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[eHalcyon]

This is relevant to language, right?

[2.71828.....]

Since when did relevance matter in this thread?

[Tables]

A new random stuff thread? I noticed we got up to random stuff V in titles, why stop there?

Why indeed?

I think this may be getting out of hand.

This post is discriminatory to those without hands.

Okay DXV's post #10 there is amazing and deserves more than 23 respect.

[Awaclus]

Maybe we are talking past each other.  We are writing on a forum, so writing and reading is required, but I'm talking about speaking out loud -- and German just seems so obviously harder to speak than Japanese.  The way it is written is a visual representation of that when the language is written phonetically -- like when I romanized the Japanese word -- which is what the argument is.  Learning to make the sounds that match their phonetic representations is the thing we are discussing but SP and Awaclus are trying to muddy the waters with kanji.

Sure, it's hard to memorize 1800 or 5000 kanji.  But speaking Japanese is really, really easy.  Memorizing a funny SS might be simple, but speaking German is not.

Romanizing Japanese words isn't comparable to German spellings of German words. You need to compare the IPAs if you want to make that argument, and it's true that you would find that the IPA for German words is more complicated than it is for Japanese, but it's not as complicated as you seem to think.

[ashersky]

I don't speak Japanese, but I do speak German and English, and the idea that an English speaker would have an easier time learning Japanese is ludicrous. English is basically an easier to learn version of German (except in the pronounciation field, English pronounciation makes zero sense).

I don't care how complex German grammar is, the simple fact that you basically know half of the vocabulary already has to make it much easier.

I haven't tried to learn German, but I learned both Japanese and Italian fluently, and the latter was exponentially harder to learn, even though Latin languages are supposed to be easier.

German and English are not Latin they are germanic.

Please read my post again.  I said I learned Japanese and Italian, and the latter was harder despite being Latin.  Nowhere did I tie together either English or German with Latin.

And yet you get the upvotes.

[ashersky]

Maybe we are talking past each other.  We are writing on a forum, so writing and reading is required, but I'm talking about speaking out loud -- and German just seems so obviously harder to speak than Japanese.  The way it is written is a visual representation of that when the language is written phonetically -- like when I romanized the Japanese word -- which is what the argument is.  Learning to make the sounds that match their phonetic representations is the thing we are discussing but SP and Awaclus are trying to muddy the waters with kanji.

Sure, it's hard to memorize 1800 or 5000 kanji.  But speaking Japanese is really, really easy.  Memorizing a funny SS might be simple, but speaking German is not.

Romanizing Japanese words isn't comparable to German spellings of German words. You need to compare the IPAs if you want to make that argument, and it's true that you would find that the IPA for German words is more complicated than it is for Japanese, but it's not as complicated as you seem to think.

So I made an incorrect comparison but had the right conclusion.  You just disagree with the degree.

[Awaclus]

Maybe we are talking past each other.  We are writing on a forum, so writing and reading is required, but I'm talking about speaking out loud -- and German just seems so obviously harder to speak than Japanese.  The way it is written is a visual representation of that when the language is written phonetically -- like when I romanized the Japanese word -- which is what the argument is.  Learning to make the sounds that match their phonetic representations is the thing we are discussing but SP and Awaclus are trying to muddy the waters with kanji.

Sure, it's hard to memorize 1800 or 5000 kanji.  But speaking Japanese is really, really easy.  Memorizing a funny SS might be simple, but speaking German is not.

Romanizing Japanese words isn't comparable to German spellings of German words. You need to compare the IPAs if you want to make that argument, and it's true that you would find that the IPA for German words is more complicated than it is for Japanese, but it's not as complicated as you seem to think.

So I made an incorrect comparison but had the right conclusion.  You just disagree with the degree.

Well, concluding that a language is difficult to pronounce if it's more difficult than Japanese is like concluding that Woodcutter is a complicated Dominion card because it's more complicated than Silver. That way, you'd conclude that Finnish is difficult to pronounce as well, but that would be a very wrong conclusion considering that comparing other languages to Finnish would still be an unfair comparison given how remarkably easy Finnish is.

[ashersky]

I concluded that, to me, German is far harder (to pronounce/learn) than Japanese.  Everyone seems united against me to prove that I am wrong, for some reason.  You don't even know me, but you do know that I found Japanese extremely easy to learn and Italian extremely hard to learn.  I also recently spent time I'm Germany, noting the difficult to pronounce words and phrases everywhere around me.

I don't see why everyone wants to change my opinion, given how short life is.

[Awaclus]

I concluded that, to me, German is far harder (to pronounce/learn) than Japanese.  Everyone seems united against me to prove that I am wrong, for some reason.  You don't even know me, but you do know that I found Japanese extremely easy to learn and Italian extremely hard to learn.  I also recently spent time I'm Germany, noting the difficult to pronounce words and phrases everywhere around me.

I don't see why everyone wants to change my opinion, given how short life is.

