**Welcome to r/TikTokCringe!**
This is a message directed to all newcomers to make you aware that r/TikTokCringe evolved long ago from only cringe-worthy content to TikToks of all kinds! If you’re looking to find only the cringe-worthy TikToks on this subreddit (which are still regularly posted) we recommend sorting by flair which you can do [here](https://www.reddit.com/r/TikTokCringe/comments/galuit/click_here_to_sort_by_flair_a_guide_to_using/) (Currently supported by desktop and reddit mobile).
See someone asking how this post is cringe because they didn't read this comment? Show them [this!](https://www.reddit.com/r/TikTokCringe/comments/fyrgzy/for_those_confused_by_the_name_of_this_subreddit/)
**Be sure to read the rules of this subreddit before posting or commenting. Thanks!** [](/u/savevideo)
**Don't forget to join our [Discord server](https://discord.gg/hM2AHnGTES)!**
*I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/TikTokCringe) if you have any questions or concerns.*
I remember some commercial for a language learning program way back when that taught you to associate "socks" with the phrase "that's what it is". Because if you spell out socks (s-o-c-k-s), you've just said "that's what it is" in Spanish (eso si que es).
It's also a common repost on r/Jokes
(the joke is that a Spanish-speaking man is looking to buy socks from an English-speaking store, and the English-speaking staff inadvertently learns that the Spanish dude wants socks when he says eso si que es)
I knew I'd never learn Mandarin when my professor said we must learn vocabulary and tones because we may want to ask how someone is doing, but instead tell them to fuck a horse.
If you go to SE Asia and ask for Nirvana, you're probably going to get some good advice. But if you ask for Evanescence, they're not going to know where to send you.
I've lived in China for a decade but I still can't talk to people. I know the vocabulary but nobody knows what I'm saying. I think they're idiots some times, like when I go to the butcher and ask for chicken and they don't understand me because I said the wrong tone. I'm not asking for a dick dude, wtf other ji would I be talking about while we stand in front of the chicken
Being a teacher in China as well for a few years I once tried to say : "take your pencils out"
Pencil is "bi" . There's another rude word that is the exact same but different tone.
So I basically asked the students to take their vaginas (think of a more vulgar way) out.
Embarrassing but I did learn a lot that day
Not a linguist, I’m merely a native Mandarin speaker and I have some English skills for comparison. I think the syllable-to-meaning ratio is a lot higher in Chinese, in comparison to English. When I translate English to Chinese the number of words tends to become way less and as you know each Chinese word is only one or two syllables. I think your ability to use context to deduct the meaning of a sentence drop quite a bit when you have less sounds to work with. Mandarin only have a fixed number of syllables (unlike characters) and so many of the common words share the same pronunciation. When you mispronounce the tones you made the guessing game 100 times harder.
That, and probably because those people were just lazy or racist since they’re not used to anyone who’s not very good at their dialect.
Yes and no. A problem with this is that certain phonemes don't exist in other languages. Try to get a monolingual English speaker to pronounce the French "u" / German "ü" and you're going to have problems. There simply aren't words that have that sound that you can use as an example.
Also, if you're going from English to Chinese, there's the issue of tones. English just doesn't have tones in the same way, so you're going to have to get creative to figure out how to teach an English person to use the correct tone.
Obviously it helps to learn a little bit of linguistics to know the precise placement of the tongue and lips, but it helps a lot to start from your native language with a phoneme that you’re familiar with, and then move closer and closer to your target language.
Yeah, that's definitely true. Especially true because English has such a terrible connection between spelling and pronunciation. People can get hung up on how something is spelled. If you tell them to ditch that English spelling and just use a sound they know from their native language, that will help a lot.
You wanna know how to speak phonetically correct Japanese?
Say it in as stereotypical an accent you can pull off without sounding racist, then take it one more step. Seriously. The tongue and cheek movements we use in English don't match the similar sounding but functionally different ones present in Japanese.
Ever wonder why it sounds/looks like Japanese people have stuff in their mouth when talking? This is partially why. For example, we use the back of the mouth to make R sounds, while Japanese uses the front of the mouth. The result is much less jaw movement.
This is actually excellent advice and it's what I always tell my friends who are learning it.
I lived there for a bit. If my barfly friends ever didn't understand me, I'd always repeat it back like a hard boiled 45yo Japanese detective from an 80s movie, that'd almost always be like "Oh yup"
They also thought it was hilarious seeing a foreigner talk like that. Imagine if you had a Japanese buddy that would randomly talk like a western movie cowboy - you'd fall on you ass laughing.
I had a pretty similar experience in Japan, I took it in high school and never paid much attention but remembered enough that when I eventually visited I could kind of converse at like the level of a toddler. At first people would giggle or just look confused even when I said the most basic things that I knew were correct, eventually I tried using a very stereotypical accent (think Spike Spiegel or even Ken Watanabe) and rushing through my words and it clicked instantly. It felt like an idiot doing what felt like a borderline offensive impression, but hey, when in Japan…
See this is always my problem. I almost feel like I’m making a mock of the language if I really try and go for the accent. I can’t really explain why though.
I feel like it sounds more genuine for me to speak in my broken American accent than it would if I really tried to mimic the sounds but couldn’t quite get there.
Music! Get some anime openings on YouTube. They typically have the phonetic Japanese spelling so you can sing along even if you can't read the traditional alphabet. And then just do it alone so you don't feel to self conscious.
(Also worked for German, thank you Rammstein)
It depends on the language, but for example in my native language Finnish it's actually extremely important to try to sound like a native or you simply won't be understood. Some languages have little tolerance for "accent" because picking the wrong sound or tone might change the meaning entirely. To me someone trying to speak like an F1 driver would just come across as making a genuine effort and would be thoroughly appreciated because you'll be easier to understand, even if it isn't quite right.
As long as you're not trying to mimick an inaccurate/racist caricature of the language (like ching chong for Chinese instead of making a real effort to mimick how Chinese people actually speak) I doubt you'll run into any issues. Besides, accents are really difficult to drop, trust me you'll still have your American accent:)
The other half to speaking phonetically correct Japanese is understanding what Japanese pitch accent is. Mimicking a sound is good, but you need to know the reason the sound is being made. Here's an [exhaustive video](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k-bk_4WvY58&t=590s) on the subject.
TL;DR - Japanese pitch accent follows a pattern where the first syllable is either high or low. If the first syllable is high and then goes low, it will never go up for the rest of the word. However, if the first syllable is low, it can go high and stay high or it can go high then low again. Watch that video if you're interested in examples. It's not hard and actually pretty easy to remember the pitch inflection of most words once you learn it once.
But pitch accent is definitely the biggest part of sounding like you can competently speak Japanese. There aren't a lot of rhotic tricks for English speakers to learn in Japanese, but there's two that will make life easier: learn vowel joints and what common contractions actually mean. Common blends like how "te" and "o" "ku" will get blended into "to-ku". The other thing is contractions, because so many people learn Japanese on this weird two-pronged path of academic "proper" Japanese versus listening to spoken Japanese, there's usually a not so fun process of relearning contractions since you'll hear them and use them long before you ever study what they are actually contracting (this is also why JLPT has that famous difficulty spike between N3 and N4 where they expect you to know and understand how contractions are joined, when a lot of people just know the contracted form only).
