The various different forms of Japanese can be incredibly confusing {think plain-past-negative}, and often in a classroom environment you will only be exposed to polite or formal Japanese. Though I had learnt about colloquial Japanese at school, I was never really given a chance to practise it, so coming to Japan and speaking in only colloquial terms has been slightly difficult – but I’ve picked up some tricks along the way to ensure that you can communicate effectively.

The most important thing is to know a lot of verbs, and learning them in formal Japanese is fine. Once you know verbs, you can figure out the stem, and you’ll be able to communicate in past, present, future, plain and many other tenses. An easy example of this is 食べます – tabemasu {to eat}, the verb stem is clearly ‘tabe’, so my tip is that if you are unsure of how to phrase something, just use the verb stem and it will most likely be understood. For example, if you want to say: I want to eat chicken, then you would phrase it like this: チキンを食べ… The correct verb ending in this case is たい {want to}, so if you say that you will be able to get your message across.

My next tip is directly related to the one above, which is that normally if you peter off, people will say the correct verb to themselves. So I guess you should just listen to what they say instead of tuning out. They are freely giving you the answer, so use it in your next conversation. Perhaps even confirm the correct sentence by saying it again.

If you are listening to instructions and have no idea what is going on, watch their hand movements. People can often mime an action without thinking, and this will give you a clue as to what they want you to do. Often, like in English, the same verb can apply to a number of situations, so take note of them and use your brain.

I hope this post has been a little helpful in teaching colloquial Japanese. It’s really important to initiate conversations and get involved, rather than sitting on the sidelines and contemplating how bad your language skills are. Even if you don’t know how to phrase something – give it a try! As it is not your mother tongue people will cut you a lot of slack, so don’t be afraid of embarrassing yourself and leap in!

-H