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I started learning Japanese 2 weeks ago but I already knew how fucked English was because I learned English first.
Japanese seems weird and hella foreign at first because the alphabet it uses, but it's way more straightforward than English. What's weird is being at a point where I know most of the alphabet, but barely any words or grammar. So I can sound out entire sentences and say them aloud but not know what it actually says lol
Not that it doesn't have its own problems... There are over 60 characters in the Unicode standard that, apparently, nobody knows the meaning of. And it's because there would be small communities or areas that have their own characters for things that have fallen into obscurity and also caused by things like photocopier artifacts, etc. So far 12 have been identified as meaning nothing at all.
Wait 'till you learn about pitch accent :)
At least most things are pronounced like they are written but not all.
n -> m is a common one such as in 新聞 because Japanese doesn't have standalone m.
Japanese also has 7 vowels: standard aeiou and devoiced i and u. It's the reason people say です (desu) like 'des'. A fun example of this playing out is 靴下 (kutsushita - socks). My wife (native Japanese speaker) didn't even realize this until I was watching a video about it.
I had wondered if it was just the text to speech engine sounding weird sometimes or if certain things get pronounced differently when put together in a complete sentence.
Like "hi to" hella sounds like "shito" on that thing sometimes, but not always. And "desu" sounds like "des" or "desu" just depending on which voice is speaking.
Can you post or link to some of those obscure characters?
Well, I can certainly link the video I learned this from!
https://youtu.be/tfk3dgpAals?si=l-VUlvDTmZ-UApcD