this post was submitted on 21 Nov 2024
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Summary

Japan’s English proficiency ranking dropped to 92nd out of 116 countries, the lowest ever recorded.

The decline is attributed to stagnant English proficiency among young people, particularly due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

The Netherlands ranked first, followed by European countries, while the Philippines and Malaysia ranked 22nd and 26th, respectively.

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[–] Gork@lemm.ee 36 points 1 day ago (21 children)

It is a tricky language. Almost nothing in common with Indo-European languages except loan words. Completely different grammatical structure. Three different writing scripts.

At least the pronunciation isn't too bad coming from English as all the usual sounds are represented within our phonology. Compared to Spanish rolling R's, Russian and Arabic consonant clusters, Chinese tonality, and other difficult to pronounce languages.

[–] NoneOfUrBusiness@fedia.io 21 points 1 day ago (20 children)

as all the usual sounds are represented within our phonology

Is what you'd think, but nope. Their r, sh, j, ch and w and u sounds are slightly different from English (enough so that some languages have the English version and the Japanese version as independent sounds), the lone n consonant has a pronunciation not existent in English, and Japanese has a tone system but it's simple enough a foreigner can get by without knowing it. That is to say, Japanese pronunciation is very different from English and decently hard to master, but if you just pronounce it like you would English (without stress of course, absolutely don't add stress) you shouldn't have a problem getting your point across.

Russian and Arabic consonant clusters

Wait Arabic consonant clusters? If anything Arabic has less consonant clusters than English. As a native Arabic speaker what I would think is a problem for English natives is the consonants themselves, because we have a lot of them and many don't exist in English.

[–] tigeruppercut@lemmy.zip 2 points 16 hours ago* (last edited 16 hours ago) (4 children)

I've never been able to hear a difference with the ch, sh, j, or w. Is there anything that lays out the differences? I've basically given up on feeling like I'll ever be totally comfortable in the language anyway.

Oh, and don't forget the f sound is also different from English. At least the vowels are pretty easy to transition to

[–] loppy@fedia.io 3 points 14 hours ago

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_phonology

Go to the Consonants section. There are lots of useful notes there, and you can also click on the individual consonants for more information, including how to configure your mouth to make the sound. "ch" and "sh" are tɕ and ɕ, "j" is dʑ at the beginning of utterances or after ん and is ʑ after a vowel, "w" is w.

Compare to English under the Phonemes section. "ch" and "sh" are tʃ and ʃ, "j" is dʒ, "w" is w.

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