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I learned Japanese as a 16 year old when I was a rotary student. I learned as a baby would, never had to unlearn poor pronunciation gathered in American schools

by xrd 8y ago

I learned Japanese as a 16 year old when I was a rotary student. I learned as a baby would, never had to unlearn poor pronunciation gathered in American schools since I only heard it in Japan, going there without knowing anything. Most people can't tell I'm not native on the phone. But, I did find myself worried at that age about making mistakes, so I was hesitant to speak often and focused on the writing. I think that meant I lost opportunities to speak with people and accelerate my learning through rapid feedback. When I was 25 I lived in Brazil. My Portuguese pronunciation is not as good as it turns out but at that point I didn't care about making mistakes. Now, I'm much more interested in attempting to communicate, even when I make mistakes. I think each era in life has a different set of circumstances that can hold you back and help when learning languages. I'm glad to see that it doesn't appear that we are at a cognitive disadvantage to learn later in life, since I love learning languages. I hope someday my family can live in Barcelona and we can all learn Catalan together.

new4thaccount 8y ago
I know reading Japanese isn't easy, but the pronunciation part is pretty regular and easy enough for an English speaker right? I don't think I've heard much Japanese that I just went "nope...could never say that" like I do with Russian, Mandarin, Finnish...etc. Of course I'm just monolingual and don't know anything :)
- ShinTakuya 8y ago
  There's actually a few significant barriers that don't block communication but make you sound weird. The biggest one is the pitch accent. Japanese accent rises and falls on two levels (high and low) and this changes the meaning of the word. Natives will usually figure out what you're saying but it's an important part of the language that English speakers struggle with. Then there's also a few sounds that don't quite match normal English. "r" is more like a sound between "l" and "d". "f" is between "f" and "h". "t" tends to be a bit more of a solid sound than usual English. All in all as a current learner I've been surprised at how many hurdles there have been.
  - Zanneth 7y ago
    This is a big problem with a lot of Japanese language learning material written for English speakers. There seems to be this false notion that pitch accent is not important enough to teach Japanese learners, so it’s not learned until much later. As a result for a lot of people who are at the intermediate level, pitch accent is the main distinguishing factor between sounding native and sounding like a foreigner.
- xrd 8y ago
  Definitely, Japanese pronunciation is pretty standard. There is intonation and as ShinTakuya mentioned some sounds which don't really exist in English (like the sound between f and h). But, it is pretty easy in general. Having said that, it's amazing to hear people speak it with crazy accents where they clearly bring in their own understanding of how things should sound.
  - risos 8y ago
    The pitch accent ShinTakuya mentioned is actually a huge part of why attaining a native-like Japanese accent is so hard. It's more than just individual words having an accent that can affect the meaning of the word. There are rules for the pitch accent of conjugations of verbs and adjectives, rules for compound words, suffixes, prefixes and even a combined sentence level accent that changes depending on the accent of the word contained within that sentence. And to wrap it up, there's exceptions to most of these rules. Not to mention that names of places and people have their own accent that, while one can gain an intuition for over time, are still something to be aware of. Edit: There's also the fact that English doesn't have a pitch accent system, so it's harder for English speakers to acquire an unconscious understanding and production of the correct pitch accent than it would be for someone whose first language is Chinese. While Chinese's tones aren't as complicated as Japanese's pitch accent, the fact that Chinese speakers have to pay attention to the relative pitch of a phoneme gives them an advantage when listening to words in Japanese as they will be unconsciously aware that the pitch of a word is important and most likely reproduce it correctly without conscious effort.
olingern 8y ago
Correct pitch accent and intonation is quite hard to acquire. Congratulations, no small feat.
stevekemp 8y ago
> But, I did find myself worried at that age about making mistakes, so I was hesitant to speak often I think this is a hard barrier to get over, and something I continue to struggle with. I moved to Finland and I understand a hell of a lot of conversation in front of me - words I don't know I skip, but context usually helps. When it comes to speaking though getting going is really hard, it isn't helped when people open conversations in English - I guess I look foreign - or I have to confess I don't fully understand when they're asking questions. Still making mistakes is a part of the learning process, and it feels like I learn (niche) words every day.

by xrd 8y ago

new4thaccount 8y ago

I know reading Japanese isn't easy, but the pronunciation part is pretty regular and easy enough for an English speaker right? I don't think I've heard much Japanese that I just went "nope...could never say that" like I do with Russian, Mandarin, Finnish...etc. Of course I'm just monolingual and don't know anything :)

ShinTakuya 8y ago
There's actually a few significant barriers that don't block communication but make you sound weird. The biggest one is the pitch accent. Japanese accent rises and falls on two levels (high and low) and this changes the meaning of the word. Natives will usually figure out what you're saying but it's an important part of the language that English speakers struggle with. Then there's also a few sounds that don't quite match normal English. "r" is more like a sound between "l" and "d". "f" is between "f" and "h". "t" tends to be a bit more of a solid sound than usual English. All in all as a current learner I've been surprised at how many hurdles there have been.
- Zanneth 7y ago
  This is a big problem with a lot of Japanese language learning material written for English speakers. There seems to be this false notion that pitch accent is not important enough to teach Japanese learners, so it’s not learned until much later. As a result for a lot of people who are at the intermediate level, pitch accent is the main distinguishing factor between sounding native and sounding like a foreigner.
xrd 8y ago
Definitely, Japanese pronunciation is pretty standard. There is intonation and as ShinTakuya mentioned some sounds which don't really exist in English (like the sound between f and h). But, it is pretty easy in general. Having said that, it's amazing to hear people speak it with crazy accents where they clearly bring in their own understanding of how things should sound.
- risos 8y ago
  The pitch accent ShinTakuya mentioned is actually a huge part of why attaining a native-like Japanese accent is so hard. It's more than just individual words having an accent that can affect the meaning of the word. There are rules for the pitch accent of conjugations of verbs and adjectives, rules for compound words, suffixes, prefixes and even a combined sentence level accent that changes depending on the accent of the word contained within that sentence. And to wrap it up, there's exceptions to most of these rules. Not to mention that names of places and people have their own accent that, while one can gain an intuition for over time, are still something to be aware of. Edit: There's also the fact that English doesn't have a pitch accent system, so it's harder for English speakers to acquire an unconscious understanding and production of the correct pitch accent than it would be for someone whose first language is Chinese. While Chinese's tones aren't as complicated as Japanese's pitch accent, the fact that Chinese speakers have to pay attention to the relative pitch of a phoneme gives them an advantage when listening to words in Japanese as they will be unconsciously aware that the pitch of a word is important and most likely reproduce it correctly without conscious effort.

olingern 8y ago

Correct pitch accent and intonation is quite hard to acquire. Congratulations, no small feat.

stevekemp 8y ago

> But, I did find myself worried at that age about making mistakes, so I was hesitant to speak often I think this is a hard barrier to get over, and something I continue to struggle with. I moved to Finland and I understand a hell of a lot of conversation in front of me - words I don't know I skip, but context usually helps. When it comes to speaking though getting going is really hard, it isn't helped when people open conversations in English - I guess I look foreign - or I have to confess I don't fully understand when they're asking questions. Still making mistakes is a part of the learning process, and it feels like I learn (niche) words every day.