If you're learning Japanese,there are some steps you can take to reduce any accent you have when speaking. First,do your best to avoid reading Romanized Japanese,that is Japanese written in the Roman alphabet,because of the way your brain will try to extend the grammar and pronunciation rules of English too far(there is no silent'e'in the word moe.Instead, use Japanese study tools that force you to learn words in hiragana,katakana and kanji,such as the Genki textbook series or the excellent flashcards from White Rabbit.This is harder at first but will pay off immediately in better pronunciation,as you say words like onsen or ichi man(hot springs and the numeric unit 10,000) the correct way,e.g.OWN-sen and ichi MAHN,not as they'd be pronounced if they were English words.Using music to help accent reduction is another good idea as a teaching tool with my Japanese students.So if you like karaoke,you've got a great tool right there,Qunli.

Yeah, pronunciation is something that concerns me. I don't mind having an accent, but I don't want to be flat out wrong. I am getting pretty okay.

Each language structure is different, it's fun to learn little bit about how they work. In English, There are four demonstrative pronouns -- this, that, these also, those -- but in Japanese language there are three, kore (koh-ray) meaning "this" associated with something close to me, the speaker, sore (soh-ray) or "that" for something near you, the person I'm speaking to, are (ah-ray), "that over there" for something far from both of us. (You nearly always ignore plurals in Japanese.) Often meanings are imported wholesale from Mandarin Chinese, like a group of kanji-based words that use the character sai, meaning "most," which is how you can express idea like biggest (saidai ), smallest (saishou), highest (saikou, which also carries the slang meaning of "awesome" or lowest (saitei, which is also a pretty potent insult). The Japanese interwebs are about to start buzzing with the new Saimoe "most moe" Tournament, in which otaku vote on who the cutest anime characters are. Last year Taiga from Toradora! took the prize -- I wonder who will win this year?Qunli.

InfantryDEL wrote:

QUOTE:
Yeah, pronunciation is something that concerns me. I don't mind having an accent, but I don't want to be flat out wrong. I am getting pretty okay.

Japanese pronunciation is very straightforward. The key to getting it right is to know the vowels. Forget how the vowels sound in English and relearn the vowels in Japanese. There's only 5, so it's really not that hard.

Afterwards, make sure that you pronounce the vowels consistently and distinctly(By distinctly, I mean that you should always emphasize the vowel, not the consonant). For example, I often hear American people pronounce "Tanaka-san" like this:

TUH-NAH-KUH SAN

When the correct pronounciation should really be this:

TAH-NAH-KAH SAHN

Notice how the vowel A is always pronounced consistently as AH. Also, a lot of people have trouble pronouncing -san or -chan. Remember, when the vowel is surrounded by consonants, emphasize the vowel (Simply soften the consonants, and make the vowel sound more distinct).

SAHN and CHAHN

A lot of people don't do this and it comes out to:

SAWN and CHON

So yeah, just make sure you get the vowels down and make sure it's emphasized more than the consonant. Do those 2 and you will have no problems with pronunciation, guaranteed.

for finding the right pronunciation you have to learn basic scripts of Japanese, i.e Katakana, Hiragana, kanji etc.

So... Being Dutch seems to come in handy after all.
Since all the vowels in Japanese are in Dutch like the same thing.
I noticed I could "skip" the pronounciation part in learning Japanese since I didn't actually have to learn anything there.
But of course, I don't sound exactly like a japanese.