The existence of ‘’Katakana’’

Some people say that “Katakana English” is useful for beginners, but I feel the existence of “Katakana” interrupts us to master English.

This is because “Katakana” is too unique and totally different from ordinal English in many words.

For instance, the word Armageddon, which was one of the most famous movies all around the world is pronounced as A-RU-MA-GE-DO-N in Japanese.

However, the correct English pronounces Aar-muh-geh-dn, totally different from each other so that I could not understand the word when a native used this word, even though I knew and watched this movie three times.

There are a lot of examples of thinking about people’s names. Stephen R. Covey, who wrote the book “The 7 habits of highly effective people” influenced me a lot in learning basic methods of working.

Still, when I explain my impact from this book and a teacher told me the author’s name, I could not understand what he wanted me to say.

Grammar

I don’t know why, but we Japanese don’t think about the sequence of words. Also, we ignore the importance of using verbs.

I find it difficult when I make English sentences. I haven’t thought about the sequence of words in my native language, so I need to think deeply.

Also, thinking of some rules, we Japanese use the word “dog” in both situations: a dog and dogs. It confuses me a lot and makes a lot of mistakes.

Pronunciation

Aside from the adverse of “Katakana English”, the Japanese had great barriers of pronunciation. English native speakers use the throat in deeper areas than we use.

When we think about burps, I could not imagine why people from other countries make such a deep and somewhat horrifying voice.

By contrast, I heard people from other countries felt difficulties in sipping noodle soup. I learned that using shallow areas of our throat enables the Japanese to sip noodles.In this point, it may be similar to the first point, which makes several additional barriers to understanding English.

In reality, when I traveled to the US during my university days, a flight attendant asked me a dinner and a drink. I was able to tell what I want to eat, chicken, but I was not able to drink coke because of my bad pronunciation. Instead, I was able to order water, because she was able to understand it.

I was really shocked at that time, but they give us great opportunities when the Japanese can speak English because of a limited number of people who can speak English smoothly.