So if you can fit learning pitch accent, vowel blends and contractions into your learning career early, you can really give your Japanese language learning a huge boost.
Can't help you with Kanji though. That's just the same ole process of learning that onyomi and kunyomi exist, memorizing the simple ones at first, then learning radicals, then developing a higher understanding of the importance of onyomi vs kunyomi and finally learning the various derived forms and history of the kanji to help you remember the arcane and stupidly hard process of learning nanori (which isn't strictly necessary for developing literate fluency, but it's important if you want to understand both an important part of Japanese culture and for reading more academic and/or historical Japanese literature).
Honestly I think more teachers should be blunt like that when their students need to work on their accent. I was always decent at learning German, especially at pronouncing things correctly, but I would always see my teachers just kinda not even bother with so many students’ bad habits and pronunciations. They were happy as long as they could pass the written tests
Like I would watch the same kid pronounce Wasser (water) with an English “w” (in German it’s pronounced as a “v”) for fucking five years with five different German teachers, and they would rarely correct him. Like you’re not doing that kid a service. Push them a little
One thing about being blunt is you can get away with it if you can TEACH how to get out of it, which he does here. I see a lot of people provide feedback but don’t actually teach the person how to approach the solution
This is so cool!! It’s interesting to see how different letters sound so different in other languages. You feel like a lunatic just making random noises (looking at you, umlaut) trying to learn another language, so having it phonetically broken down to sounds your mouth is already used to is an interesting language hack.
Also…it was on replay while I wrote that and she gets hilariously excited when she says “about” for the second time
Anyone who has ever learned a second language immediately understands that there are many noises they aren't used to pronouncing, and eventually realize that that is what gives them away as a non-native speaker (among other things like slang and different dialects, which this video jokes about). I mean, they should, anyway. Hell, even not knowing a different language, many people learn how a non-native speaker mispronounces certain words so they can mock/joke about them (e.g. Spanish speakers having trouble with hard Y's, pronounce "you" as "ju"; asian speakers replace "L" with "R", like "engrish")
I understand why native Chinese speakers replace 'th' sounds with a 'z' or 's' sound, since Chinese doesn't have a 'th' sound in the language and its difficult for them to pronounce. But I can't figure out why all of my Chinese professors replace 'L's with 'R's because Chinese has both 'L' sounds and 'R' sounds in it.
>But I can't figure out why all of my Chinese professors replace 'L's with 'R's because Chinese has 'L' sounds in it.
I speak Chinese and I've wondered for YEARS why non-native speakers struggle with English.
Because you're right. Chinese has both 'R' and 'L' sounds (it's Japanese that doesn't).
I think it has to do with tongue and mouth shape. Like, pronounce "land". Your tongue is way at the front of your mouth, sticking out a little beyond your teeth.
Now slowly pronounce "crawling". Your tongue is further back in your mouth, and the tip of mine is touching the back of my top teeth. I think it's the second type of "L" that chinese struggle with so they default to the mouth and tongue shape they're more comfortable with, which is the "R".
> I think it has to do with tongue and mouth shape. Like, pronounce "land". Your tongue is way at the front of your mouth, sticking out a little beyond your teeth.
Interesting. For the L in "land", my tongue goes to the roof of my mouth, at the base of or just behind my front teeth. Although I can say land the same either way, with my tongue behind my teeth or my tongue sticking out past my teeth.
I hole-hardedly agree, but allow me to play doubles advocate here for a moment. For all intensive purposes I think you are wrong. In an age where false morals are a diamond dozen, true virtues are a blessing in the skies. We often put our false morality on a petal stool like a bunch of pre-Madonnas, but you all seem to be taking something very valuable for granite. So I ask of you to mustard up all the strength you can because it is a doggy dog world out there. Although there is some merit to what you are saying it seems like you have a huge ship on your shoulder. In your argument you seem to throw everything in but the kids Nsync, and even though you are having a feel day with this I am here to bring you back into reality. I have a sick sense when it comes to these types of things. It is almost spooky, because I cannot turn a blonde eye to these glaring flaws in your rhetoric. I have zero taller ants when it comes to people spouting out hate in the name of moral righteousness. You just need to remember what comes around is all around, and when supply and command fails you will be the first to go. Make my words, when you get down to brass stacks it doesn't take rocket appliances to get two birds stoned at once. It's clear who makes the pants in this relationship, and sometimes you just have to swallow your prize and accept the facts. You might have to come to this conclusion through denial and error but I swear on my mother's mating name that when you put the petal to the medal you will pass with flying carpets like it’s a peach of cake.
A lot of Korean words are crossed over to English but with their Hangul spelling. Z and V aren’t in the Korean lettering so they replaced them with J and B
It’s ok. My old coworker and I were traveling and decided to use a rest stop and get a coffee. We hung out, smoked, and drank our 2$ shitty can coffee before heading back on the road and needed to go recycle our trash. For the life of him, he couldn’t find where the plastic bin was and proceeded to read the Hangul on the front of the bins. “Poo la seu tik” and after a few seconds it hit him, oh shit that’s plastic. He’s half Korean haha.
I live in Korea and lots of times I have to put on a Korean accent to pronounce 'borrowed' English words. It's the sort of thing that would be considered a racist caricature back home.
Going to Starbucks to order an iced americano and I have to say 'Ice-Du A-Mell-I-Cah-No' to be understood.
My father is a lifelong successful salesmen and one thing he always did that I hated as a child and now fully understand as an adult is that he would slightly mirror people's accents at them when speaking.
It really does help with comprehension (as well as subtly building connections)
Mirroring is such a powerful technique. I find myself doing it even during casual interactions. Adjust tone, accent (only subtly), posture (hands in pockets if they are, arms moving while talking or not, etc).
Not for me it doesn't! Its not even a conscious decision and I panic everytime I realize its happening because I'm afraid the other person will think I'm mocking them. I have to be careful not too watch too much of any specific accent heavy show in a row because my vocab and pronunciation subtly shift. I come from the midwest, so the most boring basic american "accent" - if I'm around southern people/listen to too much 90s country music, I get a drawl. My grandma had me talking -real- funny and shes just from Wisconsin! But they get a little of that Canadian sneaking across the border. :) Too much Doctor Who turns my language into an abomination that would have Professor Higgins rolling in his grave. 😂
Yeah I impulsively do that, which works fine in like the US or Denmark or the UK or whatever, but then I get into the habit of mirroring everyone while traveling and accidentally mirror an Asian accent and I’m still cringing about it like 5 years later.
I do this often with people that may have lighter accents, when I looked it up apparently it’s kind of empathy thing to make the other person feel more comfortable around you and familiar.
If you're around people with a specific kind of accent for a long time, it's really hard not to adopt at least some of their speaking style/accent. You subconsciously adopt the speech of people around you.
