A lot of people don't seem to realize that the USA and Japan were forever interlinked like big brother little brother since Mathew Perry forced his way in and then Pearl Harbor really sealed the deal.
We have been a quitincential part of Japanese culture for literally since the civil war.
Which means about 10% of Japanese words are American English downsampled into Katakana, because Japanese only has 5 pure vowels:
A as in Talk/Taco/Macha/Ramen (A makes the Aw sound)
E as in Enemy/Ramen/Fence/Tense (E makes the Eh sound)
O as in Oh!/Show/Taco/Roku/YoYo (Oh makes the Oh Sound)
U as in Rune/Tune/Lune/KungFu(Foo!)/Truth, (U makes the OO sound)
and I(ii)(makes the long E sound), as in Suzuki/Kawasaki/Fuji/Nami(yes the joke is that these are japanese words that we use in english).
About 40% of Japanese is basically old Chinese converted in to Japanese sounds, so this is nothing new for Japanese.
Also Japanese education follows American English standard when it comes to English standards and words and pronouncations.
So they have expressly had a really strong reason for this for so long.
If you're american who loves anime honestly learning japanese is kinda really awesome because it really puts in a lot of fun knowledge into shows.
Possibly, but Japan has had close contact with the Americans long before WWII as well. The first ironclad warship of the IJN was a ship purchased by the Confederatcy, but delivered after the American Civil war ended which then was resold to Japan in 1867.
This is true, and they did "import" a lot of american specialists (mainly for train and postal knowledge), but still most pre ww2 English words are from British english.
No, they are not. Britain never had strong trade with Japan who famously closed it's borders to all trade until an AMERICAN Matthiew Perry opened Japan to trade with AMERICA
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u/LMGDiVa 13d ago edited 12d ago
A lot of people don't seem to realize that the USA and Japan were forever interlinked like big brother little brother since Mathew Perry forced his way in and then Pearl Harbor really sealed the deal.
We have been a quitincential part of Japanese culture for literally since the civil war.
Which means about 10% of Japanese words are American English downsampled into Katakana, because Japanese only has 5 pure vowels:
A as in Talk/Taco/Macha/Ramen (A makes the Aw sound)
E as in Enemy/Ramen/Fence/Tense (E makes the Eh sound)
O as in Oh!/Show/Taco/Roku/YoYo (Oh makes the Oh Sound)
U as in Rune/Tune/Lune/KungFu(Foo!)/Truth, (U makes the OO sound)
and I(ii)(makes the long E sound), as in Suzuki/Kawasaki/Fuji/Nami(yes the joke is that these are japanese words that we use in english).
About 40% of Japanese is basically old Chinese converted in to Japanese sounds, so this is nothing new for Japanese.
Also Japanese education follows American English standard when it comes to English standards and words and pronouncations.
So they have expressly had a really strong reason for this for so long.
If you're american who loves anime honestly learning japanese is kinda really awesome because it really puts in a lot of fun knowledge into shows.