 Hello, everyone. My name is Scott Perry and I'm your host today for Let's Talk Hawaii, live from Honolulu today. This is a program about English pronunciation, communication, and interesting things and people in Hawaii. You can see me here every other Tuesday at 3pm. People have asked me more information about myself and I said, well, I can give you my website. ScottPerryAcademy.com. You can also find my information at ScottPerryAcademy.com. Today's topic is why you may need to repeat yourself. Now, not if you're a native speaker, but if you actually are not a native speaker and maybe from Japan or Korea or China or somewhere like that, today's we're going to talk about why you may need to repeat yourself. The information might be a little bit surprising. Excuse me. Moving on, I'm going to show you the header of today's topic in Japanese. Today's topic is why you may need to repeat yourself. If you're not a native speaker, you may need to repeat yourself. It's an interesting reason, but it's a research report. I'm going to show you the cover of that one, my first slide, actually. This is a topic about a workshop that I'm having. Next slide, please. This is my research in pronunciation and perception. I created this several years ago when I was duplicating a test that was done in Georgia, a university in Georgia did a test, and I was very interested in that information. It's almost unbelievable because of my field. If you don't know, I've been a pronunciation teacher, an English teacher for over 30 years now. It's actually my past my 31st year. Today's topic is an interesting research about a university in Georgia. I want to repeat that, I want to duplicate that. Several years ago, about 10 years ago, I did a similar research. Over 300 people I got involved and the results are very interesting. I'm going to come up to that next. Now, if I can go back to my first slide, there we go. This is an event that's coming up. Someone asked me, Scott, what are you doing next? I saw you were in Japan. When are you doing that again? I said, well, here's the answer. My next event is going to be in Tokyo and it's going to be September 23rd. It's going to be an all day workshop, very intensive workshop. I've got some speakers of mine. The first two ladies you can see there are former students. Excellent pronunciation, one's an actress, one's a singer, and so on. If you're interested in that, you can contact me. Now, also, in the background you can see Waimanalo Beach. That's not on the Waikiki side, but the opposite side. It's a very lovely beach, as you can see. And you can see Rabbit Island in the background. This way, Rabbit Island in the background. And it's a very, very common, popular place for Japanese tourists, and any tourist, basically, to come and enjoy that beach. Beautiful water, and always a nice time there. I just wanted to let you know where I was. I'm actually not there right now, but that's the background. Okay, now, perception in Japanese. Now, before I get to that main point, I wanted to show you. I was asked recently about Japan and how many people come to Japan. And I said, well, how many do you think? And I asked them, and they said, 50, 50, 100? And I said, no, many more than that. 500? Maybe you think, yes, 500 people. How many people come to Japan? Actually, every, actually, the airline industry keeps a report of every Japanese tourist that visits Hawaii. That's why Japan's air companies release reports every day. Those reports come from how many people come to Japan? How many people come? And I asked them, how many people come every day? And I know the answer because it's published every day in a Japanese newspaper, a daily newspaper. Every day, there are reports from Japan, and it tells you exactly how many people came from Japan. And how many people come to Japan? How many do you think come on average to Hawaii? Well, the answer might surprise you. It is 5,500 people. 5,500 people. Let me see what that looks like in Japanese. So that's 5,500 people. 5,500 people. Yes. Then it comes every day on average. Sometimes, 600 people. Sometimes, 5,000 people. 6,000, 5,000. But roughly every day, there are about 5 days or 4 days. So the meaning is, in seven days and one week, any time in Waikiki, there's about 35,000 Japanese people on average. So that's interesting. So if you look closely, 35,000 people here in Waikiki almost any day of the week. And of course, 5,500 people come home every day. So it's a rotation. And many times, it's not just the first time, the third time, the fourth time, the fifth time. It's often the first time. It's like they're back in home. So it's very important to be able to communicate. It's very good if you can communicate. For some reason, you want to come here and have fun. You want to have fun. But if you can't talk, it's a bit of a hassle. Many people would love to talk and learn more about Hawaii. But if you can't really interact with the local people, it's a little bit difficult. So I'm going to talk about for those of you who are trying to improve your English and your pronunciation, why you might need to repeat yourself. Don't feel bad. I speak and people say, excuse me? No big deal. I did not, most likely, did not make a mistake with my pronunciation. That's not why we don't understand. We don't have to worry about our pronunciation. We don't have to worry about our pronunciation. We don't have to worry about our pronunciation. We don't have to worry about our pronunciation. Excuse me? Pardon me? I'm not the one who made a mistake. Sometimes it's because I couldn't hear it. They couldn't hear it. They were thinking something else. Maybe noise in the background. There