Side Question:
I have noticed some references to English words in Japanese. Their pronunciation is a bit difference. Benoist (The tea brand), Computers, etc.
Does someone know if there are any websites that talk about these "foreign" words and their proper japanese pronunciation? I mean, I am curious the proper way to pronunce them...
Thx.
Japanese way of English pronunciation
Re: Japanese way of English pronunciation
The quick explanation: There are certain words in the English language that have no direct interpretation in Japanese. For example, there is no translation for an English surname, or a name of a city or country outside of Japan. So instead, the Japanese converts these certain words to Japanese using the Katakana language, by taking the English letters and transposing them to Katakana characters. For example, the letters of the English word "computer" transposes to コンピュータ (ko-n'-pi+yu-ta). All you need to do is learn the Katakana character system (VERY easy), and then learn how to do the conversion yourself.cytodex wrote:Side Question:
I have noticed some references to English words in Japanese. Their pronunciation is a bit difference. Benoist (The tea brand), Computers, etc.
Does someone know if there are any websites that talk about these "foreign" words and their proper japanese pronunciation? I mean, I am curious the proper way to pronounce them...
Thx.
Rather than direct you to an incomplete list, I'd recommend using Babelfish:
http://babelfish.altavista.com/
Type in the English word, then use English-to-Japanese, and it'll kick out the Katakana version if necessary, or the Hiragana/Kanji translation if there's one available.
--- goink
Re: Japanese way of English pronunciation
Thanks for your prompt and detailed explanations! The same goes to cgozun!groink wrote: Rather than direct you to an incomplete list, I'd recommend using Babelfish:
http://babelfish.altavista.com/
Type in the English word, then use English-to-Japanese, and it'll kick out the Katakana version if necessary, or the Hiragana/Kanji translation if there's one available.
--- goink
I wonder why so many seem to really follow the katakana, why cant they say hermes as we would instead of heremesu? are they embarassed to try? Is the katakana a safer way to avoid being made fun of? 
I just find it strange, why cant they try to say it as it sounds in english when they speak english :/
I just find it strange, why cant they try to say it as it sounds in english when they speak english :/
well, i think it's about what people are accustomed to pronouncing. while in japan, studying english is part of the core curriculum, it doesn't mean it's easy for people to pronounce words. even when we say Hermes in the States like "er-mez" it's actually the wrong pronunciation. In France, you wouldn't pronounce the "s"... um, right? 
Well yeah, but that is nothing remarkable, it sounds like an s anyway. below is japanese english
"Maynee Jyapaneezu peeporu supeeki urisu sutorongo katakana akusento uren zay supeeki Engurishee."
im sure the japanese mouths are capable of more if they tried, its not like they are aliens. France doesnt sound much like english either, but most here are really good at it, and we are the same species.. Well well i dont know, just wondering
"Maynee Jyapaneezu peeporu supeeki urisu sutorongo katakana akusento uren zay supeeki Engurishee."
im sure the japanese mouths are capable of more if they tried, its not like they are aliens. France doesnt sound much like english either, but most here are really good at it, and we are the same species.. Well well i dont know, just wondering
well typically asians have smaller tounges(no joke) so some words are harder to say. Lets face it people English isnt an easy language to master infact its said its the hardest language to learn. I give them an A for at least trying you should think how funny you sound trying to speak japanese to them.
I'm sure some English words are hard to pronounce but that doesn't mean Japanese people use their own accents to speak it because they can't do it in English. If you're talking about Japanized English words, it's more like incorporating a foreign language into your own native language. In this sense, it's pronounced correctly in Japanese of course. In time these so called English words will be part of the Japanese language as Japanese words.Romance wrote:I wonder why so many seem to really follow the katakana, why cant they say hermes as we would instead of heremesu? are they embarassed to try? Is the katakana a safer way to avoid being made fun of?
I just find it strange, why cant they try to say it as it sounds in english when they speak english :/
Last edited by cgozun on Aug 21st, '05, 01:54, edited 1 time in total.
Well exactly... LOL good point. They also have different ways of pronoucing some letters. Watch Gokusen like ep 4 I think when they do the alphabit, they do good till they hit about G than they start pronoucing it funny.cgozun wrote:I'm sure some English words are hard to pronounce but that doesn't mean Japanese people use their own accents to speak it because they can't do it in English. If you're talking about Japanized English words, it's more like incorporating a foreign language into your own native language. In this sense, it's pronounced correctly in Japanese of course. In time these so called English words will be part of the Japanese language as Japanese words.
