Tag Archives: languages

Why Can’t Japanese People Say L’s or R’s?

Posted on September 10, 2012 by Ryo

Most Westerners who come into contact with Japanese people first wonder why they can’t seem to pronounce R’s and L’s. Those who are around them more often tend to observe that they actually can pronounce them, but they always mix them up. Neither of these assumptions are totally accurate. In order to understand the confusion with these English letters, we have to know a bit about the Japanese language.

This is a preview of Why Can’t Japanese People Say L’s or R’s?. Read the full post (1081 words, 1 image, estimated 4:19 mins reading time)

Posted in Culture, Japan | Tagged education, languages, linguistics | 8 Comments

Are the ESL Programs in Japan Doing More Harm than Good?

Posted on June 28, 2012 by Ryo

When you see the same mistakes being made over and over by different people – which you will inevitably see in the English education system in Japan – then the problem is clear. It’s not an individual thing; it’s a systematic issue. Students are all somehow being taught the same mistakes, and/or not enough people are fixing them. There are hundreds if not thousands of small businesses and little organizations (especially in Tokyo) that are trying to beat the bad habits out of students, but you will be surprised at how far these mistakes reach. I didn’t have to look hard to find examples of this in the newspaper.

This is a preview of Are the ESL Programs in Japan Doing More Harm than Good?. Read the full post (1476 words, 9 images, estimated 5:54 mins reading time)

Posted in Culture, Japan, Media, Translations | Tagged advertisements, education, English, japanese language, languages | 5 Comments

Love Plus Imagination – Part 3: Why Visual Novels (and Manga Comics) are More Popular in Japan

Posted on April 10, 2012 by Ryo

“Only a Japanese person would like that…” An ignorant and perhaps subtly racist statement, sure. However, for a different reason, there’s some truth to it when it comes to manga (Japanese comics) or visual novels (a video game genre that entails slow-paced story-telling, lots of reading, and pop-up options that can completely change the course of the game). To be clear, the statement is not true because Japanese people are inherently more inclined to like visual novels; but rather, they are more likely to give such games a chance and overlook issues that most English-speakers/Westerners would not tolerate as easily, because of their culture. The information below will reveal what the English-speaking world is ignorant of in several specific aspects of Japanese popular culture.

This is a preview of Love Plus Imagination – Part 3: Why Visual Novels (and Manga Comics) are More Popular in Japan. Read the full post (1970 words, 2 images, estimated 7:53 mins reading time)

Posted in Activism, Culture, Japan, Psychology, Technology, Video Games | Tagged japanese language, languages | Leave a comment

What Does English Sound Like to Foreigners?

Posted on March 5, 2012 by Ryo

With most of the world vying to learn English, some native English speakers are beginning to believe that English is the most valuable language. When one surrounds themselves around the same language, and only that single language, they stop getting a sense of what it’s like for someone on the outside to learn the language. Below are two fantastic videos that give a sense of what it’s like for foreign people to hear native English speakers – specifically in an American/Canadian accent. For the North American native English speakers, this should help you appreciate the ESL experience.

This is a preview of What Does English Sound Like to Foreigners?. Read the full post (393 words, 1 image, estimated 1:34 mins reading time)

Posted in Aggregators/lists/rankings, Culture | Tagged languages | 1 Comment

Is Japanese the Fastest-Sounding Language?

Posted on October 8, 2011 by Ryo

When you hear a language that you don’t understand, it always sounds like it’s whizzing by you at a million words per minute. People are also generally ignorant of the way they themselves contract colloquialisms and make their natural speech slurred and hurried. This is all natural. But recent research has given some interesting information regarding the speed of several common languages, including which has the most information packed into the fewest amount of syllables, and which language has the most syllables. Where does your language stack up?

This is a preview of Is Japanese the Fastest-Sounding Language?. Read the full post (772 words, 1 image, estimated 3:05 mins reading time)

Posted in Japan, Psychology | Tagged japanese language, languages, linguistics | 2 Comments

TED Gallery: Endangered or Forgotten Languages

Posted on September 24, 2011 by Ryo

Language is a massive part of culture. There’s absolutely no denying it. Anyone who speaks multiple languages that are from cultures that do not generally intertwine (i.e., not places like Pakistan, where they may grow up to speak three or more languages, such as Urdu, Hindi, and English) understand well. But the internet, along with a rapidly increasing desire to communicate with people across the world, is homogenizing us in ways that some say are detrimental to smaller cultures. I decided to make compilations of TED talks among various topics, and I’m going to start with linguicide, the death of a language. We’ll start with one person who is trying to decipher the script of the Indus people; another who has studied many cultures across the globe; and another who believes that we can unite the world under one language, without doing so at the expense of other languages.