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Anonymous
>>165708
Japanese people not only think in a different word order, they think in terms of whole syllables rather than phonemes. You can't "sound it out" in katakana.
For example: Japanese has a W sound, it has an U sound (u as in "dude") which is close enough to the oo sound in wood as makes little difference, and it has a D sound. It does not have any way to put those sounds together in writing. What happens is that people get so used to thinking in terms of just those few dozen syllables, that there's a mental block to pronouncing anything else without great effort.
I knew two women who spoke a little English, and worked for trading companies that dealt in wood. Neither could actually say the word "wood."
You might say "well, that's just a pronunciation issue," and you'd be right to some degree. Japanese people usually write English better than they speak it. But language learning doesn't happen in a vacuum. Strength in one area helps develop strength in another, and all benefit from interaction with the environment. If a Japanese person can never learn to be understood when they speak, they lose a lot of opportunities to improve their reading and writing and listening, as well.
I first got this idea when I realized my friend Motoko also couldn't say "wood," and that STV in Sapporo always pronounces their name "Esu Tii Vui!" I had it confirmed when I found out how much better Koreans' English generally is, despite not schooling in it any harder than the Japanese. Korean is grammatically almost identical to Japanese, and has a similar set of phonemes. But unlike Japanese, you can mix and match them pretty much at will. Consequently, they can keep thinking in hangeul and not completely mangle any foreign language they speak.
I have a suspicion that if you had a completely illiterate Japanese speaker and tried to teach him English you'd find it a bit easier than one who reads and writes Japanese.
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