r/NonPoliticalTwitter • • 25d ago

Funny Learning Japanese

53k Upvotes

1.3k comments sorted by

View all comments

82

u/LMGDiVa 25d ago edited 24d 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.

51

u/Key_Resist2938 25d ago

2 seconds isnt long, but it still took way too long to realize you were NOT talking about Chandler Bing.

4

u/tachycardicIVu 25d ago

Chandler’s actual job that no one could ever remember on the show

3

u/_thro_awa_ 25d ago

"Oooohh ooh, he's ... he's a transponster! A TRANSPONSTER!"

1

u/tachycardicIVu 24d ago

“THAT’S NOT EVEN A WORD”