The way people pronounce this has always bugged me

[DankPanties]

I agree Kaio, I think it's wrong too, just what I've heard.
Example: http://voices.yahoo.com/learning-english-language-no-doubt-hardest-293492.html

I agree more with this perhaps:
http://www.lexiophiles.com/featured-articles/results-of-the-hardest-languages-to-learn-poll

[Ryusui]

Mah nah mah nah! *doot-doo-doo-doo-doo*

But yeah. Manna (from heaven) and mana (magic power) have two very different pronunciations, and it drives me nuts to hear people pronounce the latter like the former. The first "a" in "mana" is pronounced like the "a" in "father"; the first "a" in "manna" is pronounced like the "a" in "hat."

Unless you read kanji. Different combinations = possibly different pronunciation. But it is generally standard, from what little I know...

And then you have the nonstandard ones, which fortunately are usually indicated with furigana. Yu-Gi-Oh! has plenty of fun cases of kanji being given English readings: 万魔殿 (パンディモニウム), 先史遺産 (オーパーツ), 超銀河眼の光子龍 (ネオ・ギャラクシーアイズ・フォトン・ドラゴン). Death Note has a more severe case in the infamous 夜神　月 (やがみ・ライト) - the proper reading of 月 is not only English, but tangentially connected with the kanji's actual meaning at best.

[SargeSmash]

I've always heard that English is hard to learn, but easy to master.  It's often the other way around for other languages.

To some degree, I think that at least the first part is right.  It's hard to get all the nuances down because of the special cases, but once you do, you've got so many different ways to say things that it's not even funny.  Where in a stricter language, you can get some of the rules down, but it gets harder and harder to apply things correctly at an advanced level, because there are so very few ways to actually say something correctly.

I could also be wrong, and talking out my butt.  (Is that a language?  I suspect BS is spoken everywhere.)

[Spooniest]

I could also be wrong, and talking out my butt.  (Is that a language?  I suspect BS is spoken everywhere.)

The only reason it's called the "age of information" is because it's not polite to say "bullshit."

[LostTemplar]

And this is one of the parts about Japanese I prefer over English. If you can read a word (or it has furigana), you know how to pronounce it. No matter what. There are no alternate pronunciations to words. WYSIWYG.

Of course you're right about the actual sounds, but words can have different stresses (as you probably know) and thus different meaning even if they read the same in hiragana. It's usually subtle though, and can even vary across dialects. For instance, once I stressed カレー like カレイ (the fish) and got corrected. But sometimes you aren't understood at all if you stress words wrong.

I agree more with this perhaps:
http://www.lexiophiles.com/featured-articles/results-of-the-hardest-languages-to-learn-poll

Some of that is just so wrong. Where on earth is Japanese more difficult to pronounce than Korean? And Korean even being in the top 10 of "most difficult to write" would be strange, but on fourth place to boot? Hangeul is the most systematic script I know, and it's an "alphabet". In my opinion it would be easier to learn than the Latin alphabet if you didn't know either. Some of those voters just voted based on their first impression I guess.

Nevertheless, personally I'd rank Korean over Japanese in terms of overall difficulty.

I've always heard that English is hard to learn, but easy to master.  It's often the other way around for other languages.

I'd say it's the exact opposite. Well, it depends on your definition of "to learn" and "to master", really. At least for Germans (being in the same language family) it's usually very easy to acquire basic English skills, but bringing your proficiency up to the level of a native speaker is really hard.

I concur with English spelling being pretty random. While of course it's not really random, it just got this way over time. As French was mentioned earlier: In French, if you see an unknown word, in probably 99% (or even more) of the cases you know how to pronounce it, because its spelling is very systematic. With English, on the other hand, you NEVER know (especially if you're a non-native speaker like me). Some time ago, I read the word "facetious" (yes, here on RHDN; it's actually a pretty good place too learn new vocabulary ;) and couldn't even imagine how it would be pronounced. Like a combination of "face" and the "cious" in "precious"? No, it's fəˈsiːʃəs. And that's just the tip of the iceberg.

By the way, in Germany everbody pronounces it "mah-nah" (with the As sounding a bit like in "car").

[Garoth Moulinoski]

This discussion reminds me of my Theory of Algorithms class (which the professor insisted should have been Study of Automatas). Regular Languages are discussed there and the professor remarked that natural languages, such as English, are pretty much without exception, all Irregular Languages.

