Comment by gyomu
4 days ago
Heh that’s overstated. As a non Asian foreigner*, you get a lot of leeway for making mistakes when speaking Japanese, as it is somehow ingrained in the subconscious here that Japanese is very special and very complicated and a foreigner trying to speak it is already doing something near impossible.
If your Japanese is near flawless except for the honorific register that would strike people as weird, but then what did you do to end up speaking flawless Japanese without ever properly internalizing honorific Japanese?
*(If you are an Asian foreigner, you are subject to many other layers of prejudice unrelated to your language ability)
My grandmother spent a lot of time in Japan, and she reported that everyone was very accommodating initially, but that over time the expectation developed that after being there for so long she should have learned the correct way to behave.
Yes, but that’s more about manners and being part of a community than language skills. You can speak shit Japanese and still be involved with your local community and be accepted and appreciated, for sure.