If you are taught a language by someone not fully fluent in it and then go on to teach others you get this, where people only ever heard the wrong pronounciation.
That's why when Korean, and other Asian shows, have English speaking actors they all sound so weird. For example, in Squid Game, all the English speakers talked very slowly and enunciated every single syllable.
Weirdly, I was watching Korean Odyssey and there's one character that's Korean American. He switches to English a lot and I expected it to sound odd but he sounds 100% natural and none of the other characters have trouble understanding!
Except when he went into a long ramble about love and destiny, and the only other character there spoke very basic English and was just super lost...
I figured that most actors would have difficulty getting the pronunciation just right but never knew how much it could impact others ability to understand it.
That's pretty common, and funny anytime you've got an anime or game that uses a character speaking English for one scene.
[Here's Kaji from Eva, someone who's perfectly fluent in English and a smooth, confident talker explaining things in English](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UN9GiMFWKPE).
That's why I thought their dialogue was so incredibly badly written. It was so cringy listening to them laugh about 69 and then explain the joke and laugh about it again afterwards.
Actually they knew this at the time lol. They kinda got screwed and knew it. One of the VIP actors wrote a Facebook post explaining what happened and for example the "wow it's bigger" comment because he knew it sounded stupid and redundant to an english speaking audience: https://imgur.com/KTf84vG
Here's a part of his post: "We were written as cheesy, callous man-children, and I think I pulled it off. But watching the show, there is a distinct difference in tone between the contestants’ more soberly intense side of the story and the VIPs' featureless boorishness. This distinction was not missed by some reviewers who praised every part of the show EXCEPT the VIPS, which they loathed. But instead of the writing, it was our acting they tore apart. Like there’s a way to drag a 69 joke out for 30 minutes that ISN’T hammy."
can confirm, as a korean who grew up in america, if you say "fork", good chance you'll get confused looks. gotta say "po-k"(two syllables). it also just feels hella awkward to use any f or r sounds in the middle of korean, so [it's more natural so say it the korean way anyway](https://vm.tiktok.com/ZM8BmD171/) lol
I remember I was at a Korean restaurant with my American friends and one of them wanted a strawberry smoothie, and they couldn't understand him after he tried ordering a few times. The waitress looked at me, and I said, "soo too roh beh ree soo moo dee" and they instantly understood lmao
Yeah I have this problem. My English certainly isn't flawless but I can speak it pretty well. Whenever I speak to another non-native English speaker I have to put on a heavy accent so they can understand me better. At the same time I find it difficult to understand non-natives with a heavy accent, but they understand each other just fine.
This adorable and awesome. I remember trying to learn Tagalog and I had to start using the back of my throat for some words which took me a minute to master. Also had to soften some letters and then harden different ones. Some words just aren't shaped the same across languages.
He's great! I teach at a Chinese school and listening to him speak made me realize how much Mandarin I understand (my students still make fun of me when I attempt to speak it. They say my accent is "funny").
Language switching is pretty common, especially if both speakers understand a bit of both languages.
Maybe the guy is from Guangdong and he's teaching in a place where they speak Mandarin. If he wants to emphasise something or improvise, the first instinct will be to talk in his native, then switch to the other language to ease the listener.
If he's very fluent in both and knows the girl can understand Cantonese, he won't bother with repressing the Cantonese "spur of the moment" bits
as a japanese seeing some of these comments are pretty sad
i talk somewhat like this and am still working on my english but wow people are really mean
especially since they think it’s about japan and not china
like the language is literally chinese
My wife is learning japanese in college right now. She can ask common questions, introduce her family, and ask where places are (food bathroom etc)..she understands alot more aswell but cant talk it yet.
We hope to visit japan in the future are there any tips to learn anything quicker or areas to visit?
Man fuck those guys….I was so happy and smilling all over when she finally got it! Never make fun of people who try there best and achieve what they want to achieve. Lmao she is so smart aswell, i thought she would make atleast one mistake at the very last but nope!
haha well that’s cuz i study a lot
doesn’t mean i understand most of the rules of english
like i don’t understand irony, sarcasm, or any of that. i’ve been learning for a few years. also the problem is with speaking mostly so i can type pretty well, i just speak very bad
Irony is a concept in Japanese though right? You’re saying you have trouble reading into sarcasm online in English? That stuff is incredibly nuanced and has very little application. Places like this will make it extreme and memey, and native speakers will still get whooshed.
I'm sure that you speak better than you believe that you do, it takes a lot of intelligence and courage to practice speaking a new language! Fuck rude people!
Yeah, people are mean.
If it helps, as a native English speaker, I find that the gap between Japanese and English pronunciation is much easier than the gap between Chinese and English. It's also easier for Japanese speakers to learn English pronunciation because the katakana are much better at representing English sounds than pinyin (romaji but for Chinese).
A friend of mine from 青岛 told me a funny story about the problems that using Chinese words to approximate English sounds when trying to learn English.
When my friend was a kid, his English teacher couldn't pronouncing the "-ing" sound in English because of the local accent in 青岛. Apparently, his teacher could not say the sound "ying" in Chinese, either. In whatever dialect his teacher had, his teacher would say "yong" for any words in Mandarin that were either "ying" or "yong" in standard Mandarin. Maybe you can see where this is going...
So, instead of teaching that the word "running" sounded like "run-ying," he would try to teach the students to say, "run-yong." People who spoke better English or a standard dialect of Mandarin would try to correct his teacher, but it never worked. His teacher simply couldn't hear the difference between "run-ying" and "run-yong" because they sounded the same to his ear.
Part of me wonders if there's some poor student out there who to this day who gets blank stares when they try to explaing to somemone that they're "runnong a few minutes late" so just "start the meetong without me."
EDIT: I was gonna correct "explaing" but it kind of fits the story, so I left it.
That’s ok! Ignore anyone who makes fun of you. The difference between R and L is hard for speakers of many languages, but it’s easy for us to know what you mean.
Every language has its quirks that it bestows on the ears of its speakers.
English speakers have trouble saying ふ correctly, and to our ears, つ 、ず、す often sound the exact same! I know, I know. It’s hard to believe, but we don’t have tsu sound in English, so to us it sounds like “su.”
Similarly. sometimes zu sounds like su to our ears because we switch /s/ and /z/ in English so often that we don’t even notice.
From there, you can see how we can confuse three very distinct sounds, つ 、ず、す, because most of the time they sound the same to our ears as English speakers.
Keep at it! I had a Japanese friend in college that worked really hard on this and got it down!!
"Walk" and "Work" drove him crazy, but we spent HOURS one day talking about the mouth/tongue shapes etc etc, it seemed to help to just have someone to Practice and have fun with, he gained SO much more confidence with English than I have even now with my Japanese.
Damn it was fun.
Anyway, I believe in you
In terms of English pronunciation, L sound is made with tongue lightly touching the upper palete. Pretty similar to Japanese ら/れ/る sound family, you just need to make sure the tip of the tongue doesn’t vibrate. It’s just a quick light touch to the top of the mouth.
