ashleybotts

I usually rewatch animes so I always get a chance to watch subbed and dubbed. When I first started an Azumanga daioh marathon, I had the choice between dubbed or subbed. My friend said that Osaka has a stereotypical accent, and if you can't differentiate because I don't know the language, then I should watch it dubbed first, so I did. In the dubbed version, Osaka's stereotypical accent was portray as Southern English. When I watched the first episode subbed, I really couldn't tell the difference between Osaka and the others. Now, after learning more Japanese, I revisited Azumanga subbed and I feel proud that I can tell the difference. Also, even people who "hate" dubbed animes should still try to rewatch animes dubbed because there's a lot of funny differences sometimes. For example, in Azumanga, the English teacher has to teach Spanish instead in the dubbed version (otherwise that wouldn't really make sense.) Verbal and visual things had to be changed. It's interesting to see what they have to work with!

I enjoy watching anime as well. However, the best way to be immersed in the media is to watch Japanese news - you get the best pronunciation and important vocabulary. I can still remember the first Japanese word I immediately memorized from an anime - Doite. I can't remember what anime but the sister wanted her brother to get out of the way and just kept saying "Doite!" Anime is definitely great for learning rude phrases. Be careful!

Writing is definitely the hardest. While learning Japanese, I honestly don't intend to write Kanji... I will learn Hiragana and Katakana, but there is no reason for me to learn to write Kanji. Even if I lived in Japan, I can get by without writing anything to anyone. How often do I write things to people in English right now? Well... Besides a shopping list, I can't really think of anything.

Unfortunately, Chinese to me is not only incredibly difficult to learn and reproduce the correct enunciation, but it doesn't sound very pleasing to the ear. I believe I read that if you said their word for "chopsticks" in a different tone, you could accidentally be saying the word "bridge." However, I still appreciate the Kanji. I plan on learning Japanese and I would like to know some of the original Chinese meanings for the Kanji. Another difficult contender is Russian, for many reasons. But if I could choose one reason...

I think that it would be better, but I love the culture that goes along with other languages. What about the words that other languages have, that English doesn't have? Schadenfreude comes to mind. Schadenfreude is pleasure derived from the misfortunes of others. I definitely have feelings that correlate with this word often! :devil: What I don't understand is... Why are there different types of sign language? That just blows my mind. There definitely should only be one universal sign language...