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"As a result Japanese people (probably Chinese too) have a hard time processing some of the English syllables. This creates difficulty in learning English for J

"As a result Japanese people (probably Chinese too) have a hard time processing some of the English syllables. This creates difficulty in learning English for Japanese and Chinese." We can also say that American/English have a hard time processing some of the Japanese/Chinese syllables. All the languages I speak a little bit have distinctive sounds that are difficult for most non-native speakers to master unless you put a lot of practices. It escalates to another level to speak a whole sentence, that is, a sequence of sounds. That is why it is easy to tell if a person is a native speaker of a language in most cases. It is true that Indo-European languages are difficult for Japanese and Chinese to learn. It is due to other reasons, which would be a long answer.

visarga 10y ago
What I am saying is that in English, after learning 26 letters, you can read any combination of them. If you try to see how many possible syllables there are, there would be many thousands. Combinations like "eng" "lish" can't be properly put in Japanese phonetic characters because you can't put "eng" directly, you have to use "en gu ri shu", inserting vowels all over the place. Japanese can't properly learn English because their brains are trained with much fewer possible syllable sounds and they can't make the jump. But in turn why is it that there are so few syllable sounds in Japanese? It's because each syllable has to have its own ideograph (usually there are multiple ideographs) and you can't easily learn 10000 of them. Being limited to much fewer ideographs you can memorize, you are also limited to fewer sounds you can use. On the other hand, with English, after 26 letters you can read any combination of them, and they form many more possible sounds. So you learn to make all those sounds as a kid. Even if you come from another phonetic language you will probably have a similarly diverse sound vocabulary which will help you transition to English. So, memory limitations -> fewer characters known than possible English syllables -> a kind of mental straightjacket in producing other sounds that fall outside the allowed ones in their native language -> difficulty in learning English -> cultural isolation. Sad story. Just look up Japanese people who have learned English from grade 1 to 12, and see how great their pronunciation is. It's so damn hard for them to make the sounds.
- leemailll 10y ago
  I love hacker news. Some personal anecdotes soon summaries into neuroscience theory, and sticks to it
- justinpombrio 10y ago
  > But in turn why is it that there are so few syllable sounds in Japanese? It's because each syllable has to have its own ideograph (usually there are multiple ideographs) and you can't easily learn 10000 of them. Please don't make up facts just because they seem plausible to you. A quick internet search reveals that the Japanese language predates any writing system for it: "Before the 4th century AD, the Japanese had no writing system of their own. During the 5th century they began to import and adapt the Chinese script, along with many other aspects of Chinese culture, probably via Korea. However the Japanese were aware of Chinese writing from about the 1st century AD from the characters that appeared on imported Chinese goods."[1] Thus Japanese had settled on having few syllable sounds before there was any way to write them down, so their syllables can't have been limited by their script (at least initially). > Just look up Japanese people who have learned English from grade 1 to 12, and see how great their pronunciation is. It's so damn hard for them to make the sounds. You should see English speakers try to pronounce Chinese... [1] http://www.omniglot.com/writing/japanese.htm http://www.omniglot.com/writing/japanese.htm
  - philovivero 10y ago
    I have a couple things to add to this thread, not everything directly related to your comment. 1) Knowing the 26 letters is not remotely enough to be able to read the newspaper in English (earlier commenter made this assertion). Example: "She caught a cough. Such is life and death, dear!" How does knowing the letter "u" help you pronounce half those words? What about "g"? What about "h"? What about even if you put "gh" together? What about "e", "a", and if you shove "ea" together? In this single paragraph I've ballooned the number of letters and letter combinations needed into the 40's, and I've barely just begun. Don't get me started with borrowed words from French and Spanish (c'est la vie!). 2) Your comment: "You should see English speakers try to pronounce Chinese" - From direct first-hand experience, this is tough for a completely different reason than this comment thread is talking about. You've gone off on a tangent here. The reason Chinese is hard for English speakers is that tonality suggests overall sentence semantics, it does not directly affect any single word, whereas tonality affects every single word in Chinese. I thought we were talking about how syllable pronunciations were expressed by the writing system.
microcolonel 10y ago
I think that if Americans try, it's a lot easier to go to the Japanese phonemes; given that they are effectively a subset of English phonemes (with some variation). That said, it seems that Americans feel like they're making a disrespectful accent when they're getting closer to pronouncing things correctly. They would rather be authentically bad than sound like they're making fun of an accent. Here in Canada we have this problem even when kids are learning Québecois French in school; they think they sound like they're making fun of Francophones when they get close to good pronunciation. An American English speaker can generally approximate る and similar sounds far more easily than a Japanese speaker will learn to pronounce l or figure out the th in the. That's assuming that the English word they're trying to say doesn't have consonant clusters, which (aside from nasal consonant pairs) simply do not exist in Japanese. It really is not equivalent.

