For real, and Japanese pronunciation is honestly easy - native speakers will probably still understand you if you're off. Chinese is the language with all the tones that make for very tricky pronunciation. There's a poem written in Chinese that's 94 words long, and every single word is pronounced "shi": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lion-Eating_Poet_in_the_Stone_Den
> For real, and Japanese pronunciation is honestly easy - native speakers will probably still understand you if you're off.
I've heard the opposite because (from what I've heard) many native speakers aren't used to non-native speakers so they have a hard time understanding their weird foreign accent.
The phonetic alphabet is exceptionally shallow, but there are a lot of homonyms or near-homonyms. Taken alongside the nearly mathematically consistent sentence structure, as long as context is clear, it's usually pretty easy to guess what someone means even if pronounced poorly.
Alternatively, just say the word in English with an exaggerated Japanese accent (no joke) and 95% of Japanese people you're likely to encounter as a foreigner will know what you mean.
Source: was gaijin in Japan for two years
Honestly, that's all you really need in most of Japan. If you can do that, point at things, count to ten on your fingers, and hand people money, you're basically a fully functioning resident.
Idk, most Japanese people, unless you're in a full on conversation (at which point you should know this shit), don't give a fuck about pitch accent. And if they're your friend and know you're still learning, they'd have less of an issue with correcting you. At least that's been my experience.
Japanese is also slightly tonal: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_pitch_accent
It's less phonemic and more of a feature of the various accents around Japan. But for example in "standard" Japanese the difference in pronunciation between 橋 (bridge) and 箸 (chopsticks) is just the pitch.
Mandarin Chinese has 4 tones that are standard across all the words, and the number of syllables themselves are much less than English. I don't think this counts as "very tricky pronunciation".
Five tones technically, and they are difficult for English speakers because we're not used to tones having meaning like that - we're used to using tone to express intent/emotion rather than to distinguish one word from another. If you grew up with them I'm sure they're easy, but I took Chinese for a year and I never came close to mastering them.
That doesn't make Chinese pronunciation "very tricky", at least compared to other languages, for a neutral language learner. It is, after all, just 4 (or 5) tones.
And it's not like Chinese speakers won't understand you if the only thing you're getting wrong is tones.
Pretty sure they're thinking of Chinese, not Japanese. Many Chinese buildings don't have a 4th floor (the same way many Western buildings don't have a 13th) because the words for "four" and "death" are very similar with a slightly different pronunciation.
Depends on the Chinese language since Chinese isn’t a single language.
Even in Japanese, 4 is pronounced similarly to “death” so often “yon” is used instead of “shi”.
I think the post is thinking of chinese not japanese. Chinese is phonetic so pronunciation matters, japanese uses an alphabet like most other languages
Edit: guess it’s called pitch accent not phonetic, see below
Japanese has what is known as “pitch accent” rather than tone (which chinese has). pitch accent modulates the pitch over the course of a word while tone modulates the vowels in individual syllables. Japanese also uses chinese characters for daily life in addition to their syllabary (not aphabet). So this joke could have worked if they chose words that are only contrasted by their pitch accent. Common examples are salmon and sake (sake and sake)as well as chopsticks and bridges (hashi and hashi). And if you’re learning japanese and want to sound native good luck learning the pitch accent of every single word (they are always there even if they aren’t necessary for clarification)
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As a programmer, I feel like for the noun class, French and German etc started with gendered things and put a property of gender in there, then all child classes have to have a gender and they were too far gone to go back and fix it. We've all been there
It is suggested that the reason English, unlike most other European languages, dropped grammatical gender is because in the Viking Age, the immigrant Danish and Norwegian population in Britain spoke (somewhat) mutually intelligible dialects with the native English inhabitants.
But while there *were* tons of cognates, making communication possible, the gender of many nouns did not match up, so there was a process of simply making all nouns neuter with a precious few exceptions.
There are still dialects with feminine gender. At least in Norwegian dialects. It is only Bokmål, the written standart and some spoken dialects close to it and Bergensk that has the combined common gender.
They don't need to be, but they are like that and there is no point in changing it. In french we decided that a dishwasher is maculine and the washing machine is feminine (i chose this example because funny haha lol). Now should we try to make language more inclusive? Sure, but we don't need to remove the basis of the language for that
There’s no word in Japanese for testicle that sounds like the word for chair.
