| I get a feeling like Japanese do know how to speak in English, but do Engrish on purpose. Is this a trend in Japan to purposely mispronounce words? |
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| Pretty sure it isn't on purpose but if it is that would make it a lot more annoying. |
| As far as I know, Japanese doesn't pronounce the "l" letter in their phrases, so they pronounce it as "r" instead. It can be obvious however when a character is pronouncing the English as Engrish on purpose (JoJo) or when they try to pronounce the English seriously (Psycho-Pass movie). |
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| I'd say it's the same concept with us english speakers mispronouncing phrases from other languages. |
| "I like young-girl sexual creations, Lolicon is just one hobby of my many hobbies," he says. I ask what his wife, standing nearby, thinks of his "hobby". "She probably thinks no problem," he replies. "Because she loves young boys sexually interacting with each other." |
ExTamplier said: Do you have any actual basis for this claim, or is this just grasping at straws to come up with a thread topic?I get a feeling like Japanese do know how to speak in English, but do Engrish on purpose. |
on 
KuuhakuDesu said: Maybe, except "Engurishi" would be the romaji spelling for what would be pronounced as "English". Often they'll even pronounce English words that have r's in them as if they had l's. The first time I heard this was in the Toradora OP "pulay palato" meaning "pre-parade". There's also names like "Karen" pronounced as "Kalen" because they can't tell the difference. There are also letters like v/b and h/f which are pronounced the same as each other and r/l/d which are often confused (d has its own set of letters, but words like "muri" get pronounced with a d sound). There are also Japanese words like sayonala which are pronounced with an r sound in English because of how romaji works. "Nifongo" would be a equivalent way of saying "shitty Japanese from a native English speaker" (I made this term up).Well.. all I know is that there is no "la, le, li, lo, lu" sounds in Japanese language. So they speak "e-n-gu-ri-shi", because that's the closest form to the word "english" in their language. But I do not know if they don't know how to speak the word "english" or if they speak "engrish" on purpose |
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Zalis said: Sometimes characters/voice actors don't make me cringe.ExTamplier said: Do you have any actual basis for this claim, or is this just grasping at straws to come up with a thread topic?I get a feeling like Japanese do know how to speak in English, but do Engrish on purpose. |
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| I don't think they're doing it on purpose, though I suppose some of them could be. |
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codephat said: it's annoying?Pretty sure it isn't on purpose but if it is that would make it a lot more annoying. ot: Japanese people just have a harder time speaking English but it would make a lot more sense if they had English actors for the foreign characters that should apparently know the language |
 Freddy Nicholas said: have control, be yourself, god is dead |
| From what I'm given to understand, English is somewhat poorly taught in many Japanese schools. They speak in Engrish because many lack even a rudimentary grasp of English. Couple that with the fact that there's rarely any reason for them to speak it, which means there's little occasions for them to practice and improve upon their accent, it just stands to reason that many simply aren't very good at speaking English. But that's just speculation on my part. |
 It's an entirely different kind of flying, altogether! It's an entirely different kind of flying. |
| I don't know why people hate so much when English is talked in anime, I really enjoy... |
| ''Ask not the Sparrow, how the Eagle soars'' - Kiryūin Satsuki |
| I think its because they don't have a word in their own language that has a proper English translation so they just say it awkwardly in English with their own accent. |
Skip to 6:05 Japanese people know how to speak english but they still talk like that for some reason |
KaraSurakka said: [yt]b-Z83LjbBxs?t=6m5s[/youtube] Skip to 6:05 Japanese people know how to speak english but they still talk like that for some reason ~ 90% can only say "herro". it's a mixture of poor english, shame and bad education . you would think professional voice actors could at least fake good english...says a lot about seiyuu in general |
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| Rarely, most of the times the voice actors aren't good at English, so it becomes Engrish. |
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| Chinese, Japanese, and Korean people all have a hard time pronouncing l/r because it's really the same thing to them. Try pronouncing "Engrish" and "English" and you would know that they have very similar mouth movements. When pronouncing both of them, the tongue taps the top front of the mouth right behind the teeth. I know for a fact that most East Asian alphabets were written based off of mouth movements. In Korean, letters such as ㄱ (g) and ㅋ (k) are written very similarly and share the same "alphabet family" because they share very similar mouth movements. The vowel "ㅡ" (eu) is written as a straight line in Korean because that's how your mouth looks when you're pronouncing it. I know Korean the best, but this is very prominent in Japanese and Chinese as well. |
| Zankyou no Terror Engrish was my jam back in the day |
   I envy your delusion; I wish I could live in it  |
| Or maybe, just maybe, [majority of] the Japanese actually suck at pronouncing English because of how phonologically different the languages are With that being said, they're even worse when it comes to pronouncing French: |