Originally you concluded that German is hard to pronounce. Then you concluded that German is a more difficult foreign language than Japanese. Being harder to pronounce than Japanese doesn't mean it's hard, and I'm fairly sure that having to memorize 2000 new characters does make Japanese pretty obviously more difficult to learn as a foreign language than any language that uses the Latin alphabet or another similar writing system.

[blueblimp]

But we can all say Murakami without a problem.

This is a bad example to pick, because an English native speaker is not going to pronounce the Japanese R correctly without practice.

That said, spoken Japanese is indeed among the easiest-to-pronounce languages. It has relatively few sounds and most of them are easy. Too bad that the writing system is one of the hardest in the world.

As far as objective difficulty of learning a language overall for a native English speaker, there's the Foreign Service Institute's ranking.

[enfynet]

I concluded that, to me, German is far harder (to pronounce/learn) than Japanese.  Everyone seems united against me to prove that I am wrong, for some reason.  You don't even know me, but you do know that I found Japanese extremely easy to learn and Italian extremely hard to learn.  I also recently spent time I'm Germany, noting the difficult to pronounce words and phrases everywhere around me.

I don't see why everyone wants to change my opinion, given how short life is.

Would you say Japanese is 90_93% easier than people think?

And that was a cheap way to get +1s, considering how short life is.

[ashersky]

I concluded that, to me, German is far harder (to pronounce/learn) than Japanese.  Everyone seems united against me to prove that I am wrong, for some reason.  You don't even know me, but you do know that I found Japanese extremely easy to learn and Italian extremely hard to learn.  I also recently spent time I'm Germany, noting the difficult to pronounce words and phrases everywhere around me.

I don't see why everyone wants to change my opinion, given how short life is.

Would you say Japanese is 90_93% easier than people think?

And that was a cheap way to get +1s, considering how short life is.

I really don't think it helps anyone to make up a statistic, even as a way to create a starting point for discussion.

[silverspawn]

does through really rhyme with cough?

[A Drowned Kernel]

does through really rhyme with cough?

No. "Through" is pronounced the same as "threw." "Cough" rhymes with "off".

Yes English is weird.

[silverspawn]

yeah, that's what I thought too

Meanwhile in English, none of bough, cough, dough, rough, and through don't rhyme

[A Drowned Kernel]

yeah, that's what I thought too

Meanwhile in English, none of bough, cough, dough, rough, and through don't rhyme

I think that's a double negative probably, what Kirian meant to say is that none of those words rhyme with each other.

[Witherweaver]

[Witherweaver]

yeah, that's what I thought too

Meanwhile in English, none of bough, cough, dough, rough, and through don't rhyme

I think that's a double negative probably, what Kirian meant to say is that none of those words rhyme with each other.

I definitely read this in my mind the first time as:

"bō, co, doe, row, throw"

[Kirian]

Dammit.

[silverspawn]

yeah, that's what I thought too

Meanwhile in English, none of bough, cough, dough, rough, and through don't rhyme

I think that's a double negative probably, what Kirian meant to say is that none of those words rhyme with each other.

oh, in that case I just learned that I always pronounced cough wrong

[eHalcyon]

I concluded that, to me, German is far harder (to pronounce/learn) than Japanese.  Everyone seems united against me to prove that I am wrong, for some reason.  You don't even know me, but you do know that I found Japanese extremely easy to learn and Italian extremely hard to learn.  I also recently spent time I'm Germany, noting the difficult to pronounce words and phrases everywhere around me.

I don't see why everyone wants to change my opinion, given how short life is.

I think people were arguing because you started off making a general claim (or seemed to) instead of a personal one, and it seemed to be about learning languages overall rather than just ease of pronunciation.

[Roadrunner7671]

I guess I'll post this here. I learned about 'Omer,' a user who was banned several years ago. Maybe you remember him, he had 25 postd and a Cultist avatar? I don't understand why he got banned so quickly but Goon Garden went on for 13 pages before he was banned.

[LastFootnote]

I guess I'll post this here. I learned about 'Omer,' a user who was banned several years ago. Maybe you remember him, he had 25 postd and a Cultist avatar? I don't understand why he got banned so quickly but Goon Garden went on for 13 pages before he was banned.

It matters how fast theory notices. This ain't a science.

[Roadrunner7671]

I guess I'll post this here. I learned about 'Omer,' a user who was banned several years ago. Maybe you remember him, he had 25 postd and a Cultist avatar? I don't understand why he got banned so quickly but Goon Garden went on for 13 pages before he was banned.

It matters how fast theory notices. This ain't a science.

Okay, a follow up question: What was Omer's offense/offenses that caused him to get banned? Sure, he wasn't the most polite person I've ever seen, but I think a ban was very cruel.

[Donald X.]

Okay, a follow up question: What was Omer's offense/offenses that caused him to get banned? Sure, he wasn't the most polite person I've ever seen, but I think a ban was very cruel.

I don't remember, but maybe there are posts that were deleted.