Summary
Japan’s English proficiency ranking dropped to 92nd out of 116 countries, the lowest ever recorded.
The decline is attributed to stagnant English proficiency among young people, particularly due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
The Netherlands ranked first, followed by European countries, while the Philippines and Malaysia ranked 22nd and 26th, respectively.
as all the usual sounds are represented within our phonology
Is what you’d think, but nope. Their r, sh, j, ch and w and u sounds are slightly different from English (enough so that some languages have the English version and the Japanese version as independent sounds), the lone n consonant has a pronunciation not existent in English, and Japanese has a tone system but it’s simple enough a foreigner can get by without knowing it. That is to say, Japanese pronunciation is very different from English and decently hard to master, but if you just pronounce it like you would English (without stress of course, absolutely don’t add stress) you shouldn’t have a problem getting your point across.
Russian and Arabic consonant clusters
Wait Arabic consonant clusters? If anything Arabic has less consonant clusters than English. As a native Arabic speaker what I would think is a problem for English natives is the consonants themselves, because we have a lot of them and many don’t exist in English.
I would think is a problem for English natives is the consonants themselves, because we have a lot of them and many don’t exist in English.
I am not an Arabic speaker at all, but one of the few amusing points of the Iraq war was that absolutely no one in the U.S. media could agree on how to pronounce Qatar. There were even segments on how to pronounce it. They didn’t agree with each other.
Of course, they never actually put someone who spoke Arabic on TV to get them to pronounce it properly. They probably couldn’t anyway considering the intelligence level of news anchors I’ve worked with.
Thanks for confirming. I don’t speak Japanese but my sister studied it for a few years, and according to her, teachers were always impressed with her perfect pronunciation. We’re both native Spanish speakers in an English speaking country. From what I gather, Japanese phonology has more in common with Spanish or Italian than with English.
Pitch accent isn’t a tone system, also ん can he pronounced in way too many ways.
also ん can he pronounced in way too many ways
If English speakers¹ can deal with oo being pronounced at least six different ways (moon, book, door, blood, cooperation, brooch) they should be able to deal with this…
1— Disclaimer: as a non native speaker, I not only can’t deal with it, but at this point have absolutely no intention to.
I mean according to Wikipedia,
Some scholars have claimed that the term “pitch accent” is not coherently defined and that pitch-accent languages are just a sub-category of tonal languages in general.
And yeah ん is messed up but aren’t three of these the same sound? I’d say it’s more five different pronunciations rather than seven, which still a lot but would match with my understanding of it as English+2.
I think he titled it 7 because he explicitly presents 7 different cases. I’m not sure what you mean by saying three are the same though? Two are obviously exactly the same. Personally, I would only consider it three different “things”:
- A uvular nasal at the end of an utterance.
- The nasalization of a following consonant when that consonant has the tongue contacting the roof of the mouth.
- The nasalization of a preceeding vowel when the following phoneme has the tongue not making contact.
I think it’s fair to even say that it’s almost exactly one thing: an instruction to let air out of your nose whilst producing the surrounding phonemes.
Thanks for that.
Japanese has a tone system but it’s simple enough a foreigner can get by without knowing it
Isn’t this just learning each word’s tonic syllable? Or if you mean the flow of a sentence, the general waving tone structure like in Spanish or French?
You are correct (for standard Japanese 標準語 hyoujungo; other dialects can be quite different). NoneOfUrBusiness’s response is not a great take. Every word has an accented syllable or no accent at all (and it really is based on syllables, not mora). The accent is realized as a relatively sudden drop in pitch after the accented syllable with no (necessary) change in length or loudness. The drop can complete within the next syllable or after. Usually at the beginning of an utterance you start low, climb up in pitch to a certain point, and then either hit an accent and drop suddenly or gradually drop across a longer period of time if there’s no accent.
The precise pitch does not matter, and it’s definitely possible to have two accents close together resulting in a high-mid-low kind of pitch pattern.
