A Japanese guy: "Ai emu Japaniizu man. Ai emu rukkingu foowaado tsu nowingu yuu. Letto'su speakingu!"
An ignorant prick (most likely American): "Haha! Look at that stupid Japanese speaker trying to pronounce English! Ain't it funny! LOL! brb gonna go masturbate to sum tentacle hentais and them read my mangas"
Hey English speakers! You are just like the Japanese: you can't pronounce foreign languages for shit.
Be it German, French, Finnish, Japanese, Chinese, Telugu or motherfuckin' Esperanto, English speakers simply sound awkward when they try to pronounce them (and believe me they try...). I haven't met (or more like heard) a single English speaker, trying to pronounce Japanese, who didn't try to sound like whatever stupid anime character they decided to ape (even saying that they sound like anime characters is an exaggeration; more like anime characters with downs).
Americans are the worst offenders, although the British and other anglophones are not doing a good job either.
Seriously guys, the world is becoming less and less anglophonic. Already westerners are scrambling to learn the languages of tomorrow: Chinese, Japanese, Hindi, Arabic, Russian. But no one will take you seriously with your muddled pronunciation, just like you can't take the Japanese seriously and mock them while you dream of fucking their women.
You can't pronounce ü, you can't roll your r's, your l's are weird, your k's and t's are always aspirated, your vowels are nothing but diphtongs which make you sound no better than the Japanese who can't pronounce consonants without attaching vowels to them: you always try to cram the diphtongs everywhere. You're incapable of pronouncing pure vowels, and believe me, it shows. Even the purest e's, a's, o's and u's you can produce have a certain unnatural tang to them.
Look in the mirror the next time you make fun of the Japanese and their pronunciation. Or better yet; record your voice, play it back, and weep.
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Anonymous2009-07-07 3:11
What's the point of this thread? Everyone already knows it.
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Anonymous2009-07-07 5:23
>>1 your vowels are nothing but diphtongs which make you sound no better than the Japanese who can't pronounce consonants without attaching vowels to them: you always try to cram the diphtongs everywhere.
So true.
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Anonymous2009-07-07 6:18
>>1
honestly I've only seen that in Americans (no offense, I'm sure you are not all like that)
once i heard an American on a plane trying to order in French. I wanted to throttle him. MERCY BOU-KU
Also when they try and pronounce Croatian words. How do you turn "dobor dan" into "doober dang". Though to be fair heaps of Croatian words lack vowels.
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Anonymous2009-07-07 6:32
Blame the English orthography. They've got their brains fixed on that retarded unintuitive way of writing things down, that they can't snap out of it.
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Anonymous2009-07-07 12:10
>>1
It's true Americans can't pronounce foreign languages very well. Americans also tend to think you can learn a foreign language in a matter of months or even weeks. They surely are very naive in that regard.
However, because Japanese has so few syllables and is pronounced very regular as opposed to English, it's alot harder for a Japanese person to pronounce English than it is for an American to pronounce Japanese. Surely English has at least twice as many sounds as Japanese.
I can pronounce Japanese quite well, because German, which is my native language, shares alot of sounds with Japanese and it's generally easier for a German person to pronounce Japanese than it is for an American from my experience.
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Anonymous2009-07-10 3:25
can anyone pronounce õ?
muhahaaa
õ
õ õ
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Anonymous2009-07-10 5:02
>languages of tomorrow
ilol'd. there is only one "language of tommorow". guess what? guess why? it is simple, it is nice and it is spoken by the most powerful and significant nations. others learn it, not vice versa. i guess it shall last for some centures
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Anonymous2009-07-10 5:08
>>8
You need to look into the number of foreign language learners atm. Chinese is dominating.
English isn't the language of tomorrow, it's the language of today. Most of Europe speaks it, and obviously all Anglophone countries. Chinese is what'll become the next lingua franca in 50 years or so.
