Tips for Americans to pronounce Japanese correctly #learnjapanese #japaneselanguage #Japanese

[LillieLaTigresse]

I love that you mentioned Hebrew! I'm learning Japanese right now and the phonetics are easier for me as a Hebrew speaker. Also we already pronounce a lot of the names the correct way (like Toyota etc.)

[jessie]

There is an R sound in Japanese RA, RI, RU, RE, RO,

[RealPumpkinJay]

I’m bilingual German/English, so it’s fairly easy for me to pronounce the transliteration of Japanese words.

[anastasija]

I mean serbo-croat is purely phonetic so its easier for me to correctly guess how Japanese words are pronounced than english or god forbid french

[MrDragos]

I am from Romania and I already have all the sounds from Japanese even some extras. I could read hiragana at first glance. But I still struggle with R/L(like りんご, I read it "ringo" meanwhile my teacher told me it's more like "lingo") sounds and pitch accent. Except this I have no problem pronouncing Japanese words

[RuliMatsumoto]

Easier for Spanish speakers, same vowels ❤

[solntom]

That is the same phonic rule for Spanish 😂.

[juliedeane]

So the first syllable gets an emphasis? A lot of folks from USA are used the Spanish where the next to last syllable gets emphasized.

[miroslavabugnerova]

I’m originally from Central Europe, so Japanese pronunciation is way more natural to me than English one, however reading is a different story 😹😂

[Makkaru]

Plus if you say konnichiwa to a friend they’ll think you’ve demoted their status within the friendship. Too formal I believe.

[martaleszkiewicz]

The most important thing to remember for Anglophone speakers is that there is NO vowel shift in Japanese (or ny other language outside of English for that matter).

[meteordaddy]

As a Filipino, that’s what I tell my coworkers. Just simplify the vowels and you’ll be fine in most Asian languages. A e i o u shouldn’t be read as ey eeh ai ow you. Just use the most basic sound.

[llopcuac]

There’s still intonation. When you say ‘Naruto, ’ you’re stressing the first ‘A, ’ it’s not flat.

[jasonkey]

I speak a little Latin, well enough to buy a newspaper.

[ColinRobinson]

I'm not sure what you mean by Latin people. Latin has been a dead language for many centuries. If you are referring to the Latin alphabet, that is what English uses, along with most of Western Europe and the Americas. So by saying "Latin people", in that sense you would be including Americans. The other thing is that there are absolutely diphthongs in Japanese. The most basic word "hai" has the /aɪ/ sound. Even though it ends in a glottal stop, it's still a blended vowel sound. So as an abstraction, we don't say Japanese has diphthongs but as far as the physical production of speech, the spoken word はい absolutely uses a diphthong.

[dylandrew]

Fun fact Americans struggle with English let alone any other language.

[artex]

"Rule #1: sound of R does not exist" - later: "Naruto", "Kaori", "Karate", "Karaoke" ...

[melia]

Except… those are the correct pronunciations in American English. Americans aren’t trying to speak Japanese when they say those words in an English conversation. It’s just like all the English loan words are pronounced *wrong* in Japanese, but those are actually the correct pronunciations in Japanese.

[Plain]

Welp theres a whole lot of americans from the north to the south so i think we know which americans shes talking about 😊

[paulasmith]

I wonder about UK people. Can they do it?