When I teach my fellow countrymen (Poland here) Japanese basics, they virtually never confuse シ with ツ, but almost everyone confuse あ with お.
I also taught a few native English speakers and it was the opposite. Literally all confused シ with ツ, but never あ with お.
I wonder what’s the issue.
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As a German シ, ツ, ソ, and ン were significantly harder to tell apart initially than あ and お.
My guess is it’s because you don’t have exactly the same writing system as us.
Yes, it’s latin-based, but there’s a lot of extra bits thrown in like lines through letters as well as diacritics. So maybe that affects it in some way?
Just a guess, to be honest, nothing definitive. Just remember that [Hans here](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AfKZclMWS1U) is not the only European who cannot handle Polish.
Maybe you explained the difference properly to them? In handwriting シ and ツ are a bit less easy to mix up because you write シ horizontally and ツ vertically.
I always wondered why people struggled so much with ツ シ ソ ン. They came pretty quickly to me. If you think of one going straight down/vertically and the other going horizontally,
It’s very easy to tell them apart.
>confuse あ with お
I hate how often that happens to me.
Learning how to write the characters should help with recognizing them as well, I guess.
The thing with シ and ツ: they are sometimes used as emojis and because of that, they could be easier to tell apart for people who use internet more often.