Yukkuri onegai shimasu...

[Snowflake]

ゆっくり　おねがい　します (I hope that says "slowly, please").

To my untrained ear, Japanese spoken at natural speed sounds really fast. Does anyone know of a site that provides an option to learn words syllable-by-syllable? Ideally, I'd love to hear the word three times: normal speed, slow syllable-by-syllable and again at normal speed.

I've followed many of the links I've seen here on The Japanese Page and, while many offer audio options, I haven't seen any with the slow-down option.

Currently, the only online place I've found that offers an option like that is JapanesePod101's Learning Center. Unfortunately, not every word, phrase or sentence in their lessons is offered in slow speed. For the words and phrases I have learned from them, however, the syllable-by-syllable breakdown has aided tremendously in my own pronunciation. I think it has helped me with listening comprehension, as well.

Thank you for any suggestions you can offer!

[Musiflare]

You could try Japanesepod101.com. On a lot of their exercises, particularly in the beginner's section, they speak the learning conversations at both a slow speed and a natural speaking speed--plus, it gives you a decent amount of listening experience, which is good for those of us who tend to stay buried in a textbook all the live long day.

[Snowflake]

arigato, Musiflare-さん!

Yes, JapanesePod101 is the only place I've found online so far that has a slow-down feature. JPod101 is a good site, although I find navigating around there to be a bit clunky. I also wish they had a larger selection of the slow-down words in their wordbank and that they had entire phrases from the lessons on slow-down.

They do a slow-down of the sentences during the lessons themselves (at least in the Newbie Lessons I've listened to so far), but the slow-down isn't necessarily included on the website's lesson supplements (hope that makes sense).

[Sairana]

Slowdown should only be necessary until you become familiar with Japanese phonemes (sounds). I doubt you're going to find -any- resource that slows down conversation significantly beyond the first few lessons. After that, the student is expected to be familiar enough to follow the conversation with the help of a written transcript.

In the case of Jpod 101, the supplemental lessons use vocabulary they already covered in the podcast, so you should no longer need that vocabulary slowed down. If it's hard to remember, then you need to re-listen to the podcast until most of the vocabulary sticks (about 80% is a good goal).