Raora explains how Japanese is simpler than English

[@ilestecritqueseullink6387]

Can confirm japanese pronunciations aren’t hard for latin speakers, while all the stresses and phonetic inconsistencies in english are hell to enunciate correctly

[@juviowater]

True. I'm Brazilian, speak portuguese, and I was surprised how easy was to pronounce japanese words

[@Frigidblood]

We don't talk about French.

[@BygoneT]

Only hell if you're not a child and lazy

[@ilestecritqueseullink6387]

@@Frigidblood french is no exception believe me

[@abcdefghijkl123454]

I mean, there's a reason spelling bees are not a thing in romance language speaking countries

[@katacutie]

English is a gamble in general, since it takes words from like 5 different sources. I'm also italian, so I can see where she's coming from!

[@Orthien]

Its worse that we almost had it fixed. They were planning to standardize everything and sort all our franken word gibberish, then the printing press came to soon and locked in everything as it was since changing everything suddenly became much harder. Curse you Gutenberg!

[@hi_hello10]

English has way more then 5 sources, we take from whatever just feels right.

[@katacutie]

@@hi_hello10 I should have said "major sources", but you're right!

[@tovarishchfeixiao]

@@hi_hello10 Just as literally every other language in the world. English isn't special for having loanwords.

[@amanosatoshitranslates]

and have like no rule to how to pronounce.

[@nicocchi]

Hey remember when Raora read a Spanish superchatinni and she absolutely nailed it despite having no idea what she was doing? Bless you languages that are read as they're written. None of this guessing bullshit you have with English

[@ssilentmedia]

yeah, but i don't think she was able to read it without any problems because they are both languages that are read as they're written.i think it might have been more because italian and spanish are both latin languages and are really closely related. there are still languages that are read as they are written but they pronounce their letters a bit different and that will give them an accent when reading in other languages

[@HenshinFanatic]

Grzegorz Brzęczyszczykiewicz says "hallo".

[@DioBrando-qr6ye]

​@@ssilentmediaTrue, however, I don't know about Spanish but Italian really reads as it's written. The worst thing that can happen when reading a word that you never heard before is that you get the emphasis wrong.

[@GugureSux]

She's right. English is such a bizarre bundle of odd pronunciation exceptions over exceptions, that it's darn hard to learn without constant exposure to material spoken by the natives. Meanwhile, most other European languages can read most other tongues, and Romanized Japanese, just fine, because things are often read as they're written. Every letter's spoken the same way, in every word.

[@Frigidblood]

French: bonjour!

[@andreapicchioni4912]

Nobody likes french soo its normal

[@viandulce8389]

As someone who's fluent with a few Japanese words (especially when introducing yourself), I can confirm. I'll be needing it a bit more than English if I were to work in Japan

[@TOBY-jy7bz]

English isn't hard to learn, it's hard to pronounce. That's a HUGE difference. Yeah, I can easily read the hiragana(I think that's what it's called) without having studied Japanese with almost 100% correct pronunciation, but learning EVERYTHING else is the hard part, the vocabulary is insane. English is pretty much simple, simpler than virtually every other language on the planet. The "complexity" gained from being influenced by several cultures really boils down to having a lot of synonyms. The grammar is about as simple as it gets too

[@Icetea-2000]

Wdym? Leicester being Lester makes total sense!

[@ignacioperez5479]

English is not rules with some exceptions, is almost all exceptions with some try of rules

[@miamha]

English is three languages in a trenchcoat trying to show off it’s fluency in classical greek, latin, celtic, and norse

[@MW_Asura]

Old English and French*

[@hi_hello10]

and any other language you can think of

[@ghaida_alt5082]

Same with Indonesian. Read words from italian and japanese also easy most of time because "phonetic".

[@LibrocreatesL2]

im studying both of them and yeah, it's really something coming from a language that it's literally decided with dice rolls (english) to languages that have pretty much always a set pronunciation (aside from kanji obv)

[@Joromonni]

Finnish also belongs to this group of languages that have similar phonetics/pronunciation to Japanese.

[@ezed8748]

You would have an easy time with spanish too

[@julien827]

truly almost all 1000s of languages are part of this group, english is an exception not the norm, english is like the only examle of native speaker having has much trouble figuring the pronounciation of a word they dont know as non native

[@tovarishchfeixiao]

@@Joromonni The whole Uralic family has easy time with pronunciation and the logic of grammar.

[@MisterL777]

My teacher said vocabulary is always the most important Because if you don't know grammar it's easier to pick up from context And if you grammar is not quite correct it's often still understandable (you can get the point across) But if you lack the vocabulary... not many options As for Japanese grammar, while it's not too complicated on paper (if you omit keigo which is a special can of worms), the Japanese have this terrrible habit of saying things in the most indirect way possible, and it's even worse in formal japanese, which leads to sentences with way too many negations (2 is very common, but 3 is nothing exceptional) in which you can get lost easily (especially when the subject is omitted which is extremely common). In those cases, the simplicity of grammar (lack of articles, conjugation, and even subject) is actually working against you (if you're listening/reading). It's like a big creature with no skeleton, and you don't know what is head and what is tail.

