• tigeruppercut@lemmy.zip
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    15 hours ago

    Sometimes it can be the opposite as well, because missing a key word or two renders all the other stuff you understood in the sentence basically useless. If you understood “He has a new X and he’s gonna try Y tomorrow,” you got everything except the gist, but constructing basic sentences doesn’t take all that much study.

    Anyway, I’d recommend not trying to do Japanese through immersion.

    • Pacattack57@lemmy.world
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      15 hours ago

      Japanese has a cheat code though. If you try to say English words with a Japanese accent they can mostly understand you. Words like hamburger and strawberry are a good example.

      • tigeruppercut@lemmy.zip
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        14 hours ago

        The huge number of loanwords is a bit of a boon, but the benefits are canceled out by the small amount of sounds in the language. There are so many homophones and words with similar sounds that learning vocab is really difficult.

        Also it was years before I found out that hambaagaa is a hamburger and hambaagu is a meat patty on a plate.