Does Japanese contain basic English grammar rules?

I mean rules like “ar” “or” “sh” and “ou” you know just to figure out how I should pronounce some words that line up to form these in hiragana or katakana

5 comments
  1. Can you give a concrete example of what you are asking about?

    Japanese does not have the English letter “r” or the sound that it represents. It has letters like ろ that represent a different sound that does not exist in English, but for convenience it is [romanized](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Romanization_of_Japanese) as “ro”.

    Similarly, the Japanese し has a sound similar but not identical to English “sh”.

    English doesn’t really have rules for how letters sound. For example, “ou” makes 4 different sounds in “shout”, “should”, “soup”, and “young”. Hiragana and katakana actually do follow simple pronunciation rules… mostly. (There are a few exceptions, but not nearly as many as English.)

    Just learn how Japanese pronunciation and writing work, and don’t expect them to have the same quirks as English spelling.

  2. I get the impression you’re looking for pronunciation, not grammar. Try looking up ‘devoicing Japanese’ & maybe some general Kana pronunciation guides. Learn what Mora are and how they interact.

  3. Japanese has grammar which is completely different than English.

    There are common elements, such as both have adverbs, verbs, nouns, adjectives, both have sentences, both have quotes, and so on, but generally speaking the grammar is, again, completely different.

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