/jp/ - Otaku Culture

>>20572512
First from my perspective as a Croatian, Czech, German and English speaker, I learned all these languages while I was young and I'm fairy proficient at them.

They have two advantages.

English is much more ubiquitous than Japanese. Japanese is just in Japan and thats about it.

English is made out of just 26 letters, this is ridiculously low. Sure these make for about 44 unique sounds in English but thats still nothing compared to Japanese.

You have 71 Kana but these combine into 140 if you count all the 2-3 kana combinations. These make for about 50 unique sounds. Sure that would be easy if there was spaces between the words but no 2,136 Joyo Kanji + more.

You can learn the alphabet in Japan just by reading all the dual language signs everywhere. Not to mention 90% of the modern products have english names. So you can understand why it's easy for them to learn how to read english when your average Japanese has about 2500+ chracters in his head 26 more is like cakewalk.

Camera could be called 写真機 but nobody really calls it that everyone just calls it カメラ. Check this out.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ym3HnjBxPsw
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=88Nh0wvQGYk

First let me say I'm not an English speaker I speak a Slavic language. So we're a very phonetic language and I'm familiar how our "local" people "translate" English words and terms into my language say the company "John Deer" becomes "Jondir".

So when I first went to Japan a few years ago my knowledge of Japanese was very limited. I knew the basic kana somewhat well. I was shocked at how much I could understand.

Like go to a 7-11 and you got メロンパン, パンプキン, チョコレート or ショコラ, ココア, ケーキ, チップ, ヨーグルト, フローズンヨーグルト, ジュース, フルーツジュース , グレープジュース, チョコレートパン , チョコパン, チョコレートケーキ , チョコチップ , チョコミント, ハンバーガー , ハンバーグ and so on...

You can walk into a konbini and without speaking much Japanese read almost every label there is except the real authentic Japanese foods like say お握り picture related, you won't know what the fuck is お握り with ちりめんとろろ昆布 and like detergents and cosmetics.

Anyways I think it's far easier for a Japanese person to learn English.

They main problem they have with English is transformations (regular and irregular verbs) and pronunciation.

As a Germanic/Slavic speaker I still after 20+ years can't nail a perfect English or German accent. Theres always some slavic in it. Czech on the other hand thats not my mother tongue I speak like a 100% native.

When speaking to Japanese people it's really hard to tell because they'll praise your japanese even if it's dogshit but I do know that slavic phenomes are much closer to Japanese phenomes and a Japanese people told me that my Japanese is "weird" sounding, they can tell I'm not a native but they can't go OH hes an american or oh hes french.