I don’t speak a lot of Japanese these days, mainly English in class and at home, but when I do speak it, I’ve noticed a disturbing trend. Lately I have been shortening some important sounds in the interest of smoother speech. Here’s an example:
To say “It’s cold, isn’t it?” in Japanese, you would say “寒ã„ã§ã™ã。” (Samui desu ne.)
But recently, I have been trimming off the “de” from “desu” like this:
“Samui ssune.”
Probably the “de” sound is a little out of position for my tongue, and so seeing a chance to be lazy I have been lowering the sound of “de” until it is almost inaudible, and then hissing a little to combine the “su” and the “ne”.
Actually, it sounds very authentic, and I hear it often on TV and in other places in Japan. Unfortunately, it is almost exclusively a characteristic of older male speech.
That’s right – solid linguistic proof that I’m getting old.
I need to work on cleaning up this bad habit now. I wonder what other bad habits I’ve picked up over the years that I’m not aware of…