 Nico- said: Conversations with people pinging/quoting me to argue about some old post I wrote years ago will not be entertained@Comic_Sans oh no y arnt ppl dieing i need more ppl dieing rly gud plot avansement jus liek tokyo ghoul if erbudy dies amirite |
| MAYBE LOL id k man I don't rea.ly think about iet |
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| i'm not sure but when they do it rather good it is very cringey imo idk why but when they do it completely japanese sounding its funny but yeah when they actually try at it its like pls, pls stop |
| Yes what exactly? Protaku said: abomination of animeZankyou no Terror Engrish was my jam back in the day |
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-Maz said: They speak in Engrish because many lack even a rudimentary grasp of English. It has nothing to do with english being poorly taught, it's just that the japanese language have much less different sounds than english. That makes it really hard for a japanese person to pronounce english, because he has to try to pronounce a lot of unfamiliar and confusing sounds. For example, in Japanese, with one or two exceptions, a syllable is always composed of a consonant+ a vowel. So having two conscutive consonants in a word is strange and hard to pronounce for them because it doesn't exist in their language. That's why they tend to add vowels between consonants and at the end of english words ("speed" becoming "supiido"). A lot of other sounds don't exist in Japanese; l and r letters are pronounced the same,the "v" letter doesn't exist,and even simples syllables such as "si" or "tu" don't exist in japanese (they are pronounced as "shi" and "tsu" or "tyu"). It's not specific to Japanese though, you'll have the same if anyone tries to learn a language including sounds he has never heard. An English-speaking person will have a hard time with chinese or arab pronounciation because it has a lot of sounds unknown in their mother tongue. Even if you study for years, you'll still struggle to pronounce some sounds because you have not been accustomed to them since your youngest age. The Japanese just have it extra hard because they have one of the poorest languages in terms of variety of sounds, making it hard to pronounce virtually any other language. |
YarrowiaApr 23, 2016 6:36 PM
| Japanese is completely different from any other East Asian language though. A chinese person will have an easier time pronouncing english words than a japanese person with the same level of training. Pronounciation has really much more to do with the difficulty of unfamiliar sounds than with the quality of learning. Also, it has nothing to do with being multilingual. 80% of Flemish people are perfectly trilingual (dutch/french/english) and they're some of the best non-native english speakers in the world. It's just that after a certain age, it's incredibly hard to learn to differenciate and pronounce new sounds. So if you're learning a language that have a lot of new sounds, you will struggle to pronounce it right. And since virtually all languages have sounds that are unheard of in Japanese, Japanese people will struggle to pronounce them. Even within one language this happens; for example in Belgium the french words "brin" and "brun" are not pronounced the same way. However, in France, people do not make a difference between those sounds. And because they have never been exposed to the difference between the two from a young age, for most of them it's impossible to tell these words apart, and thus impossible to pronounce them right, although it's their own language. Try yourself to pronounce the japanese "r", and you will understand why they struggle; because if you're pronouncing like an "l" or an "r" you're getting it wrong. It's a different sound, but because we are not accustomed to this sound, our brain identify it as "r" or "l" the closest sound we know. And it will take a lot of time and immersion to get it right like a native speaker. The Japanese have that same problem with english sounds, except that they have much more difficult sounds to cope with. |
ExTamplier said: I get a feeling like Japanese do know how to speak in English, but do Engrish on purpose. Is this a trend in Japan to purposely mispronounce words? Anime are cartoons made by Japanese primarily for a Japanese audience. So I am sure the target audience doesn't know or give a rats ass about the English pronunciation accuracy of the voice actors. |
| It's not on purpose. When you grew up speaking a language, and tries to learn English later on, your accent will be much different than standard English. It's especially noticeable in Japanese and Chinese native speakers. They will never be able to speak English without their original accent which in this case is what you call Engrish. Only Asians that grew up speaking English (10 and under) can speak proper English. If you want to see a Japanese speaking standard English (or close), then watch some videos on this channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCqwxJts-6yF33rupyF_DCsA/videos |
ExTamplier said: Wouldn't it make more sense to assume that the VA that don't make you cringe are simply better at speaking English than the ones that do make you cringe? "Difference in skill level between different VAs" is a lot more plausible than "elaborate conspiracy to mangle the English language for nebulous reasons."Zalis said: Sometimes characters/voice actors don't make me cringe.Do you have any actual basis for this claim, or is this just grasping at straws to come up with a thread topic? |
Zalis said: ExTamplier said: Do you have any actual basis for this claim, or is this just grasping at straws to come up with a thread topic?I get a feeling like Japanese do know how to speak in English, but do Engrish on purpose. Yes they sometimes do it on purpose (don't know if it is done 100%) of the time. My brother asked an episode director while in Japan back in 2011 if it was done on purpose, he said the English of foreigners are hard to understand by Japanese. So expats have to alter their accents. |