[@Paveway-chan]

The example I love to use in situations like this is the english r sound. It's guttural and sounds a little like "uhr" almost, whereas in japanese it's a clearer rolling "rrr". Many latin languages (maybe not french) and some germanic ones (swedish and german does, dutch and danish doesn't) does it the japanese way, so it's super easy. Japanese being hard to pronounce is an anglo skill issue, funnily enough

[@tovarishchfeixiao]

I don't know what people have you heard before, but Japanese "r" isn't a rolling one. Otherwise it wouldn't be easily merged with "L".

[@laurajanco2i]

​@@tovarishchfeixiaoThat's the same r italians use. The problem is people describe latin r as a rolled one when it's not the case at all. When we say r we roll it, but when we say it in a word that doesn't have a double r, it almost disappears because it's light and can be mistaken for an L like the Japanese one. I don't know about Spanish, but Italians don't roll the r in the middle of words. That person is saying that we pronounce the r the same way as Japanese speakers. That's why I never understand when people, especially English speakers, claim to me that latin r and Japanese r are different, because in reality they aren't. Foreigners pay too much attention to steretypes and don't really know what the meaning of rolled r is for us.

[@adrianaslund8605]

Swedish pronunciation is also very close. When Pekora watched Midsommar she pronounced "Hälsingland" perfectly. The I,A and E sounds are pretty identical.

[@GoodOleDFT]

Native Portuguese speaker here, and can confirm. Japanese has straightforward phonetics that mixes with Latin languages pretty well. Français notwithstanding. Sounds like Raora is practicing the spoken part of the language and using romaji, which is fair. The claim that you can learn the grammar in 3 days, though, is either cap, a gross exaggeration, or a miscommunication, because 3 days would at most give you a superficial idea of how the elements are assembled to create logical phrases. I'm 11 months into my own tutorship and I'm still _barely_ getting into multi-clause sentences. Haven't even officially seen the connective element「みたぃな」 (AFAIK the rough equivalent to the "que" conjunction in Portuguese) yet; I'm still polishing up on the て-form of verbs and the various uses of the particle 「から」.

[@majesticfox]

That's an exaggeration for sure. But it really stress how easy it is to learn the grammar compared to actually using it on the word (the vocab). It's not easy to notice/hear what word was said when it has been transformed to other form. You'll straight up need to experience it multiple times to get it wired to a word/meaning. That's IMO what it means when she said vocab are more important.

[@Pakigol]

Putting the kanjis aside, once you mastered the て form on 5-dan verbs you're pretty much done. Then you just need practicing.

[@baroncicala1934]

Bro doesn't know what's an hyperbole is.

[@Tojeaux_]

its probably closer to "you can learn the grammar in 3 days to a good enough level for most foreigners"

[@GoodOleDFT]

@@baroncicala1934 Hyperbole = gross exaggeration for the sake of comedy. Still an exaggeration. Ball's on your court now.

[@IronLotus15]

I will agree with Japanese grammar being conceptually simple! It's really similar to postfix/polish notation from CS. The devil is in the details and whatever, but so-called "SOV" need not be this big scary monster. It just happens to be that way when you have such a strongly head final language.

[@Ph34rNoB33r]

Lucky for us Germans, we have SOV as well (though we use V2, verb comes second, for independent clauses, so you might not realise initially).

[@ZeptoZeno]

Not only Italy, but also Germany, France, Spain, and almost all other European countries. The English language is the weird one here pronouncing "e" as most other languages would pronounce "i".

[@Ph34rNoB33r]

As a German, I mostly agree, at least when it comes to the vowels. Some consonants can be hard depending on spoken dialect, not all dialects care that much about voiced/unvoiced S and Sh sounds.

[@zafiroshin]

But not always. For some reason english speakers would pronounce a word like "Versace" reading the first "e" with the "e" sound but the last "e" as the "i" sound. It doesn't make any sense.

[@laurajanco2i]

​@@zafiroshinTHAT😂

[@DioBrando-qr6ye]

"Martin Scorsesi" 😂

[@Ekkinox]

@@zafiroshin Because it's an italian brand, so they try to emulate how italians pronounce it, but do a very poor job at it

[@cirmothe9]

Good for raora. She'll be perapera nihongo jouzu by next FES.

[@tcl78]

Yeah, Italian pronunciation of letters and Japanese are very similar. The hard part is that the words are not even close. English and Italian words are similar, but have different pronunciation, while Japanese and Italian words are completely different from one another, yet the letters are pronounced in a similar way (beside few exceptions). The writing system is also completely different, which makes things harder because you can't read the words either without first knowing at least hiragana and katakana.

[@tovarishchfeixiao]

Well, english has lots of latin and french loanwords. That's why.