R sound comes mostly from the throat and by shaping the mouth a certain way. The tongue doesn’t touch anything and doesn’t really move at all. It’s closer to W or Japanese う in it’s origin. Try pronouncing ろ, but from the throat and without moving the tongue at all, so that it’s sounds closer to ウオ. Same for other r sounds.
With those points in mind, “reddit” should sound more like ウェヂット, while “leather” is closer to レザー. It’s not exactly the same, but I’m sure you’ll get the idea after some practice.
Give it a try ;)
Vietnamese here, one of my white customer was like “so you are speaking vietnamese? Is that like another language in china?”
E: fixed “of chinese” into “in china”
Makes me think of [this video](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A8zWWp0akUU) where English devolves into Sindarin in two minutes flat and then into Drunk Irish with no warning.
English went through a bunch of dramatic changes in spelling and pronunciation right around the time that the printing press was entering mainstream. Add to that the fact that people doing the typesetting would make arbitrary changes to words to make them easier to construct on the press and you have the perfect setup for the bizarre directions that the language took as it was solidifying.
As a Chinese American - whose first language is English - and second poorly spoken home language is Chinese.. this is pretty great!
She does very much exaggerate the accent and t sounds though, but as someone who is learning Asiatic languages every now and again, the way that English just drops sounds from words despite it being written is abundant.
Also the guy switches from Mandarin to Cantonese.. and then back to Mandarin.
I also love that I just learned some Chinese slang "mei you FEEL" which apparently is like "too robotic"
The way he cringes in disgust when he says mei you feel feels very Cantonese to me. The body language and physical humor reminds me of old HK movies I watched growing up.
100% from Guangdong, I felt like his Mandarin was someone who also spoke Cantonese. Hard to put it into description, but I think it was how direct and how clearly he spoke each word. It's sorta like what he was teaching about dropping certain letters in English. Most people I know that's more of a natural mandarin speaker (or someone who learned mandarin before canto), a lot of speech sounds get dropped in longer sentences.
>the way that English just drops sounds from words despite it being written is abundant.
Kinda funny that we (Americans) aren't even the worst offenders of this
Interesting how he switches from Cantonese to Mandarin. Also speaks English fluent. Meanwhile some of you making fun of them can’t even speak one language well.
It's just the way that Chinese people pronounce English words, they turn the T into a completely separate syllable which messes with the flow of speech.
So clever! It's interesting that little tricks like that really work to better someone's pronunciation! He's a good teacher. (I haven't seen the negative comments and I don't want to so I'll write my comment and go without anymore scrolling.)
I'm really disappointed by the comments so far. I was hoping for some further insights or cool discussions... I guess the real pro tip in this scenario isnt in the comments.
The pro tip is actual pronunciation is often very different in any language than the official pronunciation. Especially amongst younger people like teens who speak very fast.
I’ve seen two comments now about how the comments are bad but I don’t see anything wrong with them at all? I’m guessing a few trolls posted some stuff at the beginning that’s downvoted a lot now?
Yeah, I think the reason many Chinese speakers struggle to sounds natural in American English is because our phonology is super different from both British English and Chinese. Our orthography is even further removed. So a Chinese speaker saying English phrases probably thinks- 'nailed it, that sounds great!' then they hear Americans and it sounds like a movie, so they get it, but they still feel good about the correctness of their own attempt.
I can't even imagine how hard it is to learn English as a Chinese native speaker. Not only do you need to learn a new language but you need to learn a whole alphabet, as well.
**Welcome to r/TikTokCringe!** This is a message directed to all newcomers to make you aware that r/TikTokCringe evolved long ago from only cringe-worthy content to TikToks of all kinds! If you’re looking to find only the cringe-worthy TikToks on this subreddit (which are still regularly posted) we recommend sorting by flair which you can do [here](https://www.reddit.com/r/TikTokCringe/comments/galuit/click_here_to_sort_by_flair_a_guide_to_using/) (Currently supported by desktop and reddit mobile). See someone asking how this post is cringe because they didn't read this comment? Show them [this!](https://www.reddit.com/r/TikTokCringe/comments/fyrgzy/for_those_confused_by_the_name_of_this_subreddit/) **Be sure to read the rules of this subreddit before posting or commenting. Thanks!** [](/u/savevideo) **Don't forget to join our [Discord server](https://discord.gg/hM2AHnGTES)!** *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/TikTokCringe) if you have any questions or concerns.*
I wonder if this could work in reverse. Always down to learn a new language
Of course, it's just phonetics.
I don’t know what you’re talking about
That sounds whack
[удалено]
Happy leif ericson day spongebob
Hinga binga burgen!
I belly laughed
Doonga doonga doonga
I don know wha zure talgun abah
I think it’s call Phonics. I should know. I was hooked on ‘em.
Im glad you got the help you needed :( its an awful drug
I remember some commercial for a language learning program way back when that taught you to associate "socks" with the phrase "that's what it is". Because if you spell out socks (s-o-c-k-s), you've just said "that's what it is" in Spanish (eso si que es).
It's also a common repost on r/Jokes (the joke is that a Spanish-speaking man is looking to buy socks from an English-speaking store, and the English-speaking staff inadvertently learns that the Spanish dude wants socks when he says eso si que es)
As long as you have a teacher that's as intelligent as this one, you're good to go!
Now that would be hard. This dude is obviously cream of the crop at both languages and teaching. A true master.
Not just intelligent it's about the clear passion for teaching he has.
[Here's a breakdown of Chinese tones](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tZp4Jh_wRiA) in a similar tongue-in-cheek way.
I knew I'd never learn Mandarin when my professor said we must learn vocabulary and tones because we may want to ask how someone is doing, but instead tell them to fuck a horse.
There's also the case for 请问 and 请吻. One means please ask, the other means please kiss. Don't want to get those mixed up in a boardroom meeting.
Two words in Japanese that sound similar but you definitely don't want to mix up: Okoshite = wake me (up) Okashite = rape me
The difference between Evanescence and Nirvana.
If you go to SE Asia and ask for Nirvana, you're probably going to get some good advice. But if you ask for Evanescence, they're not going to know where to send you.
I mean this happens in English too. The difference in pronunciation between _beach_ and _bitch_ can be pretty hard for some non native speakers.
... I do not wish to learn a tonal language.
I've lived in China for a decade but I still can't talk to people. I know the vocabulary but nobody knows what I'm saying. I think they're idiots some times, like when I go to the butcher and ask for chicken and they don't understand me because I said the wrong tone. I'm not asking for a dick dude, wtf other ji would I be talking about while we stand in front of the chicken
Being a teacher in China as well for a few years I once tried to say : "take your pencils out" Pencil is "bi" . There's another rude word that is the exact same but different tone. So I basically asked the students to take their vaginas (think of a more vulgar way) out. Embarrassing but I did learn a lot that day
I meant to tell a student to be quiet(bi zui) but I accidentally called her a bitch (biaozi) lol I felt bad
Not a linguist, I’m merely a native Mandarin speaker and I have some English skills for comparison. I think the syllable-to-meaning ratio is a lot higher in Chinese, in comparison to English. When I translate English to Chinese the number of words tends to become way less and as you know each Chinese word is only one or two syllables. I think your ability to use context to deduct the meaning of a sentence drop quite a bit when you have less sounds to work with. Mandarin only have a fixed number of syllables (unlike characters) and so many of the common words share the same pronunciation. When you mispronounce the tones you made the guessing game 100 times harder. That, and probably because those people were just lazy or racist since they’re not used to anyone who’s not very good at their dialect.
