words get sent from your brain, into your tongue a lot faster.

Of course you will need to practice the actual moving of your mouth, but you can do this by reading out loud and then you are kind of training the whole process, both mentally and physically.

Just Keep Practicing, You Will Get Faster

The real secret to getting faster with your Japanese speaking is to simply practice more and so long as you stick with that, you will see progress.

It can be hard at the start and giving up might seem like the best option, but stick with it and you will eventually see progress.

You are going to get comfortable with things and your natural ability is only going to improve and you will see your overall speed increase …just keep  practicing, it will happen.  

(You can read more about – How To Speak Japanese With Confidence (Tips for Beginners))