I love that we have hundred people saying that English is the past and irrelevant... Needing to use English to share that though.
this post was submitted on 21 Nov 2024
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Makes me wonder what America's or England's proficiency in Japanese is.
English classes are required (I think from elementary school as of a few years ago) but, from talking to a lot of teachers in my time here, the actual teachers just use the English speakers they bring over here to parrot phrases and won't let them actually correct things like pronunciation in a lot of cases. I know many Japanese who think the whole program (JET) is a waste, and I'm inclined to agree in its current state.
Japan is like 98.5% Japanese the last time I looked it up. English is completely unnecessary in Japan outside of some very specific jobs and on certain entrance exams (which are also just there for the sake of the test). If a child doesn't want to learn and the quality of the education is lacking, even with all the money dumped into it, it's useless. Back during the bubble economy ending in the '90s it may have been different, but job prospects requiring English outside of hospitality, tourism, and some specific medical and government jobs are non-existent. Even then, it often makes more sense to use a translator or to keep one on staff.
Japan either needs to get serious about its English education or just stop wasting money on an ineffective program and focus resources into classes or schools to develop people who actually want to learn. I say this as someone whose taxes fund it.
I was reading the book by Chris Broad of the Travel Abroad YouTube about his experience teaching in Japan. You're totally correct. It's really a faux pas to correct a teacher as a foreigner teaching English. So the teacher would give say the wrong thing, and you'd just nod.
Not to mention, from Chris, the Japanese tests for English are really stupid. They're teaching them with tests from the 80s, and using words that aren't common in spoken language.
I've seen uni entrance exam tests and it's definitely just there for the test -- no one speaks the way they do in those. I was never a teacher, though, so I'm just going on what my friends say (my wife hated English class and never paid attention, so she doesn't remember much).
To be fair, the JLPT also tends to include outdated Japanese, so there's that as well.
Half the foreigners survive on the shitty education system though. No need to organize mass deportations in Japan. Just stop English education and 50% of white guys are gone instantly.
Which is ironic given how many English loanwords have infiltrated the language in recent times, to the point where sometimes I hear Japanese speak in a not overly formal context and half of the words they say are just English words with Japanese pronunciation.
Same in Pakistan. People tend to use a lot of English words in Urdu, even when an equivalent native word exists. For example, the proper way to say "What's the time?" is "کیا وقت ہوا ہے؟" ("kiya waqat hawa hay?"). But a lot of people will say "کیا ٹائم ہے؟" ("kiya time hay?") instead. But of course, there are also loanwords such as "واشنگ مشین" (washing machine) and "کمپیوٹر" (computer).
Loans from French (either old French or Norman French, some borrowed into/from Latin on either side) comprise a huge amount of English vocab. Does that mean we speak French?
(yes, I know there's a video out there arguing that English is just bad/weird French and no I don't agree with it).
Having learned both english and now in the process of learning Japanese, katakana English is so confusing sometimes. It's kind of correct when you don't think about what's actually written, but you sometimes have to think long to understand that an エアコン (eakon) is just an air con(dition).
It gets easier and I agree with saying it aloud. Once you start getting used to patterns, you can decipher them more easily (at least the ones from a language you speak). Remember no diphthongs and each syllable gets one beat.
My pet theory is that it's also how the infamous "No Smorking" Engrish came about in reverse. The 'o' in smoking tends to sound long and a lot of times words that sound like that to the Japanese from English will be (long-sounding vowel)+r.
True. Also doesn't help when you sometimes mix up シ(shi) and ツ (tsu) because the font (or someone else's handwriting) makes them look very similar.
Alignment/starting position is the key. The "-like strokes in shi are left-aligned, the "-like ones in tsu are top-aligned. Same for 'so' and 'n'. This is why people talk about stroke order being important (although in this case it's not simply the order).
I don't know Japanese at all, but the way my phone renders those characters I can't tell anything about stroke order, and can only tell them apart because they're next to each other...
I imagine there might be larger differences with Japanese specific fonts, but with whatever this one is the difference seems about the same as using italics with Latin characters...
