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Katakana フ　and Hiragana つ are nothing. Look at these:

め　ぬ　ね　わ　れ

They are all so similar that I still misread one or two (especially rarer ones like "nu".)

Yeah, the two pretzels め and ぬ aren't fair, not to mention what I think of as the reachers, わ れ and ね... At least ones that start with N consistently have the little curly bit at the end, so it's helpful.

It's too bad that using normal text formatting we come *so close* to the full graphic:
へ　へ
の　の
　も
　へ

Too bad about that じ.

The absolute worst is ソ and ン. There is BARELY a difference, especially when looking at it on a monitor. I've looked at them enough so I can usually tell which is which, but come on.
I forget characters more often when writing than I do with reading. If I forget while reading, it's usually with め and　ぬ. But then I remember, the loop on the bottom right is characteristic of other N- characters. Characters I often forget when writing are:

Hirigana: Sa (don't know why; it's just like a recurring brain freeze), Mu, Nu
Katakana: Nu, Ne, So/No (I get these confused)

Also, katakana has a distinct style from hirigana. It looks more like twigs or bones. It's a lot more simplistic, and limited in curves. It's also easier for me to remember because half the time when reading Japanese, my only clue as to what's going on is English words spelled out in katakana!

I now finished learning all the kanas (more or less).

For some reason I tend to belive that ニ is mi instead of ni and things like this, but other than that it's okay.
It still takes me a much larger effort than it takes to read normal alphabet : it takes about 3 secs to decode each kana, and if I see a text with kana I have to think "ok I'll have to start reading this", while if I have a text with normal alphabet I read it automatically without even thinking about it.

The absolute worst in my opinion is concatenated kana, especially if it's mixed with a dakuten.
Like if you read ジャ you expect it's something very complicated like djiya but it's simply ja, and I can't remember this (well I can but I have to think about it for a VERY long time before figuring it out).

About the ン / ソ and シ / ツ confusion, I think it really depends on the font. A good font will have the dash almost horizontal for n / shi and almost vertical for so / tsu so it's impossible to confuse. I do exactly this when writing and will never confuse them again (hopefully...)

The problem is that now that I use a vertical dash I confuse ソ with リ.
In hiragana, I confuse り with い.

So I can officially claim that "ri" is the worst kana of them all, in both cases (not counting the ja / jo etc.. which are the very worst)

They are all so similar that I still misread one or two (especially rarer ones like "nu".)

The ones you said causes no problem to me. On the other side them being similar yet different helped me to remember them.

This led me to a discovery : Most of game's menu are actually not in japanese but in english... written in katakana. How weird.

Bregalad wrote:It still takes me a much larger effort than it takes to read normal alphabet : it takes about 3 secs to decode each kana, and if I see a text with kana I have to think "ok I'll have to start reading this", while if I have a text with normal alphabet I read it automatically without even thinking about it.

This is perfectly normal when starting learning a foreign language, and especially a language which sports a total different kind of script from whatever one(s) one are used to.

As you get more accustomed to all of those syllables and Chinese characters as well as picking up more words, you will gradually start reading words as words and not have to analyze every single character anymore.

Bregalad wrote:This led me to a discovery : Most of game's menu are actually not in japanese but in english... written in katakana. How weird.

For some reason they really do love to use loan words, don't they? In some cases, I think that's perfectly fine as it also contributes to reduce some of the vagueness that can occur due to homophones, etc. However, there are many a time when I really can't understand why they don't just stick to the Japanese equivalent instead, when there's no risk of misinterpreting the meaning.

One word that I fancy quite a bit, is 接吻 (seppun), ('kiss'). Nowadays, just about everyone use キス (can also be written as キッス) instead of good ol' 接吻. My mother-in-law once told me that 接吻 is just used by really old people. (-__-;)
It's not that much of a terrible matter, however, I sometimes do wish that the Japanese would be a little bit more conservative about their language.

dr_sloppy wrote:For some reason they really do love to use loan words, don't they?

English is at least as bad. It started out like Dutch and then absorbed half of French after the Norman invasion, and it picked up a lot of scientific and religious words from Latin and Greek later.

It's not that much of a terrible matter, however, I sometimes do wish that the Japanese would be a little bit more conservative about their language.

Nearly a millennium after the Norman invasion, people are still complaining about all the French words in English. See The Anglish Moot.

tepples wrote: Nearly a millennium after the Norman invasion, people are still complaining about all the French words in English. See The Anglish Moot.

Probably not as much as the other way arround

This is perfectly normal when starting learning a foreign language, and especially a language which sports a total different kind of script from whatever one(s) one are used to.

As you get more accustomed to all of those syllables and Chinese characters as well as picking up more words, you will gradually start reading words as words and not have to analyze every single character anymore.

Thank you. And who know if I'll ever go this far...

