Studying Japanese and What To Avoid
One of the first words anyone studying Japanese learns is honto, which means "really" or "truly," and whenever a gaijin uses this word I can get an idea of how they studied Japanese. The correct pronunciation is HONE-toh, which is not difficult to get down if you started studying Japanese using a course that forced you to read everything in hiragana from the beginning (like the Genki books or the excellent flashcards from White Rabbit that we sell); but if the person says it using the English rules of pronunciation, producing something like HAWN-toh, I can tell they either learned using a romaji (romanized Japanese) textbook or learned informally, picking up words and phrases here and there. The problem is that reading a Japanese word written in the English alphabet creates problems as the brain tries to apply rules like 'silent e' to what it's seeing, which ends up making your pronunciation less correct. Another word that foreigners often get slightly wrong is man, the unit for 10,000, which pronounced like mahn, and not like the opposite of woman. Bottom line, when learning Japanese, it's best to get started on the right foot.
When studying Japanese, make sure you start out right.
posted by Peter in Japan at 4:57 PM
5 Comments:
I have that one.
10:11 PM
Another one that often gives it away is how a Japanese learner pronounces the word "gaijin". I've noticed that even somewhat experienced students tend to revert to the short I sound in "jin" if they're not consciously thinking about it.
Come to think of it, that's true with many Japanese loanwords that are used in English speech, such as anime and manga. Because the words are used in an English language context, it becomes easier to revert to English pronunciation rules, even when speaking Japanese.
1:43 AM
Sometimes i find that if you are using a Japanese word that generally people would know, like Manga for example, if you say it with the proper pronounciation English speaking people don't understand.
Never thought a slight change pronounciation would cause such trouble :/
3:02 AM
Good identification of "learning method". But it only applies to certain "mother tongues". In my mother tongue I would say "man" (same meaning as the english man) in the Japanese way. Reading in romaji worked fine at the very beginning, only later I found it limited my learning abilities, the change was quickly made.
3:16 AM
For a second you had me with the HONE-toh. Because for a German native speaker it would be wrong. Our romaji writing indicating the pronunciation of honto would simply be, well... honto.
Hone-toh for us as pronunciation would be like "ho neh toh", since we'd pronounce the E as well.
So I ended up thinking "What's with the E?" for a second before I realized that zze krazy Englisch speekers are different zere. You'd gobble down the E, wouldn't you?
I think it's because the pronunciation of vocals is somewhat similar in German and Japanese. So it's a tad bit easier for us, but not much.
Though, I have yet to see a Japanese who can pronounce some of our names. Like... Hrdlicka (there's an Austrian painter with that name.) The name itself originates from Czech. The joys of Austria once having been a multi-cultural monarchy :P
Gotta love all those consonant combos in German :P
6:42 PM
Post a Comment
<< Home