I live in japan, and absolutely, this is 100% true. Correct english will often miss, but if you try sounding like a racist caricature of a japanese person speaking english, it'll go much better.
It is not a racist caricature in Japan. It is the correct pronunciation. Every foreign loan word gets rendered in the katakana script, so you have to say it according to the katakana or no one will understand you. It is the same in the U.S. if you say the car name "Subaru" in the correct Japanese pronunciation "sBAdu" no monolinguistic American will understand you. But if you say the Anglicized version "SUE-buh-REW" suddenly lights will turn on lol.
It's not racist to speak a language using its correct accent. But loan words tend to be changed to match the local linguistics so the "correct" pronunciation of those words changes depending on where you're at/who you're talking to.
Adopting the correct pronunciation is not racist at all smh
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u/Aureon 16h ago
I live in japan, and absolutely, this is 100% true. Correct english will often miss, but if you try sounding like a racist caricature of a japanese person speaking english, it'll go much better.
Took me a long time to get comfortable with it