One word that I fancy quite a bit, is 接吻 (seppun), ('kiss'). Nowadays, just about everyone use キス (can also be written as キッス) instead of good ol' 接吻. My mother-in-law once told me that 接吻 is just used by really old people. (-__-;)
It's not that much of a terrible matter, however, I sometimes do wish that the Japanese would be a little bit more conservative about their language.

I have mixed feelings about this. Yes it's very sad they use foreign words and forget their own language.
But the less words I have to learn, the better ^^
Although it's common that "foregin" words are so distorted they aren't recognizable anymore.

We should all be speaking english, period. Not that I think it's the greatest language of all time, but it's the one that's most widely known. Imagine a world without bad dubs, or subtitles to distract us...

A language barrier isn't the only reason for subtitles or bad dubs. Otherwise, how will we know what characters in NES games' cut scenes are saying? Not all classic 8-bit consoles have big enough storage to hold a full voiceover, and not all games have the budget for a well-acted voiceover even if there were enough storage and enough compression (such as ESS MX as used in Impossible Mission). Remember the homebrew complexity discussion a couple years back? And how will people who are hard of hearing understand such TV or such games? Sure, in the coming system of things, we'll all have perfect hearing and speak one pure language, but that's on the other side of World War III.

Bregalad wrote: For some reason I tend to belive that ニ is mi instead of ni and things like this, but other than that it's okay.

I find it helps if you think of Ni as the Kanji for 2, because 二 and ニ look almost exactly the same.

We should all be speaking english, period

This is already the case today, pretty much, until the next great global language shift which will eventually happen one day when the American-controlled world will collapse and another nation will start to grow more and more important.

Imagine a world without bad dubs, or subtitles to distract us...

1) What is a bad dub ?
2) Subtitles are required for people with hearing disability

I find it helps if you think of Ni as the Kanji for 2, because 二 and ニ look almost exactly the same.

I don't know how to count in Japanese (I think they use good old arabic numerals thank god - at least in games), but thanks for the advice anyways.

Bregalad wrote:1) What is a bad dub ?

Dubbing is when the original voices are replaced by new ones in another language. IMO, all dubs are bad because no matter how good the actors are, the lips will always be out of sync. Cartoons can sometimes be dubbed well though, since they have varying degrees of lip movement accuracy.

2) Subtitles are required for people with hearing disability

True, but even as it is today movie theaters only put subtitles in foreign movies, so people with hearing disabilities are screwed either way. At home though, where you can freely enable/disable subtitles, you can get rid of them if your hearing is good and all movies are in the language you speak.

BTW, my original comment wasn't exactly serious. Yeah, it would be nice if everyone spoke the same language (for reason much more significant than dubs and subs), but if the attitude towards the idea of a global language all around the world is the same as the one I see here in Brazil, that won't happen anytime soon. Here in Brazil there's a lot of hate towards anglicisms, much like Bregalad said there is in french.

tepples wrote:English is at least as bad. It started out like Dutch and then absorbed half of French after the Norman invasion, and it picked up a lot of scientific and religious words from Latin and Greek later.

You're absolutely right. There are also a good bunch of Scandinavian words in there as well, actually. Words like 'window' and 'gay' (*) for a starter. I think this really adds to the international-ness of the English language. In a rather positive way, I might add.

My gripes about loanwords regarding Japanese might probably be a bit due to the fact that Japanese is a very different language to the ones it usually borrows from, I think.

Bregalad wrote:I don't know how to count in Japanese (I think they use good old arabic numerals thank god - at least in games), but thanks for the advice anyways.

It's a bit of a mixed bag, really. At eating establishments they very often list prices (esp. on strips of paper attached to the walls) using kanji numerals. As for printed menus I find it to be mostly in Arabic numerals.

Bregalad wrote:This is already the case today, pretty much, until the next great global language shift which will eventually happen one day when the American-controlled world will collapse and another nation will start to grow more and more important.

Even during the most, like, hardcore times of the Roman Empire way back in the days, Koine (ancient Greek) was still used as the common lingua franca in the old world (for about a good 600 years (〜300 BC - 〜300 AD). I think that one reason for this was that Koine had already become quite widespread by the time the Roman Empire seriously started climbing the ladder. Another reason might've been due to the, once again, widespread, culture of Greece.

For what it's worth, I find it rather doubtsome that some other language (e.g. Chinese) can replace English anytime soon.



(*) 'Window' hails from 'vindauga' (lit. wind eye). 'Gay' is from 'gøy' which is one word for 'fun' or 'good time' (German: 'lüstig'). Somewhere along the line, the word 'gay' got its meaning changed to mean homo(phile) in English.

You think kanas are confusing. Wait till you see Mandarin. As an Asian (Chinese-born SE Asian) I never would find Mandarin easy to write or speak! After like 5 years of exposure to Mandarin environment, I was still struggling to get all the pronunciations correct, or even to string a simple Mandarin sentence!