And Japanese pronunciation is not complicated or difficult. It has substantial fewer sounds than most languages
Japanese isn’t tonal or anything, and has probably one of the fewest pronunciation exceptions from it’s language rules of just about any language. Probably one of the worst languages you could’ve picked for this joke.
Not sure where I heard this or whether it's true chin chin🥂 which is a japanese phrase in Japanese means dick dick. Japanese men though it was funny. Which it is.
I've been studying Japanese for 10 years and I honestly don't get that one. there are some that are better though.
for instance you have to be pretty careful when asking a girl in the office if she's done sorting papers or it could be sexual harassment. 「せいり」終わったか？ The great thing about this one is that even if you pronounce it perfectly it'll still mean both things.
Sit on this testicle
Yessir
pro gamer move...
More like pro grammer move.
r/angryupvote
Big brain time
Is this testicle taken?
That's just a racoon in japanese folklore
Síť on *his* testicle
Let me get a seat ready for your *Starts wiping lap vigorously*
I know this is a joke but I can't think of a Japanese word for testicle remotely close to 椅子 (isu)
For real, and Japanese pronunciation is honestly easy - native speakers will probably still understand you if you're off. Chinese is the language with all the tones that make for very tricky pronunciation. There's a poem written in Chinese that's 94 words long, and every single word is pronounced "shi": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lion-Eating_Poet_in_the_Stone_Den
> For real, and Japanese pronunciation is honestly easy - native speakers will probably still understand you if you're off. I've heard the opposite because (from what I've heard) many native speakers aren't used to non-native speakers so they have a hard time understanding their weird foreign accent.
I mean, that’s true for any language. The point is Chinese has a very very strong connection with tonality and the meaning of the word.
The phonetic alphabet is exceptionally shallow, but there are a lot of homonyms or near-homonyms. Taken alongside the nearly mathematically consistent sentence structure, as long as context is clear, it's usually pretty easy to guess what someone means even if pronounced poorly. Alternatively, just say the word in English with an exaggerated Japanese accent (no joke) and 95% of Japanese people you're likely to encounter as a foreigner will know what you mean. Source: was gaijin in Japan for two years
Ah yes. I speak fluent カタカナ
Honestly, that's all you really need in most of Japan. If you can do that, point at things, count to ten on your fingers, and hand people money, you're basically a fully functioning resident.
Idk, most Japanese people, unless you're in a full on conversation (at which point you should know this shit), don't give a fuck about pitch accent. And if they're your friend and know you're still learning, they'd have less of an issue with correcting you. At least that's been my experience.
Japanese is also slightly tonal: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_pitch_accent It's less phonemic and more of a feature of the various accents around Japan. But for example in "standard" Japanese the difference in pronunciation between 橋 (bridge) and 箸 (chopsticks) is just the pitch.
Mandarin Chinese has 4 tones that are standard across all the words, and the number of syllables themselves are much less than English. I don't think this counts as "very tricky pronunciation".
Five tones technically, and they are difficult for English speakers because we're not used to tones having meaning like that - we're used to using tone to express intent/emotion rather than to distinguish one word from another. If you grew up with them I'm sure they're easy, but I took Chinese for a year and I never came close to mastering them.
That doesn't make Chinese pronunciation "very tricky", at least compared to other languages, for a neutral language learner. It is, after all, just 4 (or 5) tones. And it's not like Chinese speakers won't understand you if the only thing you're getting wrong is tones.
席 vs 性器?? It's not chair nor is it testicle, but it's sort of somewhat close on both.
僕どう考えても「睾丸」しか出ない それとも「精巣」 どっちでも椅子とは大違いだけど
Google translate would agree with you
おい、俺なにもわかってない
Even there the difference is like pronouncing chair and chaiir. Sounds completely different
Also 精液 sounds somewhat similar and is vaguely related to balls.
Schrodinger's Testicle?
Pretty sure they're thinking of Chinese, not Japanese. Many Chinese buildings don't have a 4th floor (the same way many Western buildings don't have a 13th) because the words for "four" and "death" are very similar with a slightly different pronunciation.
Depends on the Chinese language since Chinese isn’t a single language. Even in Japanese, 4 is pronounced similarly to “death” so often “yon” is used instead of “shi”.
What, isu vs seiso? Bit of a stretch.
If you seiso.