I can see the difference, but I think it takes practice. シ lines coming from left, line align with bottom left and ツ lines coming from top and all 3 roughly align at top.
Edit: maybe ctrl+f 'Happy Lilac' on this page and it may help: https://www.tofugu.com/japanese/katakana-chart/
Having lots of loaned words don’t mean much when English and Japanese have vastly different grammatical structures. There are also lots of non-English loaned words in Japanese, and from experience, the Japanese don’t always know which language a word is borrowed from, nor should the speakers of the language really need to care. In any case, grammar makes up an important part of a language, though it doesn’t come for free if you aren’t already exposed to the grammatical structure before.
tbf, the Japanese proficiency of English-speaking nations is probably lower.
I know Watashi ga kita!, Baaaka!, and Omae wa mou... shindeiru.
That seems like it should be enough to cover most conversations, according to my research.
NANI!?
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.
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.
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
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.
Is there anything that lays out the differences?
I'm not sure if they're neatly explained somewhere, but the short of it is that sh, j and ch are "smoother" than the English versiond. They're literally just s, z and t respectively, with an i next to them and smoothed over for ease of pronunciation because otherwise it's a pain to say "si" (languages that do have this sound, like English, have ways of coping with this, but Japanese doesn't). In English the equivalent of this is how drink is actually djrink and two becomes chuu, but anyway the point is that thinking of these three sounds as coping mechanisms rather than independent sounds should help. Listen carefully to a Japanese shi and you'll hear the remnants of an s in it. You'll probably have some luck looking these sounds up on YouTube.
W is a bit simpler; it's just uw instead of a plain W, in the same way the English version lets out a bit of air before the W itself. Just insert a small u before watashi to make it uwatashi and you'll get pretty close. Again YT should help. BTW to help appreciate the difference, when the Japanese try to emulate the English W sound they add a ho first, as in howaito (white).
I've basically given up on feeling like I'll ever be totally comfortable in the language anyway.
My strategy is watch tons of anime (or your Japanese media of choice) with English subtitles. As long as you don't depend completely on the subtitles and try to listen to the words being said it's a pretty effective way of learning the language in my experience. Simple manga (or, again, your Japanese written media of choice) also does wonders.
Edit: A bunch of stuff here is wrong, see below.
The stuff about "w" is wrong, but there's a good reason you would think this. The lip shape for the "w" sound in English and Japanese is different; in English the shape is like English "u", and in Japanese the shape is like Japanese "u", but you definitely shouldn't have an actual "u" sound.
in the same way the English version lets out a bit of air before the W itself.
I think, especially considering your comment about ホワイト howaito, that you're confusing two things. There are English dialects which have two separate "w"-like sounds, one of which is typically written "wh" and the other "w". (To my ear, this distinctiln also sounds old-fashioned.) In these dialects, "w" as in "water" and "wood" is pronounced like you would expect, whereas "wh" as in "who" and "what" is pronounced somewhat like an "h" sound followed by just-"w" sound. I don't think the "wh" sound is used for all instances of "w" in any dialect; in fact, most dialects have just the "w" sound.
BTW to help appreciate the difference, when the Japanese try to emulate the English W sound they add a ho first, as in howaito (white).
This is false, they only do this for "wh" sounds (and maybe not even for all of them). Counterexamples to your claim are easy: ウェイトレス weitoresu = waitress, ワット watto = watt, etc.
That... Is all true. I guess I was basically spreading misinformation.
Pitch accent isn't a tone system, also ん can he pronounced in way too many ways.
also ん can he pronounced in way too many ways
If English speakers¹ can deal with oo being pronounced at least six different ways (moon, book, door, blood, cooperation, brooch) they should be able to deal with this...
1— Disclaimer: as a non native speaker, I not only can't deal with it, but at this point have absolutely no intention to.
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Brasil is higher than Japan?? It's Japan that don't care to learn English because they can do "everything" in their country without the need to know english?
Is it really that surprising? If you've ever played a video game before, you'd know that pretty much every Brazilian speaks English.
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