It’s one thing to say, “I’ma gonna start a YouTube channel!” and quite another thing to actually do so in another language. I realized that since my intended audience is Japanese, some of the language conventions for western YouTube won’t necessarily apply.

It is more than just making a western style video, but in Japanese. That would sound clunky. It’s tailoring the way I speak so that those language conventions will sound somewhat smooth to Japanese listeners while still retaining some originality.

I have, by no means, any delusions of somehow magically mastering the language for the purposes of YouTube. I just fear that my listeners’ very souls will cringe when they hear the awkward Japanese stumbling out of my mouth. Obviously, because of the culture difference, there will be some things that will sound cringe-worthy to Western audiences, but will be really catchy to a Japanese person. Or, they will be catchy because of said cringe factor. On the topic of opening greetings, President Hajime encapsulates this conundrum in nine succinct syllables:  

“Aisatsu kuso dasai….” (Opening greetings are @#$%ing lame)

~President Hajime, September 2020

In order to avoid nailing the wrong kind of dasai  or offending all of the people in my videos, I began to ask myself a number of things, namely:

1.How do Japanese YouTubers open a video in Japanese?

2. How do they sign off?

3. What kind of sense of humour or video presence do they use?

4. What speech patterns do they use when explaining things?

5. What level of formality do they use in their speech?

6. Do they change their language based on the setting of their video?

Thus marks the beginning of a new series in which I analyze different YouTubers’ language styles in the hopes of finding inspiration for my own videos. If all goes well, by the end of this series I’ll have settled on my own style and will have posted a few embarrassing videos of me practicing those pesky conventions.

References:

President HajimeFields,(2020). YouTuberあるあるソング [Video file]. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bfWqN2BpsN8&feature=emb_title

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bfWqN2BpsN8&feature=emb_title