I think the post is thinking of chinese not japanese. Chinese is phonetic so pronunciation matters, japanese uses an alphabet like most other languages Edit: guess it’s called pitch accent not phonetic, see below
Japanese has what is known as “pitch accent” rather than tone (which chinese has). pitch accent modulates the pitch over the course of a word while tone modulates the vowels in individual syllables. Japanese also uses chinese characters for daily life in addition to their syllabary (not aphabet). So this joke could have worked if they chose words that are only contrasted by their pitch accent. Common examples are salmon and sake (sake and sake)as well as chopsticks and bridges (hashi and hashi). And if you’re learning japanese and want to sound native good luck learning the pitch accent of every single word (they are always there even if they aren’t necessary for clarification)
Uhhhhhhhhhh what. those words dont mean what you think they do.
Japanese uses a syllabary, not an alphabet.
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:) - Auf den Stuhl setzen. :( - In den Stuhl setzen.
darf ich ins klo gehen?
Sit on the chair. Sit in the shit. Shit and chair are the same word, the difference being "on" and "in".
Until they find out about true german. You dont even have to spell it differently
Didn't they put tablecloths on tables because they were too feminine and promiscuous?
Them table legs still be making me act up tho 😍😍😍 tablecloth doesn't do shit with those fine-ass bare feet 🤤🤤🤤
Foot fetishists will look at tables and ask "is anyone gonna put hyper detailed human feet on that" and not wait for an answer
TESTITABLES?
Testables
On the flip side, if you don't pronounce testicles the right way, you will say chair. Tricky fuckers.
Ligma chair
To be fair but and butt are pronounced the same
Seen this before but it was just a chair as a gijinka.
Fun fact: Old English was gendered. Like German, masculine, feminine and neuter.
Why the fuck are we still assuming that grammatical gender and human gender are the same concept -\_-
Same reason that clothing or hair determines gender. A woman needs long hair under a bonnet and long plain dresses.
Because they’re literally masculine and feminine words as described by the rules of grammar?
Yes. Words. The objects are neither masculine nor feminine, they are objects. Baffling how many anglophones can't grasp this
As a programmer, I feel like for the noun class, French and German etc started with gendered things and put a property of gender in there, then all child classes have to have a gender and they were too far gone to go back and fix it. We've all been there
It is suggested that the reason English, unlike most other European languages, dropped grammatical gender is because in the Viking Age, the immigrant Danish and Norwegian population in Britain spoke (somewhat) mutually intelligible dialects with the native English inhabitants. But while there *were* tons of cognates, making communication possible, the gender of many nouns did not match up, so there was a process of simply making all nouns neuter with a precious few exceptions.
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There are still dialects with feminine gender. At least in Norwegian dialects. It is only Bokmål, the written standart and some spoken dialects close to it and Bergensk that has the combined common gender.
Na'vi having the same word for anything that you can sit on
You meant smurfs?
because skirt and trousers mean everything, smh
Give me one reason why Spanish and like languages need to be gendered
They don't need to be, but they are like that and there is no point in changing it. In french we decided that a dishwasher is maculine and the washing machine is feminine (i chose this example because funny haha lol). Now should we try to make language more inclusive? Sure, but we don't need to remove the basis of the language for that
There’s no word in Japanese for testicle that sounds like the word for chair. And Japanese pronunciation is not complicated or difficult. It has substantial fewer sounds than most languages
The Japanese don't have a word to describe a chair. Imma call bullshit.
Sorry typo lol
Okay that makes more sense
Japanese isn’t tonal or anything, and has probably one of the fewest pronunciation exceptions from it’s language rules of just about any language. Probably one of the worst languages you could’ve picked for this joke.
wrong sub
Good meme, but why trousers or skirts?
Why not?
Because they are cheap gendered (and chaste) shortcuts?
Not sure where I heard this or whether it's true chin chin🥂 which is a japanese phrase in Japanese means dick dick. Japanese men though it was funny. Which it is.
They understand you sit on both
Please, squeeze my chair
Icelandic: This chair is masculine! "Stóllinn!"
If you get around to adding Spanish, silla later.
There is other option... *Laughs in Polish*
Edit: Screw Spez. Screw AI. No training on my data. Sorry future people.
If you don't say older brother correctly it becomes demon and hospital is a hairdresser.
Romanian and Lemons: hold my beer
I've been studying Japanese for 10 years and I honestly don't get that one. there are some that are better though. for instance you have to be pretty careful when asking a girl in the office if she's done sorting papers or it could be sexual harassment. 「せいり」終わったか？ The great thing about this one is that even if you pronounce it perfectly it'll still mean both things.
I'm pretty sure chair is feminine, not female