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Anonymous2009-07-10 5:32
>>9
Average knowledge of "Chinese" in Western world is limited to generic knowledge of Japanese kanji and is in fact just Japanese language itself. I see no way this could become any popular apart from weeaboo faggotry (which is Japanese nowadays).
Perhaps Chinese could become a lingua franca in East and Southeast Asia since there is a considerable amount of actual Chinese speakers.
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Anonymous2009-07-10 8:41
>>1
No. American's speaking Japanese is not even 100th as bad as Japanese attempting to speak English even though they've all studied it for 10 years.
The fact is, Japanese can't pronounce jack shit because their language is fundamentally flawed in that they have very few sounds to express themselves.
I'm going to a Japanese school in Japan, and am surrounded by other people speaking Japanese.
1.Koreans are with out doubt the best in Japanese. This has to do with the fact that the language is so similar. These guys can be easily mistaken as Japanese.
2.Taiwanese are a little mixed. There's insanely good ones like the koreans, but then there's ones where it's just terrible.
3.American/Russian - I feel both sound the same when attempting to speak Japanese. They're right in the middle in pronunciation, but it's hard for white people to sound Asian.
4.German are a worse off than Americans, but not that bad.
5.Italians are just fucking horrible, 95% of them sound stupid
6.India/random ass country - These guys are so terrible that it's really sad. Just imagine the guy at the kwik-e-mart with that same accent trying to sound Japanese. It just doesn't work, and people often don't know what the fuck they're saying.
My ratings aren't just based off one or two people I knew, it's probably more around 20+ of each race. Americans are definitely not bad, in fact, Japanese understand American's pronunciation (assuming they know Japanese) better than they understand Japanese pronouncing Japanese because American's speak a lot clearer, where Japanese tend to often not use their mouth/tongue as much
cant believe no one mentioned us... we're atrocious at foreign languages due to our 'lazy' accent. we don't pronounce words as clearly as americans do (but we spell it correctly --- Queen's English ftw), so any attempts to learn another language is just craptastic.
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Anonymous2009-07-10 12:59
>>11
point 5 is strange, aren't Japanese sounds a subset of Italian ones, with vowels being exactly the same?
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Anonymous2009-07-10 13:53
>>11 5.Italians are just fucking horrible, 95% of them sound stupid
Are you serious or just trolling? Italian pronunciation is much closer to Japanese than German, English, Korean or Chinese pronunciations.
Also, listening to this guy speak Japanese just makes me cringe (he's - surprise surprise! - American):
>14
>15
This. If you are a Italian/Spanish speaker, then you won't have any problem with Japanese pronunciation, everythin is pretty much the same
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Anonymous2009-07-10 23:47
The sounds may be similar, but the Italians when speaking sound so white it's ridiculous. Just because you can make the Japanese R sound and shit doesn't mean you don't sound white as fuck. Fact is, Italians sound like they're speaking Italian when speaking Japanese. Plus all of them are terrible with intonation
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Anonymous2009-07-10 23:57
Also, I realize most of you are newbs who know roughly 3-5 kanji but when you get more advanced, almost every race can properly pronounce all sounds with ease, including americans. The key after that, which is far harder, is to sound Asian. OMFG WEEABOO?!? Not exactly, sounding Asian is key to sounding natural when speaking Japanese. Obviously Asians have an advantage over you. Although, Chinese suck ass at Japanese because they speak too much in front of their mouth.
How you use your tongue for even the same consonant differs. How you move your mouth, the location where you speak in your mouth (back of throat, front, nasal, etc), whether the air comes in or out when speaking. Yes, just because you can make the K sound doesn't mean it's perfect, dickwads. It's a lot more complicated than you think.
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Anonymous2009-07-11 13:19
I speak perfect Japanese and it was pretty easy to master after all, I'm not American though.
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Anonymous2009-07-11 13:31
The pleasure of being cummed inside!