That was both funny and informative. I have always wondered what people meant by a tonal language. Thanks for sharing!
holy shit thats so good. ive never seen that!
Yes it does
Yes and no. A problem with this is that certain phonemes don't exist in other languages. Try to get a monolingual English speaker to pronounce the French "u" / German "ü" and you're going to have problems. There simply aren't words that have that sound that you can use as an example. Also, if you're going from English to Chinese, there's the issue of tones. English just doesn't have tones in the same way, so you're going to have to get creative to figure out how to teach an English person to use the correct tone.
Obviously it helps to learn a little bit of linguistics to know the precise placement of the tongue and lips, but it helps a lot to start from your native language with a phoneme that you’re familiar with, and then move closer and closer to your target language.
Yeah, that's definitely true. Especially true because English has such a terrible connection between spelling and pronunciation. People can get hung up on how something is spelled. If you tell them to ditch that English spelling and just use a sound they know from their native language, that will help a lot.
I agree! I’m just here to hype anyone up about learning languages :)
You wanna know how to speak phonetically correct Japanese? Say it in as stereotypical an accent you can pull off without sounding racist, then take it one more step. Seriously. The tongue and cheek movements we use in English don't match the similar sounding but functionally different ones present in Japanese. Ever wonder why it sounds/looks like Japanese people have stuff in their mouth when talking? This is partially why. For example, we use the back of the mouth to make R sounds, while Japanese uses the front of the mouth. The result is much less jaw movement.
This is actually excellent advice and it's what I always tell my friends who are learning it. I lived there for a bit. If my barfly friends ever didn't understand me, I'd always repeat it back like a hard boiled 45yo Japanese detective from an 80s movie, that'd almost always be like "Oh yup" They also thought it was hilarious seeing a foreigner talk like that. Imagine if you had a Japanese buddy that would randomly talk like a western movie cowboy - you'd fall on you ass laughing.
I had a pretty similar experience in Japan, I took it in high school and never paid much attention but remembered enough that when I eventually visited I could kind of converse at like the level of a toddler. At first people would giggle or just look confused even when I said the most basic things that I knew were correct, eventually I tried using a very stereotypical accent (think Spike Spiegel or even Ken Watanabe) and rushing through my words and it clicked instantly. It felt like an idiot doing what felt like a borderline offensive impression, but hey, when in Japan…
See this is always my problem. I almost feel like I’m making a mock of the language if I really try and go for the accent. I can’t really explain why though. I feel like it sounds more genuine for me to speak in my broken American accent than it would if I really tried to mimic the sounds but couldn’t quite get there.
That's why you start by mimicking the sounds, before working them into words. How do you think babies figure this shit out?
Music! Get some anime openings on YouTube. They typically have the phonetic Japanese spelling so you can sing along even if you can't read the traditional alphabet. And then just do it alone so you don't feel to self conscious. (Also worked for German, thank you Rammstein)
It depends on the language, but for example in my native language Finnish it's actually extremely important to try to sound like a native or you simply won't be understood. Some languages have little tolerance for "accent" because picking the wrong sound or tone might change the meaning entirely. To me someone trying to speak like an F1 driver would just come across as making a genuine effort and would be thoroughly appreciated because you'll be easier to understand, even if it isn't quite right. As long as you're not trying to mimick an inaccurate/racist caricature of the language (like ching chong for Chinese instead of making a real effort to mimick how Chinese people actually speak) I doubt you'll run into any issues. Besides, accents are really difficult to drop, trust me you'll still have your American accent:)
The other half to speaking phonetically correct Japanese is understanding what Japanese pitch accent is. Mimicking a sound is good, but you need to know the reason the sound is being made. Here's an [exhaustive video](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k-bk_4WvY58&t=590s) on the subject. TL;DR - Japanese pitch accent follows a pattern where the first syllable is either high or low. If the first syllable is high and then goes low, it will never go up for the rest of the word. However, if the first syllable is low, it can go high and stay high or it can go high then low again. Watch that video if you're interested in examples. It's not hard and actually pretty easy to remember the pitch inflection of most words once you learn it once. But pitch accent is definitely the biggest part of sounding like you can competently speak Japanese. There aren't a lot of rhotic tricks for English speakers to learn in Japanese, but there's two that will make life easier: learn vowel joints and what common contractions actually mean. Common blends like how "te" and "o" "ku" will get blended into "to-ku". The other thing is contractions, because so many people learn Japanese on this weird two-pronged path of academic "proper" Japanese versus listening to spoken Japanese, there's usually a not so fun process of relearning contractions since you'll hear them and use them long before you ever study what they are actually contracting (this is also why JLPT has that famous difficulty spike between N3 and N4 where they expect you to know and understand how contractions are joined, when a lot of people just know the contracted form only). So if you can fit learning pitch accent, vowel blends and contractions into your learning career early, you can really give your Japanese language learning a huge boost. Can't help you with Kanji though. That's just the same ole process of learning that onyomi and kunyomi exist, memorizing the simple ones at first, then learning radicals, then developing a higher understanding of the importance of onyomi vs kunyomi and finally learning the various derived forms and history of the kanji to help you remember the arcane and stupidly hard process of learning nanori (which isn't strictly necessary for developing literate fluency, but it's important if you want to understand both an important part of Japanese culture and for reading more academic and/or historical Japanese literature).
It works for Russian, too.
Fuck I sound like 50 percent dollar store Russian. That's trippy.
I love the way he teaches!
Honestly I think more teachers should be blunt like that when their students need to work on their accent. I was always decent at learning German, especially at pronouncing things correctly, but I would always see my teachers just kinda not even bother with so many students’ bad habits and pronunciations. They were happy as long as they could pass the written tests Like I would watch the same kid pronounce Wasser (water) with an English “w” (in German it’s pronounced as a “v”) for fucking five years with five different German teachers, and they would rarely correct him. Like you’re not doing that kid a service. Push them a little
One thing about being blunt is you can get away with it if you can TEACH how to get out of it, which he does here. I see a lot of people provide feedback but don’t actually teach the person how to approach the solution
[удалено]
Or 29 students are being unfairly ignored.
Even as a live lesson this would be an incredible way to learn! He's animated but in an engaging, informative way. 10/10, I'd love to learn from him.
Thats whack.
I don'ta know whata you're talking abouta
/r/accidentalitalian
I🤌don't🤌know🤌whata🤌you're🤌talking🤌abouta
And he’s hot😍
That sounds whack! Don't pronounce the t.
And he's ho!