[@V-Echoes]

I studied 2 years actively by myself and I can confirm everything Raora said. I started with the goal to understand japanese people and then read but I knew a few japanese vtuber fans along the way and I started talking it too! And if you really love the language, talking is so satisfying because you see the results of your hard work. Vocabulary is essential in e very language but with japanese is even more cause the Grammar is so simple that if know a lot of words and verbs you can understands 80% of the sentence. On the other hand if you want to read you have to study at least hiragana and katakana cause some texts have furigana for kanjis, you can't escape that 😂

[@V-Echoes]

Also, I'm Italian too, and pronunciation is literally the same as Italian. Super easy

[@KOMADO_games]

@@V-Echoesまずたったの2年間でこんなに言語学習が進むという事に脱帽ですわ... 正に努力の賜物🫡

[@V-Echoes]

@@KOMADO_games ありがとうございます！

[@Kramoule]

Because of the phonetic proximity of the 2 languages, I sometime mix up small words when I speak italian like "however" (which is "però") and the japanese word "でも" ("demo"), which has more or less the same meaning (both are not my mother tongue, which is the main reason). Eg: "Mi piace molto guardare Raora streams _demo_ vorrei che mi lascia sniffa sniffa"

[@manupaz]

Italian speaker here (who's also trying to learn Japanese). I have to say that what you're saying is absolutely true, lol! By the way, I can correct you a couple of mistakes you've made in your Italian sentence so that you can learn from this! Firstly, you can say "le live di Raora" (literally "the livestreamings of Raora"). Then, you must use congiuntivo when you start a phrase with "vorrei" (so when you wish for something): "vorrei che mi lasciaSSE (fare) sniffa sniffa." (if you add "fare" the phrase sounds much more natural, because "sniffa sniffa" isn't a verb in Italian, so you can use "fare" in the sense of "fare qualcosa", to do something.)

[@Kramoule]

@@manupaz Glad to know I'm not alone haha And thank you for pointing out the mistakes, I appreciate it :) I did learn about the congiuntivo rule but somehow I often forget it if I don't focus.

[@Handleoriginal12]

English is generally a pretty hard language because it isn’t derivative of one or even just a few languages. It’s kind of a mutt/bastard of a language where it pulls from a lot of other languages

[@tovarishchfeixiao]

Every language in the world takes words from everywhere. The difference is that english didn't really change those loanwords to fit their language.

[@RollerCoasterAG]

totally get what she was trying to say here, in italian we read things as we write them, exeption made for some words with the 'gn' or 'gl' sounds, it's always basically the same. The only problems we italians mostly have with japanese is the accent, like where to put the accent in a word (or in a full sentence because sometimes japanese chages pronunciation based on the full sentece). Like we will probably pronounce harUka instead of hAruka or sasUke instead of sAsuke, japanese tend to stress on the first part of the word while we put the accent in the last part That's why in anime dubbed in the 80s, 90s and most of the ones of the 2010s, most of the japanese names are pronunciated wrongly by the italian voice actors of the time (it's totally normal, japanese culture wasnt so mainstream in italy at the time), but recently they pay more attention to that factor!

[@fuomag9]

As an italian, can confirm

[@windthugness]

Same thing with Spanish.

[@Berstich]

Japanese also has much more basic speech patterns.

[@towadark-fx2yt]

I speak Spanish, and it makes learning Japanese pronunciation incredibly easy since they basically have the same sounds. This goes for every Romance language, except French I think.

[@EchoRosen]

It’s a bit harder for French speakers as we have a different R sound but it’s still easier than for English speakers imo

[@towadark-fx2yt]

@@EchoRosen yeah definitely easier for a French speaker than an English speaker

[@bun4501]

Japanese is easy.... Until you meet Hajime and elite Miko.

[@hoshi6539]

as an italian i agree with all she said. hardest part by far is vocabulary

[@rumotu]

As someone who speaks 5 languages, Italian and English included, I can agree that first you need to speak with people. You learn to write/read afterwards. Like when I came to Italy I would study math and chemistry specifically because I didn't know how to write in Italian. And I learnt to write when I had to write my graduation thesis.

[@francesco8000]

To be fair English grammar is also piss easy compared to Italian, the difference is that (as she mentions) it's really a pain to understand how you are supposed to read words. The fact that vowels pronunciacion changes depending from the word (with no real consistency) was such a pain to learn...

[@gaetanoisgro6710]

Io sono sicurissimo che se metti un siciliano e un giapponese nella stanza e li fai parlare l'uno con l'altro senza contesto pensano di star parlando la atessa lingua ma con un dialetto di un altro paese. Tipo: "ARIGATOU!" "CHI SPACCHIU VÒ?" Ok vado a dormire è tardi...

[@rafaelcalmon2858]

Both portuguese and spanish also pronounce many words the same way as japanese. Makes it a lot easier to remember anime characters' names :D Kanji is still just as hard though. Not because they are hard to pronounce, but because there are so many and each can be read in many different ways depending on the context.

[@fisiax5460]

As an Italian that is fluent in English and is learning Japanese, i can confirm with certainty all she said

[@AchilleRagucci]

I can confirm, italian and japanese have almost the same grammatical structure. I'm italian, and when I tried duolingo to learn japanese, it was the easiest thing I've tried; unlike english that took me almost 7 years to properly learn.

[@PewPew_McPewster]

English can be a difficult language. Though thorough thoughts throughout ease tough thoroughfare, sometimes it feels like your tongue is through a trough.

