The Hardest Part of Japanese

Japanese pitch-accent and pronunciation lessons: www.patreon.com/dogen

So what you're saying is... the hardest part of Japanese, for native English speakers... are the English words...

I cannot count the number of times I've had to slowly sound out Katakana over and over until it finally clicks and I realise what the hell they're trying to say.

"No, the hardest part of Japanese for native English speakers is katakana pronunciation." TRUER WORDS WERE NEVER SPOKEN. It's embarrassing how it took me to figure out that "ストラップ" meant "strap". It took me days, folks, DAYS.

"Pass" "See my patreo-" breaks table in half

I like to imagine that, when the ancient japanese billions of years ago decided these katakana pronounciations, they had a group of maybe 20 Dogens going "rosu.... rosuanzeresu....rosanzeresu.... rooss... ".

As a french girl, the words I struggle the most with are the french words in Katakana. 'Cause first, you don't expect french, you expect english. And secondly, french prononciation is totally incompatible with katakana, maybe not more than english, but in a different level. Last time in Kawasaki, I searched for an hour what was the meaning of "ルフロン" I could read in front of all the shops names. Then I saw the name of the mall in romaji. LE FRONT. I was like "aaaAAAAaaaaaaaaahhh !" for 20 seconds. It literally means "the forehead", which makes no sens, but it feels so good when you finally get it, thought.

The 2nd hardest thing in Japanese is trying to figure out if some jukugo is a name or a simply a word you don't yet know.

Katakana pronunciation to native English speakers is like playing an away game on your home court.

This is so true! As a French native speaker I also feel that way. I used to work at a French bistro in Japan and I had to use the katakana pronunciation of French wine names in order to get my customers to understand me, ughhh!

"in short, fukking" "like rabbits" I snorted so hard 😂😂😂

Lol, that sneaky advertising at 1:45. I'm proud I start hearing the difference between the pitches :-)

今まで、外国の人がカタカナ語(和製英語)を話す時、決まってネイティブに発音するのが少し不思議だったのを覚えています。この動画を見て、カタカナ語が英語のネイティブにとってめちゃくちゃ難しいのがよくわかりました！

Me, watching Dogen for fun: "Well Katakana seems messy, but it looks like most words are fairly self-explanatory and the pronunciation is just different." Me, two years later, covering common Katakana in Japanese lessons: "Dear god, he was right..."

The following word made me hide under my bed for a week: ポリエチレン. It's polyethylene. I used to pride myself on learning chemical names in English, but I am legit terrified of learning to do so in Japanese.

Pants and パンツ are different things. :P

I remember having a particularly hard time getting the word ヘルシー which appeared in my text book once. Every time I tried to figure it out I searched for English words starting with "hell-" or "hel-" in my head, but for some reason I had a suspicion that it does not actually refer to the underworld in any way. Took me an embarrasingly long time to realise that it means "healthy".

Sorry for being a bit late, but here goes: We are a bunch of Indonesians learning Japanese, this time reading a text about the Titanic. There is a passage that says the ship departed from a place called サザンプトン. "Well that didn't sound like a British town name..." we thought. Obviously, being Indonesians, we don't exactly know the full story of the Titanic other than the fact that there is enough room for Jack damnit! Moving on, none of us could guess the name of the town, until I tried googling the katakana. There it was, サザンプトン、or in English, Southampton. When I told the class about this, just about everyone groaned like seals on an iceberg.

I swear these keep getting better man. I laughed because i knew it was no laughing matter. Finally theres someone whos out there speaking about the things that really matter to those of us learning Japanese. Ive memorized 20+ stroke kanji and i still have to think twice about how to pronounce リオデジャネロ.

i tried to buy wodka. they had only wokka.