News for hackers. Stuff that matters.

A comment on Parts for stolen Hyundais and Kias are so scarce the cars are being totaled. Parent comment

Re:Parts for stolen Hyundais and Kias are so scarce the cars... by PaulHoule on Monday May 01, 2023 @08:21AM (#35771786)
Japanese is not hard for English speakers. I bought two lots of minidiscs from Japan and was listening to them before recording over them and my wife was somewhat surprised at how singing Japanese does not sound all that foreign to her. Chinese, in the other hand, really does sound different, and personally I find the sounds of French much more difficult.
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Parts for stolen Hyundais and Kias are so scarce the cars... by pezezin on Tuesday May 02, 2023 @07:53AM (#35786141)
The problem are the vowels. Germanic languages are notorious for having a large number of vowels that may not even be consistent across dialects. Add the funky English spelling, and it is no wonder that English speakers will mangle Japanese names beyond recognition.

But yes, Japanese has pretty simple sounds and prosody and it is easy to pick up. I studied French for 5 years, and I could never get the pronunciation right. I know how words should sound, but my mouth just refuses to do it. I also studied one year of Chinese, and while I enjoyed it a lot, good god is the phonology difficult with all the weird consonant and the tones.

[ Parent | on HN ]