[@milkelangelo1]

Yea the reason such similar sounds are present among languages so different is because they use what linguists call pure vowels: that is the simplest breakdown of any vowel sound, which english, german and other languages sort of lack. There are 12 of them but they can be fundamentally be broken down into 5, a like *a*ttack, e like *e*mperor, i like *i*ntricate, o like *o*pportunity and u like s*u*per. The remaining 7 are like different intonations basically. These are kind of "natural sounds", so they are more common. P.S. this vid is pretty damn relatable

[@BaeBibooAreMyBaby]

日本語は母音が５つしかなく、多少発音が間違っていても意味が伝わるんだよね。英語は母音が15個あるから、日本語よりも発音に厳しい。より正確に発音しないと伝わらない。

[@RockLeeBl]

True, it's the same for spanish people. Which is funny because for japanese people is difficult to pronounce some letter like "L" or "RR" as they don't have those sounds in their sylabaries.

[@laurajanco2i]

Italian singular "R" sounds really similar to the Japanese one, but the double R would be hard to learn for anyone who isn't from a latin country of origin.

[@R3_dacted0]

I think she's right for the most part. But I will say that one of the hardest things about learning Japanese is there seems to be a lot of specific memorization in things like counters or specific seemingly arbitrary rule exceptions depending on context that you just have to know about.

[@ZHibiki]

I don't know about grammar. It really becomes fucking weird once you want to have multiple adjectives doing different actions...

[@goldDzNut]

Malaysian here, is someone from Malaysian or Indonesian speaker who can speak Japanese can tell me if it's hard if I want to start learning Japanese. Malaysia and Indonesia is neighbors and we are like British and American share the same language/bahasa.

[@goldDzNut]

Reminder: pls don't start claiming where bahasa originates from bcs I don't care. . If you are not aware, we tend to argue about everything. You name it, culture, history, economy, gaming tournaments and even food. Not all of Indo & Malay like that. Just don't take us seriously, we are like your quarrel brothers/sisters, but when outsiders bully one of us, we quickly protect each other. Don't believe me? Ask Malaysian or Indonesian about the 'rendang crispy' incident

[@nicholascosakavega1456]

​@goldDzNut don't worry bro. Personally i don't have any desire to argue about the origins of the language and culture things. It is something from thousands of years ago anyway, we can never know the absolute truth. To answer your question, it is easy to read the characters and pronounce it with some learning. But, like other comments said, the vocab is something you need constant exposure to, and i recommend watching translated jp clips or the sort. It'll eventually stick

[@goldDzNut]

​​@@nicholascosakavega1456Yeah I don't care about who my ancestors are when I'm dead, there's nothing to be proud of. I'm just learning history bcs I need to graduate ASAP. If my death is due tomorrow, I don't think all the history I learned will keep me safe. . Thank you, I'm really interested in learning other languages. I've been reading Japanese dubs for more than 10 years now. So sometimes there's a scene where I don't even have to read the subtitles to comprehend what the characters say. But that's the far I can go in Japanese. That's when I realized my limit. I watched some videos of foreigners telling how they learned japanese by only watching anime, but I guess not all of them are fast learners.

[@namvo3013]

At this rate she will capable of collabing with jp side next year

[@GoodOleDFT]

If she pushes the envelope, that is for sure. Just 4 years of practice and she's already fluent-advanced in English, so she clearly has a knack for language.

[@K3Vz0]

Swedish is also pretty similar becuase it also uses pitch accent very frequently

[@ManuelRiccobono]

Every languadge (execpt english) has fixed pronunciation. It is just that english pronunciation is decided by trowing random dices.

[@alvindisappeared3411]

Raora's pronunciation of "focus" had proved how hard English pronunciation is (in other stream)

[@LunaVenator]

English is the different one, a lot of languages don't change the pronunciation like they do

[@MrCantStopTheRobot]

"[INSERT LANGUAGE] is such a simple language..." _Ahh such a grand and intoxicating innocence..._

[@jondoe589]

Come Raora as friend or foe, come and cry while trying to learn german pronouns alongside me

[@T33K3SS3LCH3N]

She's not wrong for her personal goals. If you are a speech-centric learner and your goal is to speak with people, then Japanese really has many parts that are very easy. Many EN and ID Hololive members had stellar improvements and can realistically live in Japan without much trouble (as long as they get help with official paperwork). If you want full fluency with reading and writing (beyond what you need for things like shopping and travelling), then it's a whole different beast.

[@MrCantStopTheRobot]

@@T33K3SS3LCH3N eh by that standard, every language is easy. Combined with gesticulating, nodding and shaking your head? Universal translator.

[@XSoul93]

I'm having way less problem in learning japanese than english french and german. So yes, for certain countries japanese IS such a simple language.

[@MrCantStopTheRobot]

@@XSoul93 I noticed Korean kids have a way easier time.

