Worrying too much about making mistakes 😉 (myself included!)
* not using right sentence ending particles
* broken grammar including bad use of particles
* transitive vs intrans verbs
* not using Japanese phrasing (trying to turn English into Japanese)
* not using enough onomatopoeia
Biggest one I see constantly is trying to translate everything 1-to-1 with English.
I can immediately tell a new learner when I see 私multiple times in a block of text. They want to say “My name is Blah. I’m from America. My parents are both wolves and ate my younger brother when he was five years old. I like pizza.” and so they translate the I’s and My’s into a string of 私は’s and 私の’s.
I think most people who are just starting to learn a new language sort of intuit that you simply take each word in your native language, translate it into the equivalent word in the new language and bam you’re done. Of course it’s almost never that simple! Even beyond grammar differences, there are so many common phrases that don’t make sense translated directly, not to mention the plethora of words that really don’t translate at all!
Vowel length. I used to get corrected for not using long vowels when I was using a long vowel. It probably varies by native language, but I’ve since noticed that a lot of English speakers pronounce their vowels so short that doubling the length still ends up in short vowel territory for Japanese. Which was why I was getting corrected.
The biggest one that isn’t easily fixable (like bad grammar) is idiomatic usage of words and phrases. This is one of those things you have to learn on a case by case basis over time.
Not a mistake per se, but an almost sure-fire way to tell a non-native speaker is a general lack of onomatopoeia in their speech/writing.
Also transitive vs intransitive verbs. Japanese leans more towards intransitive verbs than most languaes.
違う is a verb NOT an adjective. Children struggle with this a lot.
Any word in Katakana
Pronouncing English loanword in English instead of Japanese.
Putting the action doer (the English subject) at the beginning of sentences. In Japanese, if it exists at all, it often comes somewhere in the middle after a long description/clarification of the subjec
Probably pitch accent
You can say alot with very little.
Beginners putting だ at the end of i-adjectives or saying verbだから
If by common you mean people do it at every level, not just beginners?
Pitch accent is the biggest one that people never fix. That and the palatized い行 sounds
(honestly, we can put any sound here that is not explicitly explained, ESPECIALLY allophonic sounds. People pronouncing every g like the g in good when the most common g sound in the language is actually a fricative, pronouncing the u as a rounded u when it’s unrounded, not pronouncing b as v in fast speech, etc)
One tiny thing I notice a lot that I didn’t see mentioned is the pronunciation of ふ. It’s romanization is a little confusing but I don’t think that sound exists in English and it is different to the rest. I can quickly tell someone isn’t Japanese (Chinese, Korean, Vietnamese, etc) when they say any word with ふ
Not pronouncing ん on a separate beat. This isn’t a huge mistake most of the time, but it’s something that a lot of English speakers miss.
Listening carefully to music helps one hear this more properly. ざ-ん-こくなて-ん-しのように、しょうね-ん-よ しんわになれ, to use a famous example
When I was in Japan I learned I was rounding my lips when making the “sh-” sound, which is correct in English, but in Japanese it should actually be tight and flat instead. Probably a good chance you’re doing the same if your native language is English.
[https://store-jp.nintendo.com/list/software/70010000070576.html](https://store-jp.nintendo.com/list/software/70010000070576.html) Anyone planning to play this? What level Japanese do you think is needed to enjoy the game?…
17 comments
Worrying too much about making mistakes 😉 (myself included!)
* not using right sentence ending particles
* broken grammar including bad use of particles
* transitive vs intrans verbs
* not using Japanese phrasing (trying to turn English into Japanese)
* not using enough onomatopoeia
Biggest one I see constantly is trying to translate everything 1-to-1 with English.
I can immediately tell a new learner when I see 私multiple times in a block of text. They want to say “My name is Blah. I’m from America. My parents are both wolves and ate my younger brother when he was five years old. I like pizza.” and so they translate the I’s and My’s into a string of 私は’s and 私の’s.
I think most people who are just starting to learn a new language sort of intuit that you simply take each word in your native language, translate it into the equivalent word in the new language and bam you’re done. Of course it’s almost never that simple! Even beyond grammar differences, there are so many common phrases that don’t make sense translated directly, not to mention the plethora of words that really don’t translate at all!
Vowel length. I used to get corrected for not using long vowels when I was using a long vowel. It probably varies by native language, but I’ve since noticed that a lot of English speakers pronounce their vowels so short that doubling the length still ends up in short vowel territory for Japanese. Which was why I was getting corrected.
The biggest one that isn’t easily fixable (like bad grammar) is idiomatic usage of words and phrases. This is one of those things you have to learn on a case by case basis over time.
Not a mistake per se, but an almost sure-fire way to tell a non-native speaker is a general lack of onomatopoeia in their speech/writing.
Also transitive vs intransitive verbs. Japanese leans more towards intransitive verbs than most languaes.
違う is a verb NOT an adjective. Children struggle with this a lot.
Any word in Katakana
Pronouncing English loanword in English instead of Japanese.
Putting the action doer (the English subject) at the beginning of sentences. In Japanese, if it exists at all, it often comes somewhere in the middle after a long description/clarification of the subjec
Probably pitch accent
You can say alot with very little.
Beginners putting だ at the end of i-adjectives or saying verbだから
If by common you mean people do it at every level, not just beginners?
Pitch accent is the biggest one that people never fix. That and the palatized い行 sounds
(honestly, we can put any sound here that is not explicitly explained, ESPECIALLY allophonic sounds. People pronouncing every g like the g in good when the most common g sound in the language is actually a fricative, pronouncing the u as a rounded u when it’s unrounded, not pronouncing b as v in fast speech, etc)
One tiny thing I notice a lot that I didn’t see mentioned is the pronunciation of ふ. It’s romanization is a little confusing but I don’t think that sound exists in English and it is different to the rest. I can quickly tell someone isn’t Japanese (Chinese, Korean, Vietnamese, etc) when they say any word with ふ
Not pronouncing ん on a separate beat. This isn’t a huge mistake most of the time, but it’s something that a lot of English speakers miss.
Listening carefully to music helps one hear this more properly. ざ-ん-こくなて-ん-しのように、しょうね-ん-よ しんわになれ, to use a famous example
When I was in Japan I learned I was rounding my lips when making the “sh-” sound, which is correct in English, but in Japanese it should actually be tight and flat instead. Probably a good chance you’re doing the same if your native language is English.