Part of learning a foreign language involves internalizing its phonetic system, and that can take time, especially when the language is as unique as Japanese is — I was a fan of the Dirty Pair 80s anime for years before I realized the theme song (“Russian Roulette”) contained English words. Complex English sounds like “th” get reduced since they don’t exist in Japanese, which is where the anime Psycho-Pass gets it’s name from. Currently Japan is experiencing a boom in “anti-aging” products which promise to reverse the effects time has on our bodies, but every time I hear this term I cringe, since “anti” is pronounced “anchi” for phonetic reasons. (Ditto for the “Anti-Spiral” aliens in Gurren Lagann.) Other words that are pronounced in slightly odd ways are “energy” (often said with a hard “g” sound), “coffee” (it sounds like koh-hii), “tick tock” (it comes out sounding like chiku-taku) and “city” (sadly, the si sound is always rendered as shi, creating a rather impolite adjective). The Japanese also pronounce UFO, VIP and airlines JAL and ANA as normal words, e.g. “you-foh,” “vipp,” “jal” and so on, which really takes time getting used to.
Some English words used in Japanese feel strange.