[@yinyangphoenix7785]

When encountering new words of a foreign language I always say: When in doubt, never use the English pronunciation because usually that is the furthest you can get from most other languages' pronuniciations! While the German pronunciation is especially perfect for languages such as Japanese. And even if you pronounce things wrong in other languages, it sounds much more correct with a German pronunciation than the English one ever could be... 😅

[@ssilentmedia]

same here for romanians but i guess that might be because it's a latin language and pretty close to italian

[@HelloWorld-up4of]

MA IN CHE PARTE DI KZbin SONO FINITO. PERCHè!

[@jlrebor2626]

as a spanish is kinda there, i learnt english before and i think it made it way easier for me to be able to speak jp, they kinda have the same structure that the sentence are backwards, i learnt from anime tbh so not like its top notch, but i learnt english mostly form vids so it aint top either lol

[@paodebatata6606]

Happen japanese were so simple theyd be able to afford a keyboard that doesnt operate like hell

[@shibotto]

Confermo. We don't get the pronunciation perfectly spot on, but at least we don't sound like Super Mario.

[@erisneedsoloyolo]

I studied japanese One year at school and Always Say that japanese Is way more Easy than english. The only hard thing Is the writing.

[@Master_3530]

Sometimes you can find out you've been saying an English word wrong for 15 years, like iron

[@TheTexasDice]

English isn't easier than Japanese, but for pronouncing words the same thing is true for German. A lot of Japanese pronounciations are very intuitive for German natives. The first example I can think of is the word Samurai.

[@julien827]

english is the only language who cripples human into thinking learning pronounciations is hard

[@MW_Asura]

English is easier than Japanese

[@tovarishchfeixiao]

@@MW_Asura Nope. Japanese is easier than english.

[@das_III]

English is a language of make believe were half the letter in a word are just artistic decorations

[@lat.s]

For Japanese people, learning Italian pronouncements is easy (without the 'gli' sound, and some may find it hard to trill). I think vice versa.

[@laurajanco2i]

Yes😂 "gli" and "gn" are probably hard to say, but it's fine even if you don't get it right, because we'll still understand what you want to say and it doesn't change the meaning of the word even if you say it your way. Learning hiragana as an Italian was really easy. We don't have "つ" in our alphabet, but we associate that with a double "zz" sound plus "u" so it's really easy to say. The "ふ" can also be a bit controversial because of the "hu" and "fu" sounds. We basically mix those two to create the right sound.

[@bersek-]

This also applies for Spanish

[@yoman8027]

Being Spanish I can confirm that Japanese is VERY easy to pronounce.

[@Frank_Art]

I'm Spanish, I can understand what she refers to, I already have a decent English, but at the start there is this simple things that is like, why? The most basic example, all words that end with "le" are pronounced like "el", as a child you're still learning your own language, so one doesn't think about it

[@qingyue388]

I thought she was struggling English but she sounds pretty fluent to me

[@TeroKoskinen-xy2zz]

Japanese vs Finnish vs English Tori = Bird Tori = Lintu Tori = Market Tori = Ichiba

[@commenter4898]

Japanese - Katō Shikō, Taka Kumi = 加藤志功 高久美 = two random names Finnish - Katosiko takakumi = did your rear wheel disappear?

[@Blockschrott]

you read romanji transcription like you read latin, what makes it phonetically easy for most latin based languages, the problem with the grammar is that it is the other way around most of the time (as far as I know)

[@EkatariZeen]

The grammar is similar to English, I think it should be easy to learn for someone with knowledge of English and a Latin-derived language. I tried to study it and didn't find difficulty in that aspect but my short-term memory is literally crippled so I can't retain 80% of anything so I desisted lol

[@Blockschrott]

@@EkatariZeen one thing I know is the sentence "I read a book of a friend of mine." would be in Japanese grammar: "I wa I no Friend no Book o reading" what is basically the polar opposite of the english version

[@redrovaeden5143]

Makes sense that Japanese would be easier. Words are more phonetically consistent.

[@Pakigol]

Same when you're french, except the fact that the h is silent in french, it's basically the same pronunciation. The downside is that it made me really lazy when it comes to other languages, and english which used to be my second language is now my third language falling behind japanese because I don't feel like making any effort on the pronunciation anymore. Now I just speak english with a japanese pronunciation.

[@TheZapan99]

Phonetically, Japanese has the exact same set of vowels as Spanish.

[@Tengokujin]

Well, yeah, there's a reason it's called "romanisation"

[@Agent759pwnr]

As a native English speaker currently learning Japanese, can confirm Japanese is easier to learn. No guesswork on how words are pronounced at all. Also, 90% of katakana words are either their english equivalent or repurposed english words (the JP word for Club is Circle, Lights Display is Illumination).

[@daquann1473]

What are you on about? The difficulty of a language is only relative to the languages you already know. If you speak a european language Japanese and Chinese are one of the hardest languages to learn. If you konw Chinese, Japanese could be one of the easiest languages to learn.

[@tovarishchfeixiao]

Nope that claim about katakana is as false as it just can be.

[@tovarishchfeixiao]

@@daquann1473 Why would Chinese make it easier? The only advantage is that you already know some kanji or have experience with learning it, but in most cases meanings and how the kanji looks like are very different from Chinese. Also, i hope you meant Indo-European when you said "european", because there are languages like as Finnish, Sámi, Estonian, Hungarian which is physically european and knowing any of them makes Japanese pronunciation/grammar easy.

