Wa-pedia Home > Japan Forum & Europe Forum
Results 1 to 25 of 139

Thread: English-friendly Japan

Threaded View

Previous Post Previous Post   Next Post Next Post
  1. #9
    Twirling dragon Maciamo's Avatar
    Join Date
    Jul 17, 2002
    Location
    ¼‹ž
    Posts
    2,434
    Quote Originally Posted by Gaijin 06
    For someone with a self-proclaimed high IQ you are having surprising difficulty grasping the concepts of this thread.
    As far as I know, I am the one who started this thread, and I am the one who decide what this thread is about. Are you saying that you know better than me what I had in mind and meant when I started this thread ?

    Did you miss the bit where we agreed that it is much easier to move from one European language to another than it is to move between a European language and Japanese?
    That's completely irrelevant. I have learnt many European languages and Japanese, and Japanese is not much more difficult. It's just an impression that people who haven't learnt it have. In fact, Japanese has so much more words that come from English that once you get used to the katakana pronuciation (I guess after a few weeks in Japan), Japanese becomes more similar to English that most European languages for many daily things. You mentioned going the hairdresser.

    How do you say 'haircut' in Japanese ? 'Heakatto" or just "katto" from the English. Is that more or less difficult to understand than the French "coupe de cheveux" or Spanish "corte de pelo" or Italian "taglio" or German "Haarschnitt" ? I suppose that any English speaker would say easier.
    There thousands of daily words in Japanese that come from English : doa (door), te-buru (table), gaidobukku (guidebook), mauzu (mouse), konpyuta- (computer), sofuto (software), ea-kon (air-con) ju-su (juice), rentaka- (rent-a-car), pen (pen), kontakuto lenzu (contact lenses), wain (wine), kyabetsu (cabbage), sukedyu-ru (schedule), kamera (camera), no-to (notebook), surippa (slippers), handobaggu (handbag), furaipan (frying pan), shawa- (shower), bakettsu (bucket), nettowa-ku (network), sokkusu (socks), pantsu (pants), ka-digan (cardigan), sha-tsu (shirt), etc.

    I could make a huge list and compare them to the words in French, Italian, Spanish, German and Dutch, and you'd see that most of them are completely different from English. I'll just compare the above with French, as I don't have time to do everything (keep in mind that the pronuciation of French is completely different from English for the same spelling, and that someone pronoucing a word with an English accent will almost never be understood) :

    door : porte
    table : table
    guidebook : guide de voyage
    computer : ordinateur
    software : logiciel
    mouse : souris
    air con : climatisation
    juice : jus
    rent-a-car : voiture de location
    pen : stylo
    contact lenses : lentilles
    wine : vin
    cabbage : choux
    schedule : agenda/emploi du temps
    camera : appareil photo
    notebook : cahier
    slippers : pantoufles
    handbag : sac a main
    frying pan : poele
    shower : douche
    bucket : seau
    network : reseau
    socks : chausettes
    pants (US) : pantalon
    cardigan : gillet
    shirt : chemise

    Being a native speaker of French, and being also fluent in English and Italian and conversational in Spanish and German, I know that the vast majority of the thousands of katakana words used the most commonly in Japanese come from English, and that these are usually very different from their European equivalent. This further makes Japan, and indeed Japanese language, more English-friendly. I have met a lot of French people in Japan (and discussed on French forums), and I found that those whose English was not good (or inexistent), had a notable disadvantage to learn Japanese. They didn't have the head start of the thousands of katakana words. Maybe it's difficult to realise that when you only speak English.
    Last edited by Maciamo; Oct 28, 2005 at 10:20.

Similar Threads

  1. Replies: 0
    Last Post: Mar 19, 2010, 17:54

Posting Permissions

  • You may not post new threads
  • You may not post replies
  • You may not post attachments
  • You may not edit your posts
  •