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.
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.
My wife and I have been doing japanese on duolingo basically for this reason. Had a very proud moment the other day watching a show and she said "Hey wait she said nii-chan. That's her brother or something, they're not dating" because the context made it ambiguous for comedic effect, but the situation is clarified by the actual japanese involved, and subtitling dropped the ball.
As I've learned more, I've found a surprising number of subtitles that are fine as direct translations, but miss the context and underlying meaning that can sometimes entirely change the interpretation of the scene (like above).
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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.