[@Jhud69]

Basically, Japanese is genuinely simpler than English. Not that English is hard (no ESL will ever tell you that English is hard lol basically only natives say that to cope) BUT the pronunciation can indeed be annoying, while Japanese pronunciation is pretty easy & pretty much most languages find it intuitive when English speakers usually fumble it. The grammar is also super easy. There are hard parts of grammar of course (like keigo... nobody likes learning keigo) & all the homophones, not to mention kanji, but it's genuinely one of the easiest languages I ever tried to learn. It still takes a good few years before you can be confident in it though, but it's not *hard*. But then again, I'm Polish which is considered one of the hardest languages to learn, so maybe I just have a headstart lol

[@tovarishchfeixiao]

Actually, ESL people will also tell that english is hard. It just depends on the person's native language. (mostly germanic and romance speakers claim english to be easy, and some other branches of the same family) And keigo isn't that bad. If you already have politeness levels in your own language, that is. Plus kanji only hard if you want to learn it as if it were an alphabet, when the optimal is to learn them as vocabulary (because kanji is basically just vocab)-

[@chrisangflo6102]

A Japanese, an Italian and a German does a stream together...........Raora,Cecilia and uhhhhhh????

[@Jerry694111]

Except: Japanese "gi" = Italian "ghi" Japanese "chi" = Italian "ci" Italian "chi" = Japanese "ki" Italian "gi" = Japanese "ji" Japanese "shi" = Italian "sci"

[@francesco8000]

To be fair, while the use of K is insanely rare in italian (i honestly struggle to remember a single word with it right now) if an italian sees "Ki" he will read it "chi" naturally. The first 2 are the only one that i think may be tricky at first since a significant amount of time in elementary school is spent teaching how H change the pronunciacion (ci\chi and gi\ghi for example).

[@julien827]

meanwhile in french schools: Hi guys see this cool letter H? it never makes a sound in any context beside "ch" and showing you which words shouldnt have liason despite all of us incorrectly making the liason anyway

[@gr3y916]

@@francesco8000 k x j y w are not on the Italian alphabet we use them when we adopt other language words like 'Karaoke' 'xilophone' 'judo' 'whisky' 'yogurt'

[@MW_Asura]

@@gr3y916 K, Y and W are not in the alphabet of any of the Romance languages, except French which has Y

[@Scorpio3002]

Italian is very easy to pronounce once you know the rules, except for the "O" vowel. You can never really tell whether an O should be pronounced "boat" or "bought". Fiendishly tricky for an opera singer.

[@nepas5525]

If you open a German textbook for Japanese, you will find that "it can be read and pronounced as it is" (unlike English). French textbooks say, "Don't trust the written word; it's even worse than English." But that is the first word, and the second one says: "French pronunciation actually has rules (unlike English). But that is a bit difficult for the Japanese." Is it because the English are empiricists and the Continentals are rationalists?

[@Alexfrfr999]

Plot twist: is not

[@djmhyde]

i'm not native english speaker, the thing i hate the most is how words with the same or close writing have completely different pronounces, like "read" and "bread" only one letter apart and completely different pronunciation, or the word "lead", without context is hard to know if i'm talking about the metal or the verb for leadership........ bu the worst, especially for non natives like me is the swearing words that have almost the same pronunciation as regular words, like "beach" and "bitch" or "sheet" and "shit", more than once i was talking about beach with somebody and the person was looking in a funny way at me...

[@ethervagabond]

I know what she means, because English has no logical sense about how it spells words. The letters don't have strict rules about how they're pronounced. In most languages, a letter makes a certain sound and that's it. In English not only can the letters around it change how it sounds, but also it doesn't even have the same rules every time, like how the "ere" in "here" and "there" are pronounced differently.

[@s1os2s3]

I promise you Raora. You have a little "cousin" that pronounces the words as they are except for: ghe, ghi, che, chi, ce ci, ge, gi. You pronounce ghe, ghi, che, chi as you would pronounce ge, gi, ce and ci in latin respectively. You also pronounce ce,ci, ge, gi in some of your words Luigi, Ciao. Anyway, you're learning japanese not this language. All I am saying is that....italian has a little cousin that any italian would find it easy to learn.

[@kamo7293]

one thing that duolingo fails at, and was shown in a "japanese with yuta" video, is pitch accent mistakes. the word was kiru, to wear, but it used the incorrect pitch accent which made yuta answer incorrectly. and there are many other such problems. in German, there are two main accents used, one where ch in words like ich (I in English) is pronounced like kh type sound and the other where it's pronounced like sh. when listening to the audio samples in each question, they would change the pronunciation back and forth. Which is a horrible way to learn how to speak the language

[@ZeptoZeno]

Duolingo fails at literally everything. It's an app for people that want to pretend to be knowledgable at languages without actually doing anything.