visarga 10y ago

What I am saying is that in English, after learning 26 letters, you can read any combination of them. If you try to see how many possible syllables there are, there would be many thousands. Combinations like "eng" "lish" can't be properly put in Japanese phonetic characters because you can't put "eng" directly, you have to use "en gu ri shu", inserting vowels all over the place. Japanese can't properly learn English because their brains are trained with much fewer possible syllable sounds and they can't make the jump. But in turn why is it that there are so few syllable sounds in Japanese? It's because each syllable has to have its own ideograph (usually there are multiple ideographs) and you can't easily learn 10000 of them. Being limited to much fewer ideographs you can memorize, you are also limited to fewer sounds you can use. On the other hand, with English, after 26 letters you can read any combination of them, and they form many more possible sounds. So you learn to make all those sounds as a kid. Even if you come from another phonetic language you will probably have a similarly diverse sound vocabulary which will help you transition to English. So, memory limitations -> fewer characters known than possible English syllables -> a kind of mental straightjacket in producing other sounds that fall outside the allowed ones in their native language -> difficulty in learning English -> cultural isolation. Sad story. Just look up Japanese people who have learned English from grade 1 to 12, and see how great their pronunciation is. It's so damn hard for them to make the sounds.

leemailll 10y ago
I love hacker news. Some personal anecdotes soon summaries into neuroscience theory, and sticks to it
justinpombrio 10y ago
> But in turn why is it that there are so few syllable sounds in Japanese? It's because each syllable has to have its own ideograph (usually there are multiple ideographs) and you can't easily learn 10000 of them. Please don't make up facts just because they seem plausible to you. A quick internet search reveals that the Japanese language predates any writing system for it: "Before the 4th century AD, the Japanese had no writing system of their own. During the 5th century they began to import and adapt the Chinese script, along with many other aspects of Chinese culture, probably via Korea. However the Japanese were aware of Chinese writing from about the 1st century AD from the characters that appeared on imported Chinese goods."[1] Thus Japanese had settled on having few syllable sounds before there was any way to write them down, so their syllables can't have been limited by their script (at least initially). > Just look up Japanese people who have learned English from grade 1 to 12, and see how great their pronunciation is. It's so damn hard for them to make the sounds. You should see English speakers try to pronounce Chinese... [1] http://www.omniglot.com/writing/japanese.htm http://www.omniglot.com/writing/japanese.htm
- philovivero 10y ago
  I have a couple things to add to this thread, not everything directly related to your comment. 1) Knowing the 26 letters is not remotely enough to be able to read the newspaper in English (earlier commenter made this assertion). Example: "She caught a cough. Such is life and death, dear!" How does knowing the letter "u" help you pronounce half those words? What about "g"? What about "h"? What about even if you put "gh" together? What about "e", "a", and if you shove "ea" together? In this single paragraph I've ballooned the number of letters and letter combinations needed into the 40's, and I've barely just begun. Don't get me started with borrowed words from French and Spanish (c'est la vie!). 2) Your comment: "You should see English speakers try to pronounce Chinese" - From direct first-hand experience, this is tough for a completely different reason than this comment thread is talking about. You've gone off on a tangent here. The reason Chinese is hard for English speakers is that tonality suggests overall sentence semantics, it does not directly affect any single word, whereas tonality affects every single word in Chinese. I thought we were talking about how syllable pronunciations were expressed by the writing system.

microcolonel 10y ago

I think that if Americans try, it's a lot easier to go to the Japanese phonemes; given that they are effectively a subset of English phonemes (with some variation). That said, it seems that Americans feel like they're making a disrespectful accent when they're getting closer to pronouncing things correctly. They would rather be authentically bad than sound like they're making fun of an accent. Here in Canada we have this problem even when kids are learning Québecois French in school; they think they sound like they're making fun of Francophones when they get close to good pronunciation. An American English speaker can generally approximate る and similar sounds far more easily than a Japanese speaker will learn to pronounce l or figure out the th in the. That's assuming that the English word they're trying to say doesn't have consonant clusters, which (aside from nasal consonant pairs) simply do not exist in Japanese. It really is not equivalent.