[Tenchu]

Josh,

I'm getting the same problem speaking Thai. I'm a big fella now, and have hit puberty long ago (you'll get there soon too, don't worry), so my voice is very deep. Yet Asian men rarely hit puberty before 40 or so, and their balls stay very small, and their voice is very high pitched. Because of this, even when I say perfect Thai, I am still misunderstood, because it is very deep, and Thai is a tonal language, and they've never heard these tones before. I often have to grab my balls and twist them slightly in order to hit the right notes.

The accent thing also comes into it. When I meet people from non white countries, I can always pick what nationality their English teacher was based on how they pronounce words; i.e. Asians also copy western accents when they learn our language.

For some sounds, they just do not exist in English, so you need to do a bit of copying, I think. Try and keep your own accent and depth (that is after you hit puberty) where you can, but you're going to have to copy some things to the T in order to be understood, that is fact.

Have you spoken to many Irish men? Their accent is very different and the sounds are way different; they're often hard to understand. Japan has different accents for different regions, but they are all fairly similar, as far as I know. At least, the difference between Irish and Aussie which is so vast does not exist in Japan. Point being, if you came into Japan speaking perfect Japanese, yet with an Aussie accent, the difference to them is going to be about the same as you trying to understand an Irish man; almost a no-hoper...