[@Scorpio3002]

That first pronunciation of "ich" doesn't really exist in English; you're basically shaping your mouth into an "eee" while letting out an "H" sound (the IPA symbolfor it is a Ç). That sound can also be difficult for an untrained ear to differentiate from a "shh".

[@N40AX]

Spanish speaker here, or languages are siblings from the same parents and can confirm it's easier to me to get to provide correctly Japanese. Maybe Scottish accent is phonetically closer to Spanish speakers' phonemes

[@OrangIndonesiaAsli]

Yeah, Japanese pronunciation is easy.

[@furions305]

I'm not into hololive but I have a question: as an Italian why did she choose emigrate to Japan? I know that we are open minded like a clam(as a people) but there are some vtuber with great personalities like lallawaffle and in general an it group of hololive could be a good idea

[@baroncicala1934]

She has a university degree in design and digital animation and she had the opportunity to go in the best country when it comes to these kind of professional skills while in Italy animation is basicallu DEAD. Of course she took the opportunity on the fly..

[@ZeptoZeno]

She's working for a Japanese company and literally every aspect of her life is influenced by Japanese culture.

[@furions305]

@@baroncicala1934 grazie mille per la risposta, purtroppo sto paese è bello fuori ma marcio dentro, non pensavo che il mondo dei vtuber fosse così tanto complesso

[@ViniuauCP]

@@furions305 Vtubing is a whole world, that's why we often call it a "rabbit hole". As Hololive is operated by a japanese company (Cover Corp.) some members have decided to move to Japan after joining, which makes life a lot easier for things like recordings, dance lessons, rehearsal, and meetings. Now, Hololive probably won't have any other branch for a while, as their main focus now is to support the existing talents. Aside from Raora, her generation also features a british and a german, but they're all still under the English umbrella, as this is where most of their audience comes from.

[@peinperversus]

Except it is not

[@SkepticalCaveman]

English is actually a awful fit as a world language. No useful spelling rules and archaic pronounciation. Spanish, for example, would be so much easier to learn.

[@julien827]

just make everyone learn latin, the scientific already agreed on it being the correct international language

[@SkepticalCaveman]

@@julien827 sure, but the vocabulary is limited. Spanish is a living language.

[@SilverMystes1]

Japanese is extremely hard. Three writing systems, formal and informal speech. English was easy because we share the same alphabet system with my native language.

[@ZeptoZeno]

Japanese is really not that hard. It's just Kanji that takes a long time. Everything else is just like any other language.

[@Boyzby]

English kinda has 4 writing systems: upper and lower case print, and upper and lower case cursive. Just saying, that's not why English is hard.

[@kebien6020]

Also remember the gal-emoji writing system, and the "kuuki" system which is also kinda hard to read. Oh and the "names" writing system which almost entirely unrelated to Kanji. Especially with the kira-kira names.

[@tovarishchfeixiao]

@@ZeptoZeno But in case of kanji you literally learn vocabulary, which obviously won1t be a single afternoon's work.

[@Le_Grand_Lui]

I learned English through courses, I suffered with grammar and pronunciation. But, hey, it's better than learn French.

[@XSoul93]

The only good thing i got from learning french in school for 8 years was to forget everything in a couple of years. I'm proudly french free

[@commentman192]

Personally I love kanji, I don't understand the hate behind it. If you can remember 151+ Pokémon you can remember a few kanji. What I hate that people talk less about is pitch accent. That and when to use or omit particles to sound natural. If you don't care at all about sounding natural or fluent in anyway I would agree that Japanese is easier than English. But If you want to work towards sounding native then I would say English is easier. Of course you don't need to have perfect pitch accent or particle usage to be understood but it's just a pain. Unlike what some people will try to make you believe, if you accidently say 橋(Hashi-Bridge) instead of 箸(Hashi-Chopsticks) no the waitress isn't going to laugh you to death or go outside and get you a bridge.

[@akiradkcn]

Most ppl can't really remember the 151 mons all at once, you ate thinking of old school pokémon fans which is a whole different story It takes time to decorate the kanjis just as it takes to decorate pokémon, the ppl you hear complaining are just new to the language

[@111ram1]

The problem with kanji is less the amount of characters, which is still a lot, but more how Japanese uses them, in particular the numerous pronunciations a single character can get particularly with On'yomi. Sometimes a character is meant to be the standard and simple Japanese word, sometimes it's pronounced completely differently because it's a loanword from Chinese, and sometimes it's different again because it was borrowed from Chinese at a different time.

[@commentman192]

@@111ram1 Yeah that's true, kanji having different pronunciations is a bit of a pain sometimes. I just personally find kanji to be less of a pain than pitch accent. Although I will admit that's mostly just because the way I like learning things.

[@tovarishchfeixiao]

@@111ram1 Well, kanji is literally just words/vocabulary. So obviously there will be a huge number of them. Kaji isn't an alphabet.

[@HarpoonSpear]

weird, coz i find japanese grammar is pretty hard to learn (probably the hardest aspect of japanese language) but i agree that the pronunciation is very easy

[@DiggitySlice]

English isn't supposed to be simple, it's supposed to be versatile. We have a word for just about everything, and every possible combination of things. It's the swiss army knife of languages

[@volbla]

So do all languages...

