atama warui Triglot Senior Member Japan Joined 4702 days ago 594 posts - 985 votes Speaks: German*, English, Japanese
| Message 33 of 37 16 May 2012 at 2:52pm | IP Logged |
Does this make the point invalid in any way, Arekkusu?
I'm also pretty sure that other languages casual versions are harder to understand.
But we were talking about Japanese here, so I only mentioned Japanese - especially since I can judge only from my Japanese studies, my 20 years of English, 5 years of Spanish and 1 year of French.
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Arekkusu Hexaglot Senior Member Canada bit.ly/qc_10_lec Joined 5382 days ago 3971 posts - 7747 votes Speaks: English, French*, GermanC1, Spanish, Japanese, Esperanto Studies: Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Estonian
| Message 34 of 37 16 May 2012 at 3:29pm | IP Logged |
atama warui wrote:
Does this make the point invalid in any way, Arekkusu?
I'm also pretty sure that other languages casual versions are harder to understand.
But we were talking about Japanese here, so I only mentioned Japanese - especially since I can judge only from my Japanese studies, my 20 years of English, 5 years of Spanish and 1 year of French. |
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If all languages are easier to understand when spoken in a higher voice (making women easier to understand) and if all languages' casual speech is harder to understand, then yes, mentioning that for Japanese fails to bring anything new to the argumentation.
Edited by Arekkusu on 16 May 2012 at 3:37pm
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atama warui Triglot Senior Member Japan Joined 4702 days ago 594 posts - 985 votes Speaks: German*, English, Japanese
| Message 35 of 37 16 May 2012 at 11:15pm | IP Logged |
I see. I shall not mention things irrelevant to Arekkusu any further.
Gonna stick to my log in the future.
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IronFist Senior Member United States Joined 6438 days ago 663 posts - 941 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Japanese, Korean
| Message 36 of 37 18 May 2012 at 6:46am | IP Logged |
Arekkusu wrote:
atama warui wrote:
Males speak less clearly than women in Japanese, and less clearly in casual than formal speech. Basically, a
politely speaking woman is the easiest to understand Japanese case, while a casually speaking guy the
hardest. |
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This is true in all languages. A higher pitch voice tends to be easier to understand. It's partly why we
instinctively use a higher pitch when talking to babies, which is a distinctive feature of Motherese. |
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I baby talk dogs in a higher than normal pitched voice, too!
Edited by IronFist on 18 May 2012 at 6:46am
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baskerville Trilingual Triglot Newbie Singapore scribeorigins.com Joined 4247 days ago 39 posts - 43 votes Speaks: English*, Tagalog* Studies: German*, Japanese Studies: Hungarian
| Message 37 of 37 15 June 2013 at 5:57am | IP Logged |
melkior79 wrote:
I know many foreigners who are non-asian, who speak very comfortably in Japanese. They
are fluent. All the stuff about not being accepted does not bother them too much. They
keep hammering away with a positive mind-set. Eventually they make a circle of friends
who accept them. If they meet people who don't like them , they don't focus on those
people.
Like Lucky Charms' post, these people just pushed on and have had a great time talking
in Japanese. I have much to learn from this and need to pluck more courage myself!
I think speaking Japanese is difficult, I make mistakes all the time. On the other
hand, the OP is right to say that the difficulty is over-rated by some.
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I agree with you and Lucky Charms. The right thing to do is to just use the
language and keep on improving at it. While there may be native speakers who look down
on you, you will soon find some who will appreciate your efforts and help you learn
faster. That being said, I wish I can work on my confidence faster :)
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