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Anonymous2009-07-11 15:11
I lol at how people jerk off to cartoon porn. Funny thing is, I speak English better than most Americans, and I mean Generation Jones, X and Y. Baby boomers seem to have listen in English class. I'm a part of Y myself. It's amazing how many Brits and Americans can't spell their own language. Look at any imageboard, you'll have a good diversity of class and race, and you'll see how worthless thw youth is at their own language. English is my third language, and I can speak with an American accent and a Jeeves-like English accent.
tl;dr: Native English speakers oughta learn their own language before attempting something as complicated as Japanese because of their ridiculos addiction to animu and cartoon porn. Fuck you. Fuck you and your imaginary cartoon waifu.
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Anonymous2009-07-11 15:30
>>22
We have to give Americans some credit. I believe it's very hard to grow up in America without turning into a total idiot. They don't have such a thing as fair and unbiased media. They don't even know what that is. Their country is driven by lobbyists who deliberately keep the people ignorant and misinformed. For us Europeans it just seems like a horrible, horrible place.
Baby boomers seem to have listen in English class.
Okay...
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Anonymous2009-07-11 19:45
>>24
You'll have to excuse certain typos. I'm on my iPod, and I've turned off spellcheck because it was annoying as fuck. I also see now that my post makes me look like an asshole, but whatever, it's all true. I'd edit my post to correct that, but I cannot. Lol.
I didn't try to be offensive by the way, it just ended up like that. But you americunts do have a disgraceful school system. Only the rich seem to be getting decent education, and they don't give a fuck because they're set for life. Is it, at least in SOME states, mandatory to learn a second language? inb4 we don't need it coz we rules da earth, you do need to learn another language so that you don't seem like an ignorant asshole. I mean, come on, 69% of Californians are Jesuses and Ramirezes. You could at least teach kids Spanish, just for the hell of it, even thoguh the immigrants should learn the lamguage of their host country.
Again, sorry for any typos, I'm on my iPod, and proof-reading and correcting my mistakes is a bitch when it scrolls me somewhere I don't want to go.
>>24
It's actually pretty common for stupid people like >>22 to basically make up their own little fantasy languages and regard everyone (including native speakers, of course) who doesn't speak the same way they do as using incorrect grammar and "ridiculos" spellings. A Polish guy once called me an idiot for saying "working hard," according to him the correct way of saying it would be "working hardly" because of adjective<->adverb etc.
Seems like I hit a nerve there... Don't take yourself so seriously, dude.
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Anonymous2009-07-11 20:24
>>26
>A Polish guy once called me an idiot for saying "working hard," according to him the correct way of saying it would be "working hardly" because of adjective<->adverb etc.
u know... everyone knows polish are nothing but junkheaded scum
>>23
Well, without anti-intellectualism they could have turned into DIRTY RED COMMIES.
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Anonymous2009-07-12 14:46
>>26
Well, that guy was a retard, but for example when speaking English if I pronounce Encyclopaedia correctly, illiterate native speakers assume it's my weird accent or I'm doing it wrong or whatever, so to appear "normal" I've started doing the same mistakes - albeit knowingly.
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Anonymous2009-07-12 15:00
>>31
How do you pronounce "encyclopedia" correctly, then?
>>31
It's spelled "encyclopedia" in English, (officially in the North American variant, and most commonly in modern British English) and the correct pronunciation is /ənˌsəɪkləˈpidiə/. If you pronounce it differently, you are doing it wrong, you're doing basically the same thing as those Americunts who pronounce English loanwords in Japanese just like they would in English.
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Anonymous2009-07-12 15:28
>>34
ae =/= e no matter how many illiterate buffoons claim it to be so, but, due to approaches such as yours, I do what I have to do.
Yes, I would also pronounce Caesar as kaisar if they'd just fucking let me. CLASSICAL LATIN FUCK YEAH
>>34
But hell, it's kinda cool to show off your knowledge and pronounce "encyclopaedia" in either Roman pronunciation (en-kik-lo-pah-y-dia) or even Ancient Greek (en-kyuk-lo-pah-y-deh-yah).
Yea, the transcription is pretty awkward, but that's how Americans normally read everything.
