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Comment on How realistic is it for me to learn Japanese so that I can experience Anime better? How long would it take to learn? Has anyone attempted this?

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tanisnikana@lemmy.world ⁨13⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

I mean, I thought Japanese was super straightforward compared to English. I’ve been speaking English for three goddamn decades and I:

still occasionally flip my Rs and Ls when I’m going fast and being careless
have to pause a beat before saying “Canada” to make sure I don’t use the rhythm structure/emphasis pattern for “banana”
sometimes just get really lost when I make a complicated sentence and have to stop and try again
can barely remember that English speakers take pills, and not drink them (you don’t chew them, for fucks sake! Just say drink!)
fucking hate that OUGH has more readings than most kanji
realized a couple years into learning English, that English has twenty-six radicals, stacked horizontally, and they make a word, and that word may not be pronounced how the radicals suggest, and it’s best just to memorize 116,000 kanji-words (and you English speakers bitch about kanji so endlessly, not understanding the sheer absolute fucking monster you came from)

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Eq0@literature.cafe ⁨13⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
The last point resonates with me! 😭 all other European languages are actually write-as-you-speak. Why, English, why???

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- FriendOfDeSoto@startrek.website ⁨12⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
  Danish has entered the chat. They don’t pronounce anything the way it’s written either. And French consists of 80 percent silent letters or thereabouts. It’s not just English in Europe.
  
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  - Eq0@literature.cafe ⁨12⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
    I don’t know Danish, but French is at least consistent in what is pronounced and what is not. So seeing a word will tell you how to pronounce it even if it’s the first time you encounter it.
    
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    TrickDacy@lemmy.world ⁨11⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
    Incorrect
    
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- NoneOfUrBusiness@fedia.io ⁨13⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
  The Great Vowel Shift. English writing was sensible in the early 14th century around the time of Chaucer, but then shit got out of whack speaking-wise and the writing system was never adjusted to reconcile the difference. So you can blame the Black Death I guess.
  
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  - Eq0@literature.cafe ⁨13⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
    It’s not only vowels, but consonants disappearing or just having a different flavor of sounds in each word. Like word, sword, swan…
    
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ltxrtquq@lemmy.ml ⁨11⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

can barely remember that English speakers take pills, and not drink them (you don’t chew them, for fucks sake! Just say drink!)

In my mind drink is exclusively for liquids, which is why drinking a solid sounds weird to me. Because there’s no chewing involved swallowing pills makes more sense than eating them, but I’ll admit I don’t know why “take” is the usual verb.

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