About English speakers' pronunciation

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.

>>40
What way?

>>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).

>>42
I meant to say "syllables" and "that is mostly contained".

>>37
facepalm.tar.gz

>>37
There is no "ä" sound. It's a grapheme, you noob.

>>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.

>>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.

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.

>>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).

>>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

>>49

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".

>>50

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.

Do it like French - backwards compatible, but thanks to lots of useless diacritics it's actually regular and pronounceable.

>>51
Orthography doesn't have to be beautiful, it has to be meaningful and logical, especially for a lingua franca.

>>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).

>>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.

>>55
In this case the point is that writing conveys the meaning, not phonemes.

>>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.

>>1
They're Americans, what the hell did you expect. I have yet to meet an American who can fluently speak a foreign language.

>>58
Well, there are some Americans who fluently speak English...

>>59
Pics or it didn't happen.

>>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).

>>59
>>60
>>61
what the fuck are you doing

>>62
Something beautiful

>>37
Not in Classical Latin.

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.

Take classes

>>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.

JAPANIZU FTW
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tqP10PvlBWg

>>1

Props to you mate.

>>65
>I am English, and currently trying to learn Japanese for business studies.
I'm going to have to lol wat you there...

>>54

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.

>>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.

English sucks, just stick with Japanese.

>>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.

>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.

>Be it German, French, Finnish, Japanese, Chinese, Telugu or motherfuckin' Esperanto
>telugu

The fuck, gtfo. Telugu a nuvvu?

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).

oh rest of the world, you are so tsundere for America, it is adorable :3

lol @americunts trying to learn foreign languages.

>>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.