It's spelled "encyclopedia" in English, (officially in the North American variant, and most commonly in modern British English) and the correct pronunciation is /ənˌsəɪkləˈpidiə/. If you pronounce it differently, you are doing it wrong.
I'm not sure if you know this but there are multiple ways to pronounce English, all of which are equally valid.
you're doing basically the same thing as those Americunts who pronounce English loanwords in Japanese just like they would in English.
Funny thing is, I once read the travelogues of a Japanese person who was using romaji to write Japanese because he couldn't type in Japanese characters on the Indian computer he was using. Anyhow, he spelled in English all the loanwords that would normally be in katakana. Thus, intaanetto became internet, basu became bus, haado became hard, and Derii became Delhi. It was an interesting insight into what the Japanese think about English loanwords in their language.
>>40
That's definitely not true. There are tons of languages who decide to spell loanwords either completely phonetically or phonetically up to the degree that it contains all syllbles contained in that particular language.
You have to be an idiot to claim "all languages work that way" when only a few actually do (and is mostly contained within the same language group).
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Anonymous2009-07-13 3:48
>>42
I meant to say "syllables" and "that is mostly contained".
>>37
There is no "ä" sound. It's a grapheme, you noob.
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Anonymous2009-07-13 10:06
>>42
In case of English, foreign loanwords are simply borrowed without any modifications, leaving the choice of pronunciation to end users. English orthography proved itself to be very flexible when it comes to pronouncing written words, so it works quite well.
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Anonymous2009-07-13 10:13
>>46
That is true only for languages with the standard latin script w/o additional characters. Anything beyond that and English generally loses the accents, diacritic marks, etc. But in general, you are correct, English tends to leave a lot up to the reader's "imagination", so to say. :P
Other languages do not work that way. Some transcribe the word phonetically, others use the original word but convert it to a phonetic one when it is used as a possessive pronoun or an adjective, etc.
In any case, to say "all languages work that way" is absurd, no matter which stance someone is defending.
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Anonymous2009-07-13 11:09
The problem with English is just that there are thousands of words which are pronounced irregularly and you just have to learn that and that takes a very long time. In that respect English is very different from languages such as Japanese which are very regular.
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Anonymous2009-07-13 11:54
>>48
I have to admit that the real situation is exactly the opposite. English is read very logical, once you get past the first hundreds of words it all becomes very intuitive.
In Japanese, on the other hand, you are absolutely unable to read aloud even a simplest sentence unless you memorize all the kanji present in it. Japanese is even worse than Chinese where you at least have some opportunity to guess character reading by its side radical (it's a common practice there, tbh).
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Anonymous2009-07-13 12:17
>>49
You admitting something based purely on your exposure with two languages means squat. English, compared to languages that use true phonetic alphabets/orthography IS illogical. You can't compare it with a language that has ideograms, that's silly, to say the least.
English, as it is, has far too many leftover rules from previous centuries, things that should have been taken care of in the past. Such rules (granted, AmE has dumped some of them) make it unintuitive compared to any language with a phonetic alphabet/transcription.
Unfortunately, changing the orthography at this point would not work. There has never been a case of so much literature/writings and/or foreign speakers of one single language in the history. The change of orthography is a highly unlikely event. /cry
Japanese is even worse than Chinese where you at least have some opportunity to guess character reading by its side radical
You can do that in Japanese as well actually. 系 and 係 are both pronounced "kei"; 正, 証, 症 and 鉦 are all pronounced "shou"; 青, 精, 静, 清, 錆, 晴, 請 and 靜 are all pronounced "sei"; 辰, 振, 唇, 娠, 震 and 賑 are all pronounced "shin".
The change of orthography is a highly unlikely event. /cry
I don't understand people like you. English has one of the most beautiful orthographies that expresses its long, colorful history. Why get rid of that? And it is somewhat logical, as >>49 said, but you have to learn some arbitrary spelling rules first. It really does become intuitive later on, though.
