Nani mo Wakaranai - Vol. 1 Ch. 3 - Name

[wallsg]

And then theres French where syllables are optional.

Consonants that end a word are said if the are the one in CaReFuL. I noticed this in HS French about 45 years ago so that may be incomplete or partially incorrect.

 

[wallsg]

But most languages have rules. With English, it seems, there are less "rules" and more "in this specific word it's pronounced this way".

Three big reasons for this. While the US may be the Melting Pot of people, English is the Melting Pot of languages. Different words where borrowed/adopted at different points in history when their native spellings may have evolved, each language they were adopted from has their own rules, and the Great Vowel Shift.

I'm a layperson on this stuff and have just watched videos and the like.

 

[thirty7timeslucky]

This seems like it could be a solid manga, but the chapter length leaves a lot to be desired. Reading little amounts of a story at a time more often doesn't actually help you to remember the story as well, surprisingly.

lmao i think they've gotten sidetracked

 

[sephtis]

Well this gremlin is interesting.

 

[pdonk]

the first 2 chapters felt obnoxious with how much over-thinking the protagonist was doing for everything. This isn't a LN, you can just draw the environment instead of having the protagonist go "huh, there's a door, I didn't notice. Now that I think of it, the walls are made of stone."

but this chapter, about trying to convey a foreign language, was actually interesting! I'd like to see it develop like this.

although either way, I'm not sure there's any point to the "I don't remember anything" gimmick. If you're in a foreign land and don't know the language or the culture, why does it matter if you can remember your own or not? Besides, he seems to remember everything that's convenient, anyway.

 

[chrno_12]

I can relate to the elf here.
"ryouri" was the most awkward word for me to pronounce when I was taking Japanese classes. The r y stuff just doesn't exist in the western languages I'm familiar with.

In Portuguese, the “ri” when it appears in the middle of words, for example in perigo (danger), sounds quite similar to the Japanese “ri”. It’s not identical; in Japanese they pronounce it more quickly. But it’s very similar. So Portuguese speakers don’t have much difficulty saying “ryo” or “ryu”.

 

[Tavero]

But most languages have rules. With English, it seems, there are less "rules" and more "in this specific word it's pronounced this way".

I imagine thats probably because Americans have an aversion against Change. Similar to not wanting to change to the metric system they don't want to change spelling of weirdly written words.

Germany loves clear definitions. We had several fixes in the last cencury that changed spellings of "exception of the rule" pronouncing words to mainstream spelling rules. The last one was just 20 years ago.

Could be worse though. Is could be French. Or one of the Nordic languages like Swedish Finnish or íslenska...

 

[janjan]

I imagine thats probably because Americans have an aversion against Change. Similar to not wanting to change to the metric system they don't want to change spelling of weirdly written words.

Germany loves clear definitions. We had several fixes in the last cencury that changed spellings of "exception of the rule" pronouncing words to mainstream spelling rules. The last one was just 20 years ago.

Could be worse though. Is could be French. Or one of the Nordic languages like Swedish Finnish or íslenska...

Humans in general have an aversion against change, so that's not inherently something that only the Americans have. And for Japanese alone I can point to you to basic things like "三つ", why is the word for "Three" san, but the word for three as in a quantity context, mitsu? Or something like 小学、中学, and then 高校学 instead of 大学? Things that are exceptions are sort of norms in all languages and it's not easy to say "Just fix it and standardize it all" because then you have the rolling cost of rewriting all of your signage, reeducating people to the new proper standards, enforcing that standard and doing it with minimal confusion and cost. Easier to let live and learn the exception.

English is a bit of a grab-bag of languages and a lot of words will be lifted somewhat wholesale. For instance, "ravine" is taken from French, "Kindergarden" is a common term used for one stage of schooling obviously taken German "kindergarten". Obviously you can find more examples if you want to do more digging but those are some easy ones I can think of. Try to standardize all of these from different locales and it's going to be difficult to get consistent pronounciations between all of these loanwords.

This is also before we want to get into things like diaspora (Taken from greek) and local dialects. Americans dropped a lot of "u"s from words, ask any other British English standard country how to spell "armor" and they'll add in an extra u for "armour" even though you don't pronounce that "u".

 

[Tavero]

Things that are exceptions are sort of norms in all languages and it's not easy to say "Just fix it and standardize it all" because then you have the rolling cost of rewriting all of your signage, reeducating people to the new proper standards, enforcing that standard and doing it with minimal confusion and cost. Easier to let live and learn the exception.

That's literally what we did here in Germany though. And it really was not as bad or hard as you're describing it. The "Rechtschreibreform" came and went. There was a transition period where people were using both possible spellings and after that everyone was writing with the new spelling. Formal documents should be updated each year anyway and the education was done in school like it is supposed to.

I can pick up my childhood and school books and still see the old spellings there, so it really is not that long ago.

Right now we want to get rid of the Daylight Saving Time change. Because it is so inconvenient. However because other countries in Europe are adverse to change they are putting stones in our way.

 

[janjan]

That's literally what we did here in Germany though. And it really was not as bad or hard as you're describing it. The "Rechtschreibreform" came and went. There was a transition period where people were using both possible spellings and after that everyone was writing with the new spelling. Formal documents should be updated each year anyway and the education was done in school like it is supposed to.

I can pick up my childhood and school books and still see the old spellings there, so it really is not that long ago.

Alright. Then we can change American English and British English in other countries can tell us to bugger off with our weird changes and that we're not the English Standard. So for changing English you'd have to coordinate changes between at least 3 continents and 4+ countries and that's before changing anywhere else that's using English as a lingua franca (aka: the rest of the world) that we're no longer spelling things one way rather than another.

The point still stands that just "change the language lmao" has several logistical and bureaucratic roadblocks and isn't some weird americanism of being adverse to change.

Right now we want to get rid of the Daylight Saving Time change. Because it is so inconvenient. However because other countries in Europe are adverse to change they are putting stones in our way.

Case in point.