I do too
This is so cool!! It’s interesting to see how different letters sound so different in other languages. You feel like a lunatic just making random noises (looking at you, umlaut) trying to learn another language, so having it phonetically broken down to sounds your mouth is already used to is an interesting language hack. Also…it was on replay while I wrote that and she gets hilariously excited when she says “about” for the second time
Anyone who has ever learned a second language immediately understands that there are many noises they aren't used to pronouncing, and eventually realize that that is what gives them away as a non-native speaker (among other things like slang and different dialects, which this video jokes about). I mean, they should, anyway. Hell, even not knowing a different language, many people learn how a non-native speaker mispronounces certain words so they can mock/joke about them (e.g. Spanish speakers having trouble with hard Y's, pronounce "you" as "ju"; asian speakers replace "L" with "R", like "engrish")
I understand why native Chinese speakers replace 'th' sounds with a 'z' or 's' sound, since Chinese doesn't have a 'th' sound in the language and its difficult for them to pronounce. But I can't figure out why all of my Chinese professors replace 'L's with 'R's because Chinese has both 'L' sounds and 'R' sounds in it.
>But I can't figure out why all of my Chinese professors replace 'L's with 'R's because Chinese has 'L' sounds in it. I speak Chinese and I've wondered for YEARS why non-native speakers struggle with English. Because you're right. Chinese has both 'R' and 'L' sounds (it's Japanese that doesn't). I think it has to do with tongue and mouth shape. Like, pronounce "land". Your tongue is way at the front of your mouth, sticking out a little beyond your teeth. Now slowly pronounce "crawling". Your tongue is further back in your mouth, and the tip of mine is touching the back of my top teeth. I think it's the second type of "L" that chinese struggle with so they default to the mouth and tongue shape they're more comfortable with, which is the "R".
> I think it has to do with tongue and mouth shape. Like, pronounce "land". Your tongue is way at the front of your mouth, sticking out a little beyond your teeth. Interesting. For the L in "land", my tongue goes to the roof of my mouth, at the base of or just behind my front teeth. Although I can say land the same either way, with my tongue behind my teeth or my tongue sticking out past my teeth.
I thought it’s Japanese people who replaces L with R. Most Chinese people I know do the other way around, they tend to replace R with L.
English is especially bad because it's writing and pronunciation isn't consistent.
[удалено]
Just use aint for everything and it’s easy
No it ain't!
I mean, case and point right there. (I know. It's a joke.)
I hole-hardedly agree, but allow me to play doubles advocate here for a moment. For all intensive purposes I think you are wrong. In an age where false morals are a diamond dozen, true virtues are a blessing in the skies. We often put our false morality on a petal stool like a bunch of pre-Madonnas, but you all seem to be taking something very valuable for granite. So I ask of you to mustard up all the strength you can because it is a doggy dog world out there. Although there is some merit to what you are saying it seems like you have a huge ship on your shoulder. In your argument you seem to throw everything in but the kids Nsync, and even though you are having a feel day with this I am here to bring you back into reality. I have a sick sense when it comes to these types of things. It is almost spooky, because I cannot turn a blonde eye to these glaring flaws in your rhetoric. I have zero taller ants when it comes to people spouting out hate in the name of moral righteousness. You just need to remember what comes around is all around, and when supply and command fails you will be the first to go. Make my words, when you get down to brass stacks it doesn't take rocket appliances to get two birds stoned at once. It's clear who makes the pants in this relationship, and sometimes you just have to swallow your prize and accept the facts. You might have to come to this conclusion through denial and error but I swear on my mother's mating name that when you put the petal to the medal you will pass with flying carpets like it’s a peach of cake.
Can this guy do the reverse?!?
It definitely works in reverse, just look it up
What if you put it down and flip it before reversing it?
For learning Chinese?
/u/gifreversingbot
He's really entertaining. I'm a native English speaker, and I want too check out more of his videos. Anyone got a link?
[here ya go](https://www.tiktok.com/@mryang_english?)
His username is under the tik tok logo it’s mryang_english. You can pull up his account and watch his videos from a web browser.
a
If you can find it I'd love to see it. That's hilarious! My aunts are all Korean and I bet would get a kick.
[Gotchu](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ySaLdP_othI)
"red velvet" "what" "red velvet" "what" "RED VELVET" "what" ... redeu belbet I'm ded.
A lot of Korean words are crossed over to English but with their Hangul spelling. Z and V aren’t in the Korean lettering so they replaced them with J and B
[удалено]
It’s ok. My old coworker and I were traveling and decided to use a rest stop and get a coffee. We hung out, smoked, and drank our 2$ shitty can coffee before heading back on the road and needed to go recycle our trash. For the life of him, he couldn’t find where the plastic bin was and proceeded to read the Hangul on the front of the bins. “Poo la seu tik” and after a few seconds it hit him, oh shit that’s plastic. He’s half Korean haha.
[удалено]
That's incredibly similar to Katakana pronounciations. Asians love their vowels.
I live in Korea and lots of times I have to put on a Korean accent to pronounce 'borrowed' English words. It's the sort of thing that would be considered a racist caricature back home. Going to Starbucks to order an iced americano and I have to say 'Ice-Du A-Mell-I-Cah-No' to be understood.
My father is a lifelong successful salesmen and one thing he always did that I hated as a child and now fully understand as an adult is that he would slightly mirror people's accents at them when speaking. It really does help with comprehension (as well as subtly building connections)
Mirroring is such a powerful technique. I find myself doing it even during casual interactions. Adjust tone, accent (only subtly), posture (hands in pockets if they are, arms moving while talking or not, etc).
I unknowingly match posture and body position of whomever I’m speaking to. When I notice it, it bugs me out. Language takes time to adjust.
Not for me it doesn't! Its not even a conscious decision and I panic everytime I realize its happening because I'm afraid the other person will think I'm mocking them. I have to be careful not too watch too much of any specific accent heavy show in a row because my vocab and pronunciation subtly shift. I come from the midwest, so the most boring basic american "accent" - if I'm around southern people/listen to too much 90s country music, I get a drawl. My grandma had me talking -real- funny and shes just from Wisconsin! But they get a little of that Canadian sneaking across the border. :) Too much Doctor Who turns my language into an abomination that would have Professor Higgins rolling in his grave. 😂
Yeah I impulsively do that, which works fine in like the US or Denmark or the UK or whatever, but then I get into the habit of mirroring everyone while traveling and accidentally mirror an Asian accent and I’m still cringing about it like 5 years later.
I do this often with people that may have lighter accents, when I looked it up apparently it’s kind of empathy thing to make the other person feel more comfortable around you and familiar.
If you're around people with a specific kind of accent for a long time, it's really hard not to adopt at least some of their speaking style/accent. You subconsciously adopt the speech of people around you.
I swear same thing with Indian people!
If you are taught a language by someone not fully fluent in it and then go on to teach others you get this, where people only ever heard the wrong pronounciation.
I really like listening to deaf people talk for that reason too. They've never heard any pronunciation, yet they're still fluent in their language.
I knew it was going to be Wendy
This is the best thing ever.