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Anonymous2009-07-13 13:55
Do it like French - backwards compatible, but thanks to lots of useless diacritics it's actually regular and pronounceable.
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Anonymous2009-07-13 21:14
>>51
Orthography doesn't have to be beautiful, it has to be meaningful and logical, especially for a lingua franca.
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Anonymous2009-07-13 21:45
>>53
English orthography is more "meaningful" the way it is currently: writing certain related words differently would make their common etymologies - and thus meaning - much less obvious (e.g. electric, electricity and electrician).
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Anonymous2009-07-13 22:20
>>54
I can't follow you. Why would meaning get much less obvious? If they share the same etymology, different orthographies wouldn't change that. The meaning would still be conveyed.
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Anonymous2009-07-14 0:27
>>55
In this case the point is that writing conveys the meaning, not phonemes.
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Anonymous2009-07-14 4:35
>>1
It sounds to me like you're bashing Americans for mispronouncing foreign words. It could be said that you're just bashing us for being dicks about it, but here you are, being a dick about it.
You fucking hypocrite.
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Anonymous2009-07-14 7:03
>>1
They're Americans, what the hell did you expect. I have yet to meet an American who can fluently speak a foreign language.
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Anonymous2009-07-14 7:17
>>58
Well, there are some Americans who fluently speak English...
>>60 http://www.youtube.com/profasar
He speaks English quite proficiently (being American, that's a feat). All his other languages are shiat, tho. (Don't let the comments in his videos deceive you).
Hello, this is my first time visiting any of the text boards so I really don't know the overall attitude here. Hopefully it's better than the image boards. I am English, and currently trying to learn Japanese for business studies. I'm really not too sure of what I am trying to say here. I am having trouble with following what is said and breaking down the sentences/words, and repeating it aloud. I have various audio books and such to learn with. Is there a specific "trick" to learning Japanese, or any language? I don't really know where to go with this, so sorry if I derail the thread. Just ignore my post if it's a problem.
I'm sure this post is riddled with mistakes but I haven't slept in some time, so please excuse that.
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Anonymous2009-07-16 11:36
Take classes
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Anonymous2009-07-16 11:51
>>66
I thought I would have to. At the moment it's not possible, but once I have some other academic stuff sorted I will see about classes. Thanks for the response and your time.
English orthography is more "meaningful" the way it is currently: writing certain related words differently would make their common etymologies - and thus meaning - much less obvious (e.g. electric, electricity and electrician).
English could be simplified while still keeping most of the etymological spelling. A language reform is not a binary choice between remaining the same and creating a completley one-to-one correspondance between wiriting and the spoken language.
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Anonymous2009-07-22 3:57
>>71 Which English should the new orthography be based on, then? There are huge regional differences in pronunciation, and even the simplest words aren't always pronounced the same. We'd have to keep a lot of arbitrary spellings to accommodate everyone.
>>72
All of them. As long as a particular phoneme is consistently pronounced within every dialect, it can be given a single letter. The precise pronunciation can vary.
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Anonymous2009-07-22 17:49
>I haven't met (or more like heard) a single English speaker, trying to pronounce Japanese, who didn't try to sound like whatever stupid anime character they decided to ape
OP has met me, I never try to sound like an anime character, I dont think embarrassing myself in front of a bunch of college level japanese people is a good idea.
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Anonymous2009-07-22 23:43
>Be it German, French, Finnish, Japanese, Chinese, Telugu or motherfuckin' Esperanto
>telugu
The fuck, gtfo. Telugu a nuvvu?
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Anonymous2009-07-23 3:37
Well what's even more annoying is yanks usually think their pronounciation is like really good. I have yet to meet a yank who speaks good natural Japanese, German or even French (languages I'm fluent in).
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Anonymous2009-07-23 14:48
oh rest of the world, you are so tsundere for America, it is adorable :3
lol @americunts trying to learn foreign languages.