are many reasons for not understanding. So it's not a really big deal. But foreigners don't have that much confidence. You don't have so much confidence. So you will likely think it's all your fault. It may not be. If I go back again to my original slide, I can show you my second... Yeah, there we go. If you can read Japanese, you can read that. I can't read it all. But I wrote it, but I can't read it all. But anyway, it's talking about a test to determine why people have to repeat themselves. It was kind of like a hidden survey. And it's based on a research study done in Georgia in 1992. It's a very old report, but I found it to be very interesting. And slightly disturbing, but interesting more. So in a classroom in a university in Georgia, a professor who was a language professor was giving a lecture. But the lecture topic is not a home topic. It's a different topic. It's a test. Going to be on the test. The information was going to be on the test. So this is 1992. So remember, there was no iPhone. There was no iPhone. There was no iPhone. There was no iPhone. There was no iPhone. There was no, you know, MP, whatever. It was a cassette player. So it was a cassette tape. We used to have cassette. Put the cassette in and push play. The microphone was close. Everyone could hear the lecture. On the board in the back was a huge... There were hundreds of people. Maybe 150, 200 people in this lecture. And on the board was a blonde lady from Ohio. She was a well-known, pretty well-known professor on her topic. And I stressed the blonde part because she was not Japanese or Chinese making that point. Now, so what, right? It's a person giving their information. But the interesting thing was... Overhead projector. Everybody could see a blonde lady. She's telling everybody her topic. And at the end of the class, the professor says, and says, okay, any questions? No questions. This is going to be on the test. Got it. Any questions, anybody? No, nothing. Everybody gets up and walks out. A little classic already. That class was over. Next group comes in. A mixture of the similar people. Sit down. Teacher rewinds. And plays. This time, a Chinese lady's picture on the overhead screen. Very large, you know, same large picture. But the cassette was the same. The content was the same. Play. The same voice of the people in Hawaii. The voice of the people in Hawaii. Then, same routine, but one Chinese lady's face on the screen. And it was very interesting because right after the lecture, the teacher pressed the button stop and said, okay, any questions? Many hands go up. I didn't quite understand everything that was said. I'm not sure what she said. Is this going to be on the test? I'm not sure. This is not fair. And the professor was very shocked. I'll come back with what happened next right after these messages. Aloha. I'm Marcia Joyner, inviting you to join us on Wednesdays at 1 o'clock for Cannabis Chronicles, a 10,000 year odyssey where we take a look at cannabis as food, cannabis as medicine, cannabis and religion, cannabis and dear old Uncle Sam. Please join us to learn all about cannabis. Again, Wednesdays at 1 o'clock. Thank you. The Hawaii Community Foundation. The Hawaii Council of Associations of Apartment Owners. Hawaii Energy. The Hawaii Energy Policy Forum. Hawaiian Electric Company. Integrated Security Technologies. Galen Ho of BAE Systems. Kamehameha Schools. MW Group. The Shidler Family Foundation. The Sydney Stern Memorial Trust. VOLO Foundation. Yuriko J. Sugimura. Thanks so much to you all. Welcome back, everyone. My name is Scott Perrin. I'm your host on Let's Talk Hawaii. I'm from Honolulu. And right now we're going to continue with our topic on why you might need to repeat yourself. Why do I need to repeat myself? So as I was talking before the break, the classroom heard the exact same lecture, but this time there were several questions. Not everyone, of course, but there were several questions. The professor was very surprised because the voice was exactly the same as the first person, the original speaker. The only difference was the face on the screen. Now I was very curious as to why would they say they don't understand. That was the voice of a native speaker from Ohio Shoe, which is a midland area, which is one of the standard Hudson. So I read further and I found out why. And the reason is, as you might imagine, some people are a little bit lazy. So if they could find an excuse for not doing so well, they might use that excuse. So maybe they weren't going to study, because they weren't going to study, so they were not going to study, because they were not native speakers, because they weren't native Americans. So she's not an American lady looking, so maybe she doesn't speak clearly. They were using that as an excuse, possibly. And I said, okay, so even if she did speak perfectly, there are people who might pretend they don't understand for their advantage. So if they didn't study and they failed the test, they could say, hey, I didn't understand. So maybe they didn't want to study because they didn't want to learn. So they didn't understand if their pronunciation was bad, if they couldn't hear, so that's why they failed the test. It wasn't my fault. That's kind of like not a great thing to do, but some people said, yeah, no problem. I'm fine. It went out. Those are probably the better students I'm guessing. I think that's better students. So I found out about this, and I wanted to recreate it. So I set up a similar situation, and I used my voice as the control. My voice said, hi there, my name is da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da, and I gave a little 10-second speech. But I used