Things are also complicated by the fact that Japanese likes devoicing certain syllables. Devoiced syllables can still be accented even though they can’t carry pitch in the same way as voiced syllables.
(and it really is based on syllables, not mora)
It’s not though? Pitch can and does change (either rise or drop) mid-syllable no?
Neither. Japanese has two tones, high and low (for comparison Mandarin has 4 and Cantonese has I think 7), and each vowel/vowel+consonant in a word takes one of these two. For example there are a bunch of words pronounced koukai in Japanese and they’re split 50/50 on whether their tone is high low low low or low high high high, and the words oyster and persimmon (both kaki) are famous for having opposite tones, one low high and the other high low.
By the way Japanese straight up doesn’t have stressed syllables so the idea of a tonic syllable doesn’t really translate to the language.
I’ve never been able to hear a difference with the ch, sh, j, or w. Is there anything that lays out the differences? I’ve basically given up on feeling like I’ll ever be totally comfortable in the language anyway.
Oh, and don’t forget the f sound is also different from English. At least the vowels are pretty easy to transition to
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_phonology
Go to the Consonants section. There are lots of useful notes there, and you can also click on the individual consonants for more information, including how to configure your mouth to make the sound. “ch” and “sh” are tɕ and ɕ, “j” is dʑ at the beginning of utterances or after ん and is ʑ after a vowel, “w” is w.
Compare to English under the Phonemes section. “ch” and “sh” are tʃ and ʃ, “j” is dʒ, “w” is w.
Is there anything that lays out the differences?
I’m not sure if they’re neatly explained somewhere, but the short of it is that sh, j and ch are “smoother” than the English versiond. They’re literally just s, z and t respectively, with an i next to them and smoothed over for ease of pronunciation because otherwise it’s a pain to say “si” (languages that do have this sound, like English, have ways of coping with this, but Japanese doesn’t). In English the equivalent of this is how drink is actually djrink and two becomes chuu, but anyway the point is that thinking of these three sounds as coping mechanisms rather than independent sounds should help. Listen carefully to a Japanese shi and you’ll hear the remnants of an s in it. You’ll probably have some luck looking these sounds up on YouTube.
W is a bit simpler; it’s just uw instead of a plain W, in the same way the English version lets out a bit of air before the W itself. Just insert a small u before watashi to make it uwatashi and you’ll get pretty close. Again YT should help. BTW to help appreciate the difference, when the Japanese try to emulate the English W sound they add a ho first, as in howaito (white).
I’ve basically given up on feeling like I’ll ever be totally comfortable in the language anyway.
My strategy is watch tons of anime (or your Japanese media of choice) with English subtitles. As long as you don’t depend completely on the subtitles and try to listen to the words being said it’s a pretty effective way of learning the language in my experience. Simple manga (or, again, your Japanese written media of choice) also does wonders.
The stuff about “w” is wrong, but there’s a good reason you would think this. The lip shape for the “w” sound in English and Japanese is different; in English the shape is like English “u”, and in Japanese the shape is like Japanese “u”, but you definitely shouldn’t have an actual “u” sound.
in the same way the English version lets out a bit of air before the W itself.
I think, especially considering your comment about ホワイト howaito, that you’re confusing two things. There are English dialects which have two separate “w”-like sounds, one of which is typically written “wh” and the other “w”. (To my ear, this distinctiln also sounds old-fashioned.) In these dialects, “w” as in “water” and “wood” is pronounced like you would expect, whereas “wh” as in “who” and “what” is pronounced somewhat like an “h” sound followed by just-“w” sound. I don’t think the “wh” sound is used for all instances of “w” in any dialect; in fact, most dialects have just the “w” sound.
BTW to help appreciate the difference, when the Japanese try to emulate the English W sound they add a ho first, as in howaito (white).
This is false, they only do this for “wh” sounds (and maybe not even for all of them). Counterexamples to your claim are easy: ウェイトレス weitoresu = waitress, ワット watto = watt, etc.