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Anonymous2009-07-25 19:03
>>79
I can't stand faggots like you. Everyone bitches about Americans being close minded assholes who only think about America, and then when we actually try to learn other languages that isn't good enough, you still have to bitch.
kindergardeners from backwater villages in Costa Rica know more about geography, history, and their own language than public school educated Americans do of their own language, history, and geography.
Listening to an American speaking Spanish is extremely fucking painful :S Seriously, yes you are blessed with having the world's most "popular" language as your mothertongue. But that isn't an excuse to be absolutely inbred when it comes to learning other languages. I mean wtf your whole nation is founded upon immigration. Why do you guys suck so fucking hard?
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Anonymous2009-07-26 14:01
>>77
Yeah, I'm American and I guarantee my Japanese is 100x better than yours, even if you are fluent (Which I still call bullshit)
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Anonymous2009-07-26 14:06
Yeah, I'm American and I believe that my foreign language skills are good. The truth is that I sound like a fucking retard, either painfully American or painfully geeky "hi I'm trying so hard to pronounce this right that I'm about to shit my pants".
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Anonymous2009-07-26 15:18
>>84
Well, it's not like US immigrants are much good at learning English.
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Anonymous2009-07-26 15:54
English by its very nature doesn't have true vowels and is generally spoken with as little effort from the voice as possible. That is why English speakers especially AmeriKKKans fail at learning foreign langauges.
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Anonymous2009-07-26 17:02
>>88 Doesn't have true vowels.
What does that mean?
is generally spoken with as little effort from the voice as possible
No way. English is emphatic.
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Anonymous2009-07-27 0:14
>>88
English vowels are unique. Have you ever met a single language that has such a uncertain vowel system? You can freely vary them and it all would be alright. Say, pronouncing "joke" as jowk, jahk, johk etc alters it so little that some speakers may simply not notice it. Don't mess with English vowels!
So wait... You're saying you're as much of an ignorant bastard as you're stereotyping? Everyone sounds weird learning a language if they aren't directly immersed in the language. Deal with it.
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Anonymous2009-07-28 5:43
>>93
Whether or not the OP himself is good at pronouncing foreign languages is a moot point. He was only bitching about the hyprocrisy of English speakers who often mock Japanese people who are trying to pronounce English.
Tourism is the act in which a rich, overweight, white, American monolingual with a cellphone in one hand and a hamburger in the other, who has no regard for other cultures visits another country and desecrates their traditions and holy places just so they can have pictures of their fat self standing next to some famous world monument.
These fat Americans usually carry around a "Words and Phrases" pocket book of whatever language is spoken in the country they are visiting and severely mispronounce half the words and have absolutely no manners. They will sometimes even claim to know a country's language and history better then an actual native. This is bad for a country's nationalism. The only reason some countries allow this is because they are poor and need whatever money they can get.
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Anonymous2009-08-03 17:40
The difference is that white people are good-looking and Japs are squinky-eyed gooks who generally worship our features and think getting a white girlfriend (skank) is god-tier. This is why gooks are amusing when they mispronounce shit.
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Mobius 1!CzRT9/fh7c2009-08-06 21:05
Sandniggers are by far the worst at pronouncing English.
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Anonymous2009-08-06 22:16
ITT: third worlders acting out their jealousy
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Anonymous2009-08-07 0:39
IMO Japanese pronunciation is easy for English speakers (the mildly intelligent ones, at least). Especially if you learn the language the proper way (homestay, study abroad.. etc.)
But Chinese, German, French... that shit is hard bro.
May I ask that what the fuck is wrong with americans and british (less though) when it comes to pronouncing "r"? For example, "groß", why do you force your tongue to the back of your throat? It sounds so unnatural.
Isn't that how you're supposed to do it? It's rolled in the back of the throat. It's a difficult sound though, i've been studying german for 10 years and i still have trouble with it
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Anonymous2009-08-08 0:52
>>106
I'm curious, are you referring to their native way of pronouncing that letter, or some common incorrect attempt to mimic German pronunciation? If the latter, tutor us.