Which means... there's a much bigger proof behind irregular languages than regular languages... O_o

(Sorry, I'm contributing another useless post. Oh well)

[DarknessSavior]

And then you have the nonstandard ones, which fortunately are usually indicated with furigana. Yu-Gi-Oh! has plenty of fun cases of kanji being given English readings: 万魔殿 (パンディモニウム), 先史遺産 (オーパーツ), 超銀河眼の光子龍 (ネオ・ギャラクシーアイズ・フォトン・ドラゴン). Death Note has a more severe case in the infamous 夜神　月 (やがみ・ライト) - the proper reading of 月 is not only English, but tangentially connected with the kanji's actual meaning at best.

You're both missing my point. My point was that if you look at a word, and already know it's READING (on-yomi, kun-yomi, combination of both, or even whacky stuff like Ryusui posted) you know how to pronounce it. The only reason stuff like what Ryusui posted exists is usually for the benefit of the Japanese reader who might not know any English (for instance, "OOPart" means "Out of Place Artifact", the kanji reads "Prehistorical Artifact", pretty close).

And even when you have those crazy nonstandard stuff, like Ryusui said, you almost always have furigana, so you know how to pronounce it.

~DS

[SargeSmash]

I'd say it's the exact opposite. Well, it depends on your definition of "to learn" and "to master", really. At least for Germans (being in the same language family) it's usually very easy to acquire basic English skills, but bringing your proficiency up to the level of a native speaker is really hard.

I concur with English spelling being pretty random. While of course it's not really random, it just got this way over time. As French was mentioned earlier: In French, if you see an unknown word, in probably 99% (or even more) of the cases you know how to pronounce it, because its spelling is very systematic. With English, on the other hand, you NEVER know (especially if you're a non-native speaker like me). Some time ago, I read the word "facetious" (yes, here on RHDN; it's actually a pretty good place too learn new vocabulary and couldn't even imagine how it would be pronounced. Like a combination of "face" and the "cious" in "precious"? No, it's fəˈsiːʃəs. And that's just the tip of the iceberg.

By the way, in Germany everbody pronounces it "mah-nah" (with the As sounding a bit like in "car").

Quite possibly true.

As for pronunciation, it's not completely random, obviously, but it's random enough to cause fits unless you live and breathe it.  But most of the time, using basic phonics works.  Except for when it doesn't. 

"Facetious" is certainly one of the fun ones.  At least the "tious" makes sense.  But...  oh, that explains it.  We cribbed it from the French. 

[BRPXQZME]

Mah nah mah nah! *doot-doo-doo-doo-doo*

It took till the second page for someone to mention that.

I was very disappoint.

[Jorpho]

At least that makes sense.  When I was eleven years old, I insisted on pronouncing Faxanadu as FAX-UH-NAN-DOH.  Which makes no fucking sense whatsoever.

It looks like it might sort of rhyme with Nintendo? (Which in turn sort of makes sense, since Faxanadu is named in part after the Famicom.)
May 24, 2012, 06:47:47 pm - (Auto Merged - Double Posts are not allowed before 7 days.)

That's just wrong. French is much harder for one and I'm sure there are 50 others. Sure pronunciations can be complex, but the language itself is damn easy.

French?  The verbs are a good deal less irregular, I'm told.

[Spooniest]

Mana mana

[Ryusui]

Already done. But thanks for posting the link.

[Garoth Moulinoski]

Mana mana

Well, phooey. It doesn't want to show up in my tablet. For reason, the content owner blocked it for mobile devices. Wtf.

[DarknessSavior]

Try this one, it's much better quality anyway: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8N_tupPBtWQ&feature=related

~DS

[Garoth Moulinoski]

Try this one, it's much better quality anyway: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8N_tupPBtWQ&feature=related

~DS

Oh wow. How did I not get this...?!

[BRPXQZME]

sooo disappoint

[Validus]

it will always be MANNA to me. since my childhood interpretation

same with Ys will always be WYSE to me. Since that too was a childhood treasure me and my friends interpreted that and always will as WYSE

[Bregalad]

I've always heard that English is hard to learn, but easy to master.

In fact you should have mixed up, it is the exact opposite.

The english grammar is simpler than the vast majority of languages, which is why people all over the world speaks simple english and can communicate this way.

However mastering english, whith those complex pronuncations, word stress (something completely absent in french), long and short vowyels (completely absent in french too), no clue how to pronunce words if you haven't heard them first, and no clue how to write a word if you only hear it, is a very difficult thing.

[LostTemplar]

I have to add that I think every language is difficult to master. Even a lot of native speakers, be it German, English or any other language, don't speak their own language too well.

[MisterJones]

I was never able to learn arabic.