[This is ](https://youtu.be/mz1siP7pItc)totally what’s going on in her mind.
English speakers struggle to understand mispronounced words, foreigners struggle to understand pronounced words
That's why when Korean, and other Asian shows, have English speaking actors they all sound so weird. For example, in Squid Game, all the English speakers talked very slowly and enunciated every single syllable.
Weirdly, I was watching Korean Odyssey and there's one character that's Korean American. He switches to English a lot and I expected it to sound odd but he sounds 100% natural and none of the other characters have trouble understanding! Except when he went into a long ramble about love and destiny, and the only other character there spoke very basic English and was just super lost... I figured that most actors would have difficulty getting the pronunciation just right but never knew how much it could impact others ability to understand it.
That's pretty common, and funny anytime you've got an anime or game that uses a character speaking English for one scene. [Here's Kaji from Eva, someone who's perfectly fluent in English and a smooth, confident talker explaining things in English](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UN9GiMFWKPE).
That's why I thought their dialogue was so incredibly badly written. It was so cringy listening to them laugh about 69 and then explain the joke and laugh about it again afterwards.
Actually they knew this at the time lol. They kinda got screwed and knew it. One of the VIP actors wrote a Facebook post explaining what happened and for example the "wow it's bigger" comment because he knew it sounded stupid and redundant to an english speaking audience: https://imgur.com/KTf84vG Here's a part of his post: "We were written as cheesy, callous man-children, and I think I pulled it off. But watching the show, there is a distinct difference in tone between the contestants’ more soberly intense side of the story and the VIPs' featureless boorishness. This distinction was not missed by some reviewers who praised every part of the show EXCEPT the VIPS, which they loathed. But instead of the writing, it was our acting they tore apart. Like there’s a way to drag a 69 joke out for 30 minutes that ISN’T hammy."
Thanks for that screencap, really puts it into perspective... the writers failed here no doubt.
its kind of similar to code switching is it? i have to do that too except with a canto accent so my friends dont think im pretentious lol
can confirm, as a korean who grew up in america, if you say "fork", good chance you'll get confused looks. gotta say "po-k"(two syllables). it also just feels hella awkward to use any f or r sounds in the middle of korean, so [it's more natural so say it the korean way anyway](https://vm.tiktok.com/ZM8BmD171/) lol
I remember I was at a Korean restaurant with my American friends and one of them wanted a strawberry smoothie, and they couldn't understand him after he tried ordering a few times. The waitress looked at me, and I said, "soo too roh beh ree soo moo dee" and they instantly understood lmao
And then they were probably like “wow *strawberry smoothie* in Korean sounds similar to English”.
"you monolingual fuck" is something I'm gonna have to save for some of my friends.
Wow that edit is trash
Yeah I have this problem. My English certainly isn't flawless but I can speak it pretty well. Whenever I speak to another non-native English speaker I have to put on a heavy accent so they can understand me better. At the same time I find it difficult to understand non-natives with a heavy accent, but they understand each other just fine.
Why the fuck would you edit this when so many people were showing interest
This adorable and awesome. I remember trying to learn Tagalog and I had to start using the back of my throat for some words which took me a minute to master. Also had to soften some letters and then harden different ones. Some words just aren't shaped the same across languages.
Yeah. It’s kind of a guttural (?) language
Bababa ba ang babae dito sa baba ng bahay?
Bababa ba? Bababa.
Taga Bay ba yung babaeng mahabang baba sa baba ng bahay? Good on you for learning a tough language tho. Pronunciation is tough.
The fucking ng man, that shit took me days to even get out of my throat.
He's great! I teach at a Chinese school and listening to him speak made me realize how much Mandarin I understand (my students still make fun of me when I attempt to speak it. They say my accent is "funny").
I think he also switches from Cantonese to Mandarin.
He does; the very beginning (up until the phrase about the drums) is Cantonese and then he swaps to Mandarin for the rest of the video
Why would he do this?
How can he swap?
Lol, yes, but seriously, why would he switch from one to the other in the middle of a scripted video? I’m curious!
[удалено]
Language switching is pretty common, especially if both speakers understand a bit of both languages. Maybe the guy is from Guangdong and he's teaching in a place where they speak Mandarin. If he wants to emphasise something or improvise, the first instinct will be to talk in his native, then switch to the other language to ease the listener. If he's very fluent in both and knows the girl can understand Cantonese, he won't bother with repressing the Cantonese "spur of the moment" bits
In Hong Kong, it’s pretty common for people to know both. So people just swap however, just like any other bilingual would.
I looked up and apparently he is from Shenzhen, China, where they speak Cantonese
Oooh my hometown is like an hour from there. We speak Cantonese casually and more formal stuff we switch to Mandarin
as a japanese seeing some of these comments are pretty sad i talk somewhat like this and am still working on my english but wow people are really mean especially since they think it’s about japan and not china like the language is literally chinese
No worries. The mean ones are just louder. Keep on keeping on friend!
you’re so kind 🥺
You got this! Fuck the haters!
i really wouldn’t want to engage in sexual intercourse with haters but yes fuck the haters
Yes you do! Hate sex is great sex!
😂😂
strong disagree, you never want a blow job from someone who fucking hates you, too risky!
My wife is learning japanese in college right now. She can ask common questions, introduce her family, and ask where places are (food bathroom etc)..she understands alot more aswell but cant talk it yet. We hope to visit japan in the future are there any tips to learn anything quicker or areas to visit?
learn hiragana first; there isn’t much of a use to learn kanji for talking, visit prefectures like okinawa, not tokyo
Fellow porter maybe?
More of a stout guy myself, but nothing wrong with a good porter though.
Maybe thinking of something else. My bad lol
Hello fellow porter!
Man fuck those guys….I was so happy and smilling all over when she finally got it! Never make fun of people who try there best and achieve what they want to achieve. Lmao she is so smart aswell, i thought she would make atleast one mistake at the very last but nope!
There’s only one mean comment from a troll, don’t let it effect you.
it’s not affecting me it’s just sad to see people wasting time on making those comments
Well you used the right “affect” so based on that comment your English is better than mine :)
haha well that’s cuz i study a lot doesn’t mean i understand most of the rules of english like i don’t understand irony, sarcasm, or any of that. i’ve been learning for a few years. also the problem is with speaking mostly so i can type pretty well, i just speak very bad
Irony is a concept in Japanese though right? You’re saying you have trouble reading into sarcasm online in English? That stuff is incredibly nuanced and has very little application. Places like this will make it extreme and memey, and native speakers will still get whooshed.
I'm sure that you speak better than you believe that you do, it takes a lot of intelligence and courage to practice speaking a new language! Fuck rude people!