the picture of one of my staff. He's a cool guy. He's a very cool guy, and I used his photo. He's not Japanese or Chinese either. But he also had sandy brown hair. Looks like he's an outdoor sportsman. And I used his picture. He took about 39, 40 years old. And I used his photo, and I asked people online to do a test. Listen to this voice, and tell me his level. Is it this level, this level, or this level? Good, great, excellent, not so good, bad. And what do you think? So a few hundred people logged in and clicked. I asked them, are you from Japan? Are you American? Male, female. Many detailed questions. So I had lots of data. I asked a lot of questions. How old were you? I had a lot of data. I knew who was answering the question. And the results were very surprising. Again, many people that saw his face said, no problem at all. I understand everything. Perfectly clear. Nothing to talk. I'm not changing my face. This time I put a 45-year-old Japanese man picture on the screen and asked another 100 people. And the results were very different. Again, it was confirmed. The first person, the top score, they were a one. everything was great. One is the best. The second person, 日本人の顔, same my voice, got a four on the average. So quite a bit lower. And I'm thinking, why? What? Nothing changed. It was me, Haton Kyosei teacher, a pronunciation teacher. But many people found problems with my Haton, with my voice, when his face was over my voice. And I was going, oh, wow, this is really interesting. I did the same thing with the female. Japanese ladies face, another ladies face. And I got the same result. And then I used another control. I put a Japanese ladies face, who had challenges with her Haton. Her pronunciation was not clear at all. I would rank it as an eight or a nine. Surprisingly, I was surprised to find out that the control of the Japanese ladies face, and she spoke very Japanese English. Hello, I'm Dababab. Thank you very much for the time. Much like I know it, clearly hard to understand in Japanese English. But the American people said, I can't understand her. I've got to give her a 10. I don't know what she's saying. 何言ってるかわかんない10. 日本人が5 or 6. 一じゃないけど当たり前でも they gave her a 5 or 6. She should be a 10 or 9. But I'm thinking, why would other Japanese give her a higher score? Do you? That's how they speak also. If they give her a low score, they give themselves a low score. I said, OK, I understand. You hear yourself, but you don't want to lower your own score. Basically, everything told me that about 25% of American people will look at you if you don't look the same and basically say, I don't understand what you're saying. And the reason is maybe they don't want to do the work or get something or do something. So if Starbucks needs it, I want to double wrap a mocha chino latte with soy milk and dada. Oh, man, Ducks, I don't want to do that. They don't want to get that, so it's me. And the Japanese said, I made a mistake. What should I do? Oh, no, what can I do? And they will basically freeze, cancel the order, or change the coffee, please. Coffee is easy. So I could basically say, what did you say? And you will run away. And that saves me from doing the work if I'm a lazy guy. But if I'm serious, I will hear you and get what you want. So for my students, I tell them, if they've, you know, カトンガチャンってできたら, I say, don't worry. Your sound is good. So if someone pretends they don't understand, look them in the eye. Say, I would like a double wrap a mocha chino latte with soy milk, please. Clearly. Don't have to change anything. そしたら、ああ、この人が自信持ってる。 I can't trick them. I have to get what they want. And you will get what you want. So that was the summation. So, but逆に発音が悪かったら, if your pronunciation is really not so great, people will honestly say, I don't understand. And that's going to be maybe the majority if you have a problem. But if you're actually perfect pronunciation, you could be born in America, raised in America. Second, third generation Japanese doesn't matter. And people might try the trick unless you just have 動い自信. Hey, man, give me a なんとか なんとか なんとか. Ah, can't trick this guy. He's a native. そうじゃなかったら、 プリックするかもしれないから、気をつけてください。 I tell my students, don't worry. 自信持って、話して。 Be clear, look him in the eye. And strong, wrong voice. You have no problems. So if you'd like to read the details of my research report, and funny thing, some of the people were my students looking at me, going, oh, his T.H. has a problem. 彼のRがちょっとずれてる。 My students, they know more information, but they were, you know, surprised. I was, okay, so I'm hearing something, okay. And yes, if you do come to Hawaii, I have what's called a Hawaii boot camp. It's a very fun time. And many people come here, and we have confidence and speak clearly. I'm gonna show you a couple quick pictures of what we do. That's us from earlier this year. Many people come, we gather, we talk. Next slide, we have the arrival. 始まってきたばっかりで、みんなi-hopに食べに来ました。 ご一般ケーキ食べて、みんな楽しんで。 And my next slide is scavenger hunt. We are finding people in Waikiki to talk to. Here we have a Canadian eating ice cream on the coldest day of Japan. カナダだから、カナダだから、 not so cold. Next slide, everyone had to get on a train and take a selfie, or not a train, but a bus. バス行って、セルフィトット。 And the next slide, we have our boot camp house, nice house on the Kailua side, and we are having dinner together and so on. I think I have one more slide. Dinner preparation, and last slide, exercise. Hatom Kyozai training. So we do this once or twice a year, next one coming up in October. A lot of fun if you're interested. And thank you for joining me. This is Scott Perry for Let's Talk Hawaii. See you next time.