I currently have to use Subtitles, kinda annoying. And I despise dubs since the voice acting is so bad, I mean like the emotions in the voice, its so emotionless in English.
I am a English speaker with some fluency in Cantonese and Mandarin.
How difficult is Japanese? Am I gonna waste a lot of time?
Also what’s the best resource to learn?
The last point resonates with me! 😭 all other European languages are actually write-as-you-speak. Why, English, why???
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.
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.
Edit: I was proven wrong about French.
Incorrect
Can you give me an example?
I can’t think of them off the top of my head but I studied French three years and remember there were plenty of exceptions to pronunciation rules. Here are some:
https://theperfectfrench.com/pronunciation/irregular-plural-nouns/
Scroll down to “Irregular Pronunciation of Plural Nouns”
Ils mangent - intelligent
Same four letters at the end, not the same pronunciation.
I would say, same prononciation different accent
I would say you’re moving your own goalposts here.
I have been mulling it over since the previous post. I got taught that French was read-as-written and repeated it. But now, I realize there is more.
Mangent is like rangent but not like gent - because mangent is a verb and is pronounced practically without the -nt. On the other hand intelligent is like gent, because it’s not a verb. The question is also obfuscated by nge being a different sound than ge and that intelligent and gent have the accent on the last syllable, while mangent and rangent have the accent on the one-to-last syllable.
For a better example of the difference in pronunciation between verb and noun, mangent and tangent would be better and there is indeed a difference.
Furthermore, (I think) tangent needs to have the accent on the last syllable because gent is a long sound here. While in mangent the last syllable is not long, therefore the accent recesses.
My teachers lied to me and I blindly believed them. Sorry
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.
It’s not only vowels, but consonants disappearing or just having a different flavor of sounds in each word. Like word, sword, swan…