Comment on How realistic is it for me to learn Japanese so that I can experience Anime better? How long would it take to learn? Has anyone attempted this?

• tanisnikana@lemmy.world ⁨11⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

  I mean, I thought Japanese was super straightforward compared to English. I’ve been speaking English for three goddamn decades and I:

  • still occasionally flip my Rs and Ls when I’m going fast and being careless
  • have to pause a beat before saying “Canada” to make sure I don’t use the rhythm structure/emphasis pattern for “banana”
  • sometimes just get really lost when I make a complicated sentence and have to stop and try again
  • can barely remember that English speakers take pills, and not drink them (you don’t chew them, for fucks sake! Just say drink!)
  • fucking hate that OUGH has more readings than most kanji
  • realized a couple years into learning English, that English has twenty-six radicals, stacked horizontally, and they make a word, and that word may not be pronounced how the radicals suggest, and it’s best just to memorize 116,000 kanji-words (and you English speakers bitch about kanji so endlessly, not understanding the sheer absolute fucking monster you came from)

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  • Eq0@literature.cafe ⁨11⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    The last point resonates with me! 😭 all other European languages are actually write-as-you-speak. Why, English, why???

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    • FriendOfDeSoto@startrek.website ⁨10⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

      Danish has entered the chat. They don’t pronounce anything the way it’s written either. And French consists of 80 percent silent letters or thereabouts. It’s not just English in Europe.

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      • Eq0@literature.cafe ⁨10⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

        I don’t know Danish, but French is at least consistent in what is pronounced and what is not. So seeing a word will tell you how to pronounce it even if it’s the first time you encounter it.

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    • NoneOfUrBusiness@fedia.io ⁨11⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

      The Great Vowel Shift. English writing was sensible in the early 14th century around the time of Chaucer, but then shit got out of whack speaking-wise and the writing system was never adjusted to reconcile the difference. So you can blame the Black Death I guess.

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      • Eq0@literature.cafe ⁨11⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

        It’s not only vowels, but consonants disappearing or just having a different flavor of sounds in each word. Like word, sword, swan…

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  • ltxrtquq@lemmy.ml ⁨9⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    can barely remember that English speakers take pills, and not drink them (you don’t chew them, for fucks sake! Just say drink!)

    In my mind drink is exclusively for liquids, which is why drinking a solid sounds weird to me. Because there’s no chewing involved swallowing pills makes more sense than eating them, but I’ll admit I don’t know why “take” is the usual verb.

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• FriendOfDeSoto@startrek.website ⁨10⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

  Consider the needlessly complicated to be applied on top of a general baseline of needlessly complicated that applies to any language.

  While they don’t have gendered nouns, they have something equally unnerving for the beginner learner. Their noun classes evolve mostly around the nature of shapes and sizes, which becomes an issue the moment you need to count anything. For which there are two systems, one of which stops at ten, and the other is highly irregular in its forms. And don’t get me started on the calendar. English is relatively unsophisticated by comparison.

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  • NoneOfUrBusiness@fedia.io ⁨10⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    For which there are two systems, one of which stops at ten, and the other is highly irregular in its forms.

    I think you mean Wago and Kango counting, in which case Kango isn't irregular at all. There are sound changes, but they almost all follow a handful of basic rules. Wago is plenty irregular, but it also stops at ten and is only used for a handful of things.

    And don't get me started on the calendar.

    The calendar? Their months are literally just firstmonth, secondmonth, thirdmonth, etc.

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• tanisnikana@lemmy.world ⁨11⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

  toki pona li pona.

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