Originally posted by Kunzite @Rondec:
I guess you're talking about their usage of "English" words.
For a Japanese, the English pronunciation is very difficult; and I'm unsure how many people around here could pronounce Japanese reasonably well. The languages are simply too different.
Of course, as a Romanian I would have no issues pronouncing the Japanese syllabary (except for the native accent).
The Japanese sound system is one of the simplest there is. Unlike Chinese, for instance, there are no sounds that are not in English (except for the r/l blend) nor any tones. I'd say it's even easier to pronounce than Spanish. Learning to read the characters is different, of course, but I think anyone could learn to pronounce Japanese transliterated into Roman characters in less than an hour.
For a Japanese native, English is a real challenge because there's a ton of sounds that do not appear in Japanese. For one, every consonant in Japanese (except for the ts and the glottal stop n) must be followed by a vowel, while English allows for unlimited strings of consonant combinations.
But I'd say the reason most Japanese speakers pronounce English words with extra vowels is because
1) Non-Chinese loan words are overwhelmingly from English and they equate the English word with its Japanese borrowed word
2) It's only recent to get native English speakers into classrooms to teach English. For many years, English was taught by Japanese, many of whom had never been overseas (and in rural areas, never met an English native).
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Any other parts of the text that need a better translation? I'll take requests!