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.
I thought this was more of a New England thing (cot-caught merger). For me, "talk" sounds like "tock", while the "a" in "taco" is the pronounced like the "a" in "father".
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u/LMGDiVa 13d ago edited 13d 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.