Er, what do you mean? The French have an accent when speaking English. That's why it's call a French accent in the first place. Sorry but if you think their accent is as good as a native speaker, I will have to disagree. They slur a lot of their words.Romance wrote:Well yeah, but that is nothing remarkable, it sounds like an s anyway. below is japanese english
"Maynee Jyapaneezu peeporu supeeki urisu sutorongo katakana akusento uren zay supeeki Engurishee."
im sure the japanese mouths are capable of more if they tried, its not like they are aliens. France doesnt sound much like english either, but most here are really good at it, and we are the same species.. Well well i dont know, just wondering
It has nothing to do with the physical tongue but more to do with immersion. If you were exposed to a language at an early age and learned how to speak it, you will speak like a native regardless of ethnicity. Adults will have a harder time learning a language because they are used to speaking their old language and therefore they will have an "accent". Kids do not have that problem since everything is new to them.Mythrel wrote:well typically asians have smaller tounges(no joke) so some words are harder to say. Lets face it people English isnt an easy language to master infact its said its the hardest language to learn. I give them an A for at least trying you should think how funny you sound trying to speak japanese to them.
As for why English words are Japanimized well, isn't it obvious? They are not native speakers. You can't expect them to use tones that are not normally used in everyday speech. The people who are teaching English over there are probably adults who will have accents due to the reasons I've already stated above.
Seeing as how I know more than one language, I can tell you that most foreign words becomes crappily imported and spoken with a local twang. This happens with English too.
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aisu_kurimu
- Posts: 46
- Joined: Aug 17th, '05, 13:14
- Location: NY, NY
Assuming English is your native language, try to pronounce something in Vietnamese or Chinese. Even a different pitch of your voice changes the entire meaning of the word. It's not easy to master a second language. In that same respect, it's just Eengrish with how some Japanese / Asians pronounce English. In Densha, I didn't hear Benoist being pronounced incorrectly. What happened was that Yamada didn't know how to pronounce the tea company's name, so he said "Be-no-i-su-to", and the other guy said "it's pronounced "Be-nwa".
How to speak authentic Japanese English - found this while surfing, short intro to this subject and may explain some reasons for the slight modifications of English words because of the following pattern of C-V-C-V.
http://www.estat.us/id86.html
http://www.estat.us/id86.html
From a linguistic perspective, one has to look at the number of sounds in the Japanese language. Compared to English, and even Chinese (one of the most complex), Japanese has very few sounds avaliable. There are something like 56 Kana, and when combined in all forms, they make up about 110-ish morae. (One morae - モーラ in japanese - simply put is one unit of sound to a Japanese ear). Think of english. We have 26 letters, but the combinations and sounds are seemingly endless.
These combinations in english, as they do not exist in Japanese, are 'simplified' in a sense, to accomodate the Japanese language, and the range of sound that people hear. You can't use 'l' and 'r' in Japanese, a distinction that has been made famous over the years by the media, and has become the butt of many 'election' jokes. It's not only the Japanese tounge that can't make the sounds... the Japanese ear cannot distinguish them to be able to know if they're being made correctly.
I like to think of this in a food sense. Take Vegemite (for those that don't know, it's a product of yeast that's generally spread on bread in Australia, and as Marmite in New Zealand) for example. I have eaten it for years, since I was a kid, every day on my lunch. My American friends have not, and when they try it for the first time, they spit it out, generally. They haven't been eating it since they were kids, so you can't expect them to like it on the first tasting. So rather than having Vegemite on their toast in the morning, they have strawberry jam. They're trying to eat the same toast as I am, they're just making it into a form that's more palatable to them.
As a final note, the 'mutations' of words are not really mutations - they're just shortenings. Most Japanese words have about 4 morae in them, and 'personal computer', if you make it into Japanese (パーソナル・コンピューター) it becomes 11. So they shorten it to PA-SO-KO-N. Another example, but from other Japanese, would be 'Kansai Kokusai Kuukou" (Kansai international airport) with 12 morae, which is shortened to Kankuu, with 4. It's not unique to Katakana words.
Any questions, I'd be happy to answer.
Mael.
