3 ms·
I have read a very interesting theory in that it is about how Japanese is spoken. There is an interesting trick that is often taught to students of Japanese to
by Blikkentrekker 6y ago
I have read a very interesting theory in that it is about how Japanese is spoken.
There is an interesting trick that is often taught to students of Japanese to faithfully reproduce the sounds in the language: that is to cover one's teeth with one's lips while speaking as much as possible, as most of the characteristic sounds of Japanese are caused by this.
This greatly reduces the amount of air that escapes as one speaks Japanese.
- legerdemain 6y agoPlease, no, no more "This is a PEN" Japanese-language chauvinism, I beg you. There is a whole thing in Japan about how the Japanese language has various hidden beneficial qualities, like it's some kind of gift from God. This idea about expelling less air while speaking in Japanese is firmly in that vein, and it got a lot of play on tabloid news shows, and it's total garbage.
- Blikkentrekker 6y agoSo why is it garbage? What do you have to disprove the hypothesis? because I did read it accompanied with measurements that did show that bilingual persons exported less air speaking Japanese vis-à-vis English. As there is scientific evidence to back up the idea that phonological features of languages affect the spread of diseases: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7263261/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7263261/ https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0227699 https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal...
- Tor3 6y agoI'm exposed to native Japanese every day and I can't see how this hypothesis could have any merit.