3 ms·

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 Jap

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 7y 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 7y 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 7y 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.

ShinTakuya 7y 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 7y 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 7y 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.