These combinations in english, as they do not exist in Japanese, are 'simplified' in a sense, to accomodate the Japanese language, and the range of sound that people hear. You can't use 'l' and 'r' in Japanese, a distinction that has been made famous over the years by the media, and has become the butt of many 'election' jokes. It's not only the Japanese tounge that can't make the sounds... the Japanese ear cannot distinguish them to be able to know if they're being made correctly.
I like to think of this in a food sense. Take Vegemite (for those that don't know, it's a product of yeast that's generally spread on bread in Australia, and as Marmite in New Zealand) for example. I have eaten it for years, since I was a kid, every day on my lunch. My American friends have not, and when they try it for the first time, they spit it out, generally. They haven't been eating it since they were kids, so you can't expect them to like it on the first tasting. So rather than having Vegemite on their toast in the morning, they have strawberry jam. They're trying to eat the same toast as I am, they're just making it into a form that's more palatable to them.
As a final note, the 'mutations' of words are not really mutations - they're just shortenings. Most Japanese words have about 4 morae in them, and 'personal computer', if you make it into Japanese (パーソナル・コンピューター) it becomes 11. So they shorten it to PA-SO-KO-N. Another example, but from other Japanese, would be 'Kansai Kokusai Kuukou" (Kansai international airport) with 12 morae, which is shortened to Kankuu, with 4. It's not unique to Katakana words.
Any questions, I'd be happy to answer.
Mael.
Right. For some reason the Japanese like to shorten things... and it especially seems to be into 4 syllables.Ruroshin wrote:I've also notice beside katakana-ing english words they also sometime mutate it, like for computers I hear them say it as pa-su-con. Short for personal computer?
Another example could be コンビに (konbini) or convinience store. You'll hear Starbucks referred to as スタバー (sutabaa).
The band Mr. Children often becomes ミスチル (misuchiru). The word for part time job is actually アルバイト (arubaito) but when conversing with my Japanese friends, they will always just say バイト (baito). And if memory serves me right 'half tank' (like of gas) is 半タン (hantan.. as opposed to tanku)- but don't quote me on that one, because I'm not quite sure if that's the correct word for that or not
Ask anyone who's studied a language and they're going to tell you that it's very difficult to get pronounciation right, espcially when starting out. If you were to start studying Japanese, you would find that there are sounds that you can't make properly either. When you're born, you begin taking in sounds from your native language - these building blocks are called phoenemes. At a young age, you begin to cement which phoenemes are essential to your language, and which are foreign.Romance wrote:I wonder why so many seem to really follow the katakana, why cant they say hermes as we would instead of heremesu? are they embarassed to try? Is the katakana a safer way to avoid being made fun of? Neutral
I just find it strange, why cant they try to say it as it sounds in english when they speak english :/
For example, the sound 'th' that exists in English doesn't exist in Japanese. So it's katakana-ized as 'su' which is the closest sound that exists in Japanese. But it works both ways, in Japanese, it's often hard for Western learners to pronounce 'n' and 'ya' together correctly. What should be んや (n'ya) is often said にゃ(nya) by Japanese learners. (And I apologize if that's confusing... if you can read Japanese, it'll make more sense... it's hard to romanize). "L" and "R" are hard to distinguish for the Japanese person... so words like 'grass' and 'glass' sound the same to them. Why? They only have one of these sounds in their language.
It basically all boils down to the sounds that exist in your native tounge - and even so I've noticed that Japanese who speak fluent English will use 'katakana-ized' pronounciations when speaking in Japanese.
and just to quickly add... Wikipedia has an article on "gairaigo" and loan words in Japanese:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gairaigo
There's a link to a list of common terms in that article as well.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gairaigo
There's a link to a list of common terms in that article as well.
That would be 「パソコン」 (pa+so+ko+n'). Came up with over 5.5 million links.Ruroshin wrote:I've also notice beside katakana-ing english words they also sometime mutate it, like for computers I hear them say it as pa-su-con. Short for personal computer?
EDIT - I should've looked up the kana earlier. I spelled the word wrong!
