Foreign immigrant, but they’re not brown enough to shoot on sight? Louder and slower while you assess the foreign devil… Just because they’re white doesnt mean they can’t be a commie.
This was meant as a joke, but living in the south this has certainly happened recently somewhere nearby.
You need to put your foot down demand that they speak English to you and abuse them if they refuse. Most people don’t know this, but it’s hazing ritual in a lot of countries for locals to mess with tourists by speaking made up languages to them, they actually all know English, because that’s the only actual human language that exists.
Hilariously enough, in Japan it kinda sorta works not really but ish… They have so many loan words from English that if you just say an English word in a Japanese accent it might be the right one. Like the word for print is purinto, hotel is hotelu (hoteru), and camera is kamera.
They also get taught English in school for multiple years, and English is on almost every sign in major metro areas
Travelling to Japan while only knowing a couple of phrases went perfectly fine due to most people being able to understand what I needed them to, even when my wife and I got lost and had a group of 6 or so people at a local hospital frantically trying to help us find our hotel
I lived there a couple years, if all else fails there is an even higher rate of understanding written English than spoken. In the two years I was there I never felt like I was in a situation ever I needed to know how to read or speak the language(s) even though I did make an effort.
My first experience was having to get from the airport to a hotel in Tokyo to stay the night. A gentleman outside the airport helped show me how the buses worked (those drivers are crazy) and when I got to the hotel counter the gal pulled out a pen and paper since I only knew English and we wrote back and forth to each other. After that my concern over getting lost went away, everyone was really friendly and helpful in my experience.
Is the u pronounced? I recently learned katakana and it seems like the u variant is used to just get the consonant, i.e. if you pronounce words by leaving out the u they often match more closely to the English word than if you do pronounce the u (or to (ト), because tu doesn’t exist, it’s tsu). The two examples you gave match that thesis.
The u is pronounced, but it’s a shorter sound than English u. Vowels in Japanese are shorter than English ones, which makes sense for a language where vowel length matters, eg su (vinegar) is a different word than suu (to smoke).
I’m trying to think of a word that wouldn’t use u as an insert between 2 English consonants, like trip becomes torippu, but that’s probably because they wanted to avoid tsurippu, as you mentioned about tsu. One word is garasu meaning glass (the material), but they also have gurasu, meaning drinking glass.
Most words do tend to use the u between English consonants though (supo-tsu, purezento, surippa, sute-ki, etc).
Pro-tip for tourists: if you speak English LOUDER AND SLOOOWEEEER, you’ll bypass any language barrier.
The same technique works back home in the US too.
Foreign immigrant, but they’re not brown enough to shoot on sight? Louder and slower while you assess the foreign devil… Just because they’re white doesnt mean they can’t be a commie.
This was meant as a joke, but living in the south this has certainly happened recently somewhere nearby.
You need to put your foot down demand that they speak English to you and abuse them if they refuse. Most people don’t know this, but it’s hazing ritual in a lot of countries for locals to mess with tourists by speaking made up languages to them, they actually all know English, because that’s the only actual human language that exists.
Hilariously enough, in Japan it kinda sorta works not really but ish… They have so many loan words from English that if you just say an English word in a Japanese accent it might be the right one. Like the word for print is purinto, hotel is hotelu (hoteru), and camera is kamera.
They also get taught English in school for multiple years, and English is on almost every sign in major metro areas
Travelling to Japan while only knowing a couple of phrases went perfectly fine due to most people being able to understand what I needed them to, even when my wife and I got lost and had a group of 6 or so people at a local hospital frantically trying to help us find our hotel
I lived there a couple years, if all else fails there is an even higher rate of understanding written English than spoken. In the two years I was there I never felt like I was in a situation ever I needed to know how to read or speak the language(s) even though I did make an effort.
My first experience was having to get from the airport to a hotel in Tokyo to stay the night. A gentleman outside the airport helped show me how the buses worked (those drivers are crazy) and when I got to the hotel counter the gal pulled out a pen and paper since I only knew English and we wrote back and forth to each other. After that my concern over getting lost went away, everyone was really friendly and helpful in my experience.
Is the u pronounced? I recently learned katakana and it seems like the u variant is used to just get the consonant, i.e. if you pronounce words by leaving out the u they often match more closely to the English word than if you do pronounce the u (or to (ト), because tu doesn’t exist, it’s tsu). The two examples you gave match that thesis.
The u is pronounced, but it’s a shorter sound than English u. Vowels in Japanese are shorter than English ones, which makes sense for a language where vowel length matters, eg su (vinegar) is a different word than suu (to smoke).
I’m trying to think of a word that wouldn’t use u as an insert between 2 English consonants, like trip becomes torippu, but that’s probably because they wanted to avoid tsurippu, as you mentioned about tsu. One word is garasu meaning glass (the material), but they also have gurasu, meaning drinking glass.
Most words do tend to use the u between English consonants though (supo-tsu, purezento, surippa, sute-ki, etc).