[@GoodOleDFT]

@@DiggitySlice Guess what: every language is like that.

[@vincemarenger7122]

Respectfully, I think you're monolingual

[@tezstlez3225]

@@GoodOleDFTJapanese does not have a word for everything. Not even close. Such that their language is filled with loan words from other languages and pseudo anglicisms to try and fix that issue. But even then, they are extremely lacking. Hence they speak in a very indirect and roundabout way; it's because their language needs that. They lack the words to properly communicate a lot of things. Hence it is all carried by context; you have to deduce and guess what is being talked about, and what they mean to say.

[@comradeofthebalance3147]

Languages’ only purposes is to communicate. They do not have any inherent purpose other than that. Your comment downgrades the history of the English language

[@LuizFelipe-lk1hs]

Damn... Raora might be being lied to by her teacher lmao there's no way you can learn Japanese grammar in 3 days, also phonetics aren't that similar considering how Japanese also have tones, those are easy and you can learn them in three days though. So maybe Raora mistook what her teacher said? Also the whole sentence structure SOV isn't "easy" for people that are used to SVO, like Italians are.

[@Nthdegree2]

Yea like im learning particles right now as a self study and...its alot honestly. It'd be easier if each particle had 1 specific usage in a sentence but that isnt entirely the case. Its always contexts and knowing which particle to use in a specific sentence, theres some that overlap despite being different. I understand the sentence structure tho as an english speaker, when learning a language, you kinda have to translate that language into your own. When i hear japanese people talk in the SOV structure, i register that in my brain and form it into a SVO structure. Obviously, you dont wanna respond in a SVO way but yea.

[@freak103]

Japanese is easy to people who don't have to master it. Thanks to the particle system, the order of words don't matter much. You can make yourselves understood if you choose SVO, OSV,VSO,SOV whatever

[@juwx]

italians use sov too, especially in the south

[@francesco9281]

tbh i agree with her, i'm currently studying japanese at university, grammar and pronunciation (im italian aswell) are the easiest part, particles can be difficult to use correctly but that can be fixed with just experience. kanji and vocabulary on the other hand are tough. i feel like japanese is very consistent, most european languages have strange rules or irregular forms that throw off new learners

[@XBrain130]

"phonetics aren't that similar considering how Japanese also have tones" Italian is a pretty tonal language, it technically has an accent on every word even if its not usually marked out, Japanese is flat in comparison lol

[@ADrug]

Its even more true for Russian (and probably all other slavic languages). Russian is just straight up phonetically superior (in terms of complexity) to Japanese. So for Russian speaker talking in Japanese is easy (the only inconvenience is the inflections), but for Japanese speakers Russian is as difficult as for everyone else. Add on top of that the fact that like most European languages, Russian reads as it is written (minus the emphasis, it's super important for Russian). The only language that I can think of that is more OP to be native in when it comes to learning Japanese is Chinese, just because of the alphabet.

[@julien827]

honestly id rather learn both chinese and japanese at the same time than learning wtf is going on with the russian cursive, and trying to learn the cyrillic alphabet as a latin alphabet user (and i assume vice versa) feel so cursed and hard cause of the letters that are the same as ours but with different pronounciation. the unique letters not from latin all look cool as fuck though

[@ADrug]

@@julien827 yep, Russian cursive is cursed af, although I personally seen English texts that look not too dissimilar. But Latin alphabet is chill. Yes, it does sometimes make us (me at least) read words in a weird mix of Russian and English spelling, but overall it's not that bad. Although yeah, maybe for English speakers it is a mind fuck😅. What really is a giant fuck you in both directions is pronunciation. Even beginning to describe the letters Ы, Ь and Ъ is an Olympic level mental and facial gymnastics. But also it's a 95% guarantee that a Russian, that correctly and unconsciously pronounces the "th" sound in all its variations, has a dual citizenship, and it's another 95% guarantee that one of the citizenships is in an English speaking country if he nails all the vowels as well. I personally blame the English for everything. Most continental European languages translate into one another reasonably well, most of those languages also translate reasonably well into Japanese and a couple of other languages from other continents/cultures. We just had to have the ones with a mush for language go and colonize most of the universe.

[@Nokiya]

​@@julien827Cyrillic is super simple (aside from some retarded exceptions like the Russian b thing). A handful of the same letters (H,y...) being pronounced differently is a simple task to overcome.

[@jaydee2072]

What nonsense. Japanese grammer is easier, yet English is the most spoken language worldwide. That stat speaks for itself. Not knocking the language, but Japanese leaves a lot to culture that their language doesnt cover. It's almost like it isn't meant to be spoken by anyone else.

[@julien827]

its just a combination of the biggest economy being the us and the british colonizing the entire fucking globe making sure everyone knows it it has nothing to do about the language itself but rather the influence of the country who happens to speaks it, japanese being tradionally more secluded it isnt surprising their language hasnt bloomed in other countries before that the common tongue in europe was french (literally lingua franca), and before that latin english isnt gonna be eternal either when china gets its turn on the wheel