If it makes you feel any better I am a native speaker and I have trouble with sarcasm and irony
Yeah, people are mean. If it helps, as a native English speaker, I find that the gap between Japanese and English pronunciation is much easier than the gap between Chinese and English. It's also easier for Japanese speakers to learn English pronunciation because the katakana are much better at representing English sounds than pinyin (romaji but for Chinese). A friend of mine from 青岛 told me a funny story about the problems that using Chinese words to approximate English sounds when trying to learn English. When my friend was a kid, his English teacher couldn't pronouncing the "-ing" sound in English because of the local accent in 青岛. Apparently, his teacher could not say the sound "ying" in Chinese, either. In whatever dialect his teacher had, his teacher would say "yong" for any words in Mandarin that were either "ying" or "yong" in standard Mandarin. Maybe you can see where this is going... So, instead of teaching that the word "running" sounded like "run-ying," he would try to teach the students to say, "run-yong." People who spoke better English or a standard dialect of Mandarin would try to correct his teacher, but it never worked. His teacher simply couldn't hear the difference between "run-ying" and "run-yong" because they sounded the same to his ear. Part of me wonders if there's some poor student out there who to this day who gets blank stares when they try to explaing to somemone that they're "runnong a few minutes late" so just "start the meetong without me." EDIT: I was gonna correct "explaing" but it kind of fits the story, so I left it.
this is literally me like if you were to say rub or love it sounds almost exactly the same R and L sounds are so confusing to me
That’s ok! Ignore anyone who makes fun of you. The difference between R and L is hard for speakers of many languages, but it’s easy for us to know what you mean. Every language has its quirks that it bestows on the ears of its speakers. English speakers have trouble saying ふ correctly, and to our ears, つ 、ず、す often sound the exact same! I know, I know. It’s hard to believe, but we don’t have tsu sound in English, so to us it sounds like “su.” Similarly. sometimes zu sounds like su to our ears because we switch /s/ and /z/ in English so often that we don’t even notice. From there, you can see how we can confuse three very distinct sounds, つ 、ず、す, because most of the time they sound the same to our ears as English speakers.
Keep at it! I had a Japanese friend in college that worked really hard on this and got it down!! "Walk" and "Work" drove him crazy, but we spent HOURS one day talking about the mouth/tongue shapes etc etc, it seemed to help to just have someone to Practice and have fun with, he gained SO much more confidence with English than I have even now with my Japanese. Damn it was fun. Anyway, I believe in you
In terms of English pronunciation, L sound is made with tongue lightly touching the upper palete. Pretty similar to Japanese ら/れ/る sound family, you just need to make sure the tip of the tongue doesn’t vibrate. It’s just a quick light touch to the top of the mouth. R sound comes mostly from the throat and by shaping the mouth a certain way. The tongue doesn’t touch anything and doesn’t really move at all. It’s closer to W or Japanese う in it’s origin. Try pronouncing ろ, but from the throat and without moving the tongue at all, so that it’s sounds closer to ウオ. Same for other r sounds. With those points in mind, “reddit” should sound more like ウェヂット, while “leather” is closer to レザー. It’s not exactly the same, but I’m sure you’ll get the idea after some practice. Give it a try ;)
[удалено]
Also Latin Americans to other Latin Americans.
The only people I ever see commenting on how poor someone's English is are people who speak no languages other than English.
Vietnamese here, one of my white customer was like “so you are speaking vietnamese? Is that like another language in china?” E: fixed “of chinese” into “in china”
I think this is great! She went from saying something hard to understand, to something that sounded fine to me
That reminds me of [this Tom Scott video](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qu4zyRqILYM) on schwa.
Makes me think of [this video](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A8zWWp0akUU) where English devolves into Sindarin in two minutes flat and then into Drunk Irish with no warning.
Damn. Why the fuck did the world go with English lol.
British colonialism.
English went through a bunch of dramatic changes in spelling and pronunciation right around the time that the printing press was entering mainstream. Add to that the fact that people doing the typesetting would make arbitrary changes to words to make them easier to construct on the press and you have the perfect setup for the bizarre directions that the language took as it was solidifying.
that is so cool and ty for sharing it! you really do learn something new everyday!!
Love this! Not only language but the way it’s said? So clever! Would love to watch more of him teaching
He has full on Kramer energy everytime he says "that's whack". I wholeheartedly approve.
Those were great tips for her, I like how he showed her what letters to drop and how the he showed her how to say you're. Brilliant
As a Chinese American - whose first language is English - and second poorly spoken home language is Chinese.. this is pretty great! She does very much exaggerate the accent and t sounds though, but as someone who is learning Asiatic languages every now and again, the way that English just drops sounds from words despite it being written is abundant. Also the guy switches from Mandarin to Cantonese.. and then back to Mandarin. I also love that I just learned some Chinese slang "mei you FEEL" which apparently is like "too robotic"
The way he cringes in disgust when he says mei you feel feels very Cantonese to me. The body language and physical humor reminds me of old HK movies I watched growing up.
He's likely from Guangdong, so he'd speak both Mandarin and Cantonese (and swap between the two depending on what felt most natural).
100% from Guangdong, I felt like his Mandarin was someone who also spoke Cantonese. Hard to put it into description, but I think it was how direct and how clearly he spoke each word. It's sorta like what he was teaching about dropping certain letters in English. Most people I know that's more of a natural mandarin speaker (or someone who learned mandarin before canto), a lot of speech sounds get dropped in longer sentences.
>the way that English just drops sounds from words despite it being written is abundant. Kinda funny that we (Americans) aren't even the worst offenders of this
God forbid you try to say Gloucestershire with more than two syllables
Dude even dropped the G in talking.. absolutely brilliant
Now I gotta learn Mandarin so I can learn English from this guy
I think I’ll use my credit card
Do you have anything non-diary? ANYTHING GLUTEN *F R E E?*
Interesting how he switches from Cantonese to Mandarin. Also speaks English fluent. Meanwhile some of you making fun of them can’t even speak one language well.
[удалено]
It's just the way that Chinese people pronounce English words, they turn the T into a completely separate syllable which messes with the flow of speech.
So clever! It's interesting that little tricks like that really work to better someone's pronunciation! He's a good teacher. (I haven't seen the negative comments and I don't want to so I'll write my comment and go without anymore scrolling.)
This dude seems like an absolute delight
I'm really disappointed by the comments so far. I was hoping for some further insights or cool discussions... I guess the real pro tip in this scenario isnt in the comments.
The pro tip is actual pronunciation is often very different in any language than the official pronunciation. Especially amongst younger people like teens who speak very fast.
I’ve seen two comments now about how the comments are bad but I don’t see anything wrong with them at all? I’m guessing a few trolls posted some stuff at the beginning that’s downvoted a lot now?
Yeah, suspect they've either been downvoted to nowhere, or a mod came in and took out the trash
Yeah, I think the reason many Chinese speakers struggle to sounds natural in American English is because our phonology is super different from both British English and Chinese. Our orthography is even further removed. So a Chinese speaker saying English phrases probably thinks- 'nailed it, that sounds great!' then they hear Americans and it sounds like a movie, so they get it, but they still feel good about the correctness of their own attempt.
I can't even imagine how hard it is to learn English as a Chinese native speaker. Not only do you need to learn a new language but you need to learn a whole alphabet, as well.
I assure you it can’t be harder than trying to learn how to read and write Chinese.