| I get the same vibe sometimes, maybe for aesthetic purposes |
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| When they do try to speak English well, it's way too slow so pronouncing it in a quicker more sloppy manner fits the regular speech better. As well as English words being bastardized into the Japanese language through katakana encourages mispronunciation. |
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| In the episode 4 of Yuu Yuu Hakusho teacher and the girl speak in good english (with normal accent) |
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| Maybe. Apparently anime characters don't sound like Japanese people either. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=47SRwl8tY_I |
| Why don't Americans speak an Australian accent instead? Or do they just talk like that on purpose? |
GesuYarou said: ? Americans speak american english, I don't get your point.Why don't Americans speak an Australian accent instead? Or do they just talk like that on purpose? |
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| Japanese has a very limited selection of vowel and consonant sounds compared to most western languages. This isn't to say all Japanese can't pronounce English well. Seiyuu spend enough time mastering spoken Japanese, singing, voice inflections, etc. The most famous ones are also very busy recording multiple shows per season, on top of preparing for and performing in Seiyuu events. We can't expect them all to be proficient in spoken English as well. Edit: It has nothing to do with english being poorly taught, it's just that the japanese language have much less different sounds than english. That makes it really hard for a japanese person to pronounce english, because he has to try to pronounce a lot of unfamiliar and confusing sounds. ^This reminded me: check out some spoken Korean, or talk to a Korean person about their language. They have a number of vowel and consonant inflections that are really hard for western ears to differentiate and memorize. This may help put you in the Japanese's shoes. |
Ruka_SutaApr 25, 2016 9:14 AM
ExTamplier said: GesuYarou said: ? Americans speak american english, I don't get your point.Why don't Americans speak an Australian accent instead? Or do they just talk like that on purpose? Exactly.. Americans speak American english instead of australian because that's how they were taught & that's the kind of language that's used around them.. |
| I took Spanish as a high schooler. For the life of me, I couldn't roll my "r"s or make that damn squiggly n noise. Why shouldn't it be the same thing at play here in Japan? They're probably at an even worse advantage than us, honestly; they have no reason nor way to practice another language other than Japanese, being on an island and all. The number one way to learn a language is to speak it constantly - and who are they going to be speaking to on an island that speaks predominantly Japanese? |
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| Any jap can speak engrish, but only Date can write engrish too. |
| I mean if I can use the "rr" and "~n" sound in spanish when I'm american just fine then I don't see why a Japanese couldn't properly use "L" in their pronunciation if they know about it. |
| Are you talking about full sentences of loanwords? I doubt anyone purposefully mispronounces full sentences but loanwords are, of course, modified to fit the Japanese language. So, they say "erebeetaa" instead of "elevator" on purpose, for example. |
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| In terms of why Japanese are poor at pronouncing English, the Japanese language contains some very different phonemes from English, and by extension most Indo-European languages. Sentences are structured differently, verbs conjugate differently...English is tough to learn even for speakers of other Germanic languages, but for a native speaker of a non-Indo-European language it's extremely difficult. The Japanese education system, as mentioned before, really doesn't help. Students start learning English late, and are expected to listen and memorize, not practice speaking. Since there's not many native speakers in certain parts of Japan to practice on, they don't get any better. Then there is also the money issue. It is so much cheaper to hire a Japanese VA who can speak passable English than a native speaker. This doesn't just extend to English, either: seiyuu can be heard butchering German, French, Italian, and Russian among others. |
| Sometimes I have the impression that they think it's cute. Though I start to understand that the relationship between the Japanese and the American culture and therefore English language is very complex. But I always wonder why the idea of foreign languages being difficult to learn is so hard to grasp for some English speakers. Japan is not a multicultural entity too, like the EU. The Japanese wouldn't use English in their everyday lives normally, they don't have many native speakers, it's logical if their English is bad. And their phonetics is very different. Btw, western fiction does this a lot with other langauges. Russian is often butchered in the US movies, despite the fact that there're a ton of Russian-speaking expats right in the US. |
| I don't think so, why would they? I think they're (most of them) just naturally bad at English |
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| There are a lot of engrish catch phrases they use in anime often in a way that an english speaker would never use them and some are just plain wrong. In other words, yes, they use english "wrong" to be cute or comedic. Just some off the top of my head: "lucky" "chance" "nice catch" "fabulous max" "nudist beach" "death". The list goes on and on. |
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