3 ms·
Japanese characters (kana) represent syllables and once you know the syllables it's not difficult to know what a word will sound like. They even have a duplicat
by jotux 10y ago
Japanese characters (kana) represent syllables and once you know the syllables it's not difficult to know what a word will sound like. They even have a duplicate set of characters specifically used to import foreign words into the language and provide a pronunciation (for example, "computer" translates to コンピューター ko-n-pyuu-taa).
From this perspective it's a very easy language to read/write (negating kanji) and pronounce.
- wingerlang 10y agoYes, and Korean as well. Currently I am learning thai where each character have two sounds depending on where in a word it is located. Multiple characters with the same sounds, a few characters which are marked as obsolete (but still in the alphabet) and each word will have a tone based on the groups of characters (which has a "class" assigned to them) and a whole bunch of other "special" characters that change the tone, completely silences a character or repeats something. Seemingly illogical pronunciations when combining other sounding ones (combining a vowel sounding "e" and "aa" will pronounce an "ao" sound). And I haven't even started on anything but learning how to deal with the alphabet.