As for the Japanese pronouncing the English words properly, I asked a good friend of mine this question awhile back. She grew up in Nagasaki City until her 20's. She told me it's perfectly fine for Japanese speakers to pronounce English words phonetically using the Katakana system. What REALLY blew me away is that she said when an English speaking person speaks to a Japanese speaking person in Japanese, he should pronounce English words using Katakana as well. Explanation is that It's highly likely they won't know what you're saying unless you pronounce the English word using Katakana phonetics. This is especially important to keep in mind when you sing Japanese songs at a karaoke bar (which is how this conversation came about to begin with). When you sing in Japanese around other Japanese speakers, it is best to stick with the Katakana, rather than using your English experience and pronounce the words properly. It's basically good manners. For example, when I sing the EXILE song "CARRY ON", I should pronounce that phrase as 「カリオン」 (ka+ri+o+n'). Some Japanese speakers may not actually be this strict, but when you karaoke with Japanese executives for business purposes, you have to keep stuff like this in mind.
--- groink
Last edited by groink on Aug 21st, '05, 23:52, edited 1 time in total.
the point has already been brought up but asking why a japanese person "just can't do it the right way" or "the way we do things" is just one side of the coin. When english speakers learn japanese they have a very strong accent and also "just can't seem to say it the right way". Usually native english speakers have trouble with the clear seperation and pronounciation of japanese syllables and although its well known that japanese have trouble distinguishing between R and L the flipside is that foreigners have a very difficult time learning to properly pronounce the distinct R/L (my best description) sound in japanese (even though it is commonly translated as R i.e. roku, the actual sound is a little different). So i guess what i'm trying to say is, instead of wondering why "they" can't do it like "us" it's best to appreciate the differences.
on a side note: its パソコン (pa-so-co-n)
also on the shortened words, foreign words are taken into japanese and put into katakana. but use a word long enough and you make it your own. so although the original word may have come from another language, the nuance, meaning, and usage changes according to the people using it (japanese) and their culture =shorten words, combine them, etc. English uses many word with latin roots but few people actually care how relevant the current usage is to "proper" latin. you just wouldnt give a crap cause really how often in your life are you gonna be called on that?
on a side note: its パソコン (pa-so-co-n)
also on the shortened words, foreign words are taken into japanese and put into katakana. but use a word long enough and you make it your own. so although the original word may have come from another language, the nuance, meaning, and usage changes according to the people using it (japanese) and their culture =shorten words, combine them, etc. English uses many word with latin roots but few people actually care how relevant the current usage is to "proper" latin. you just wouldnt give a crap cause really how often in your life are you gonna be called on that?
On the flip side, most Japanese words that have gotten adopted into english are mispronounced. Japanese is a pitch tone language, and doesn't stress any syllable more than another. In English, the stress is usually on the second syllable.
Commonly misprounced/misspelt Japanese words
Sake is prounounced sa-keh doesn't rhyme with hockey
Harakiri is not prounded Harry Carey pronounced ha ra ki ri
Tsunami is not SOO-nami, the T is pronounced and the initial Ts is not found in english
Typhoon is pronounced Taifuu
Tycoon is pronounced Tai-kun
The misprounciation also isn't a physiological one, asian tongues are every bit capable of making all the sounds in any language. It's that we learn certain rules of pronounciation, and especially after a certain age, aren't able to deviate from them.
And Pasokon is short for PAaSOnaru KONpyuuta.
Commonly misprounced/misspelt Japanese words
Sake is prounounced sa-keh doesn't rhyme with hockey
Harakiri is not prounded Harry Carey pronounced ha ra ki ri
Tsunami is not SOO-nami, the T is pronounced and the initial Ts is not found in english
Typhoon is pronounced Taifuu
Tycoon is pronounced Tai-kun
The misprounciation also isn't a physiological one, asian tongues are every bit capable of making all the sounds in any language. It's that we learn certain rules of pronounciation, and especially after a certain age, aren't able to deviate from them.
And Pasokon is short for PAaSOnaru KONpyuuta.
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shinshi360
- Posts: 2
- Joined: Aug 22nd, '05, 00:16
Chiming in...
I've been reading the posts and most of the pertinent points have already been raised, but let's summarize for the sake of completeness and clarity. I am by no means an expert, but I have studied Japanese extensively, interact with Japanese people on a very frequent basis, and learned a thing or two in linguistics.
Why can't Japanese say words "properly?" There are a few reasons for this.
1) The Japanese language is syllabic and composed of distinct syllables that make up a word. The Japanese syllabary (the "alphabet" is the English syllabary; there is no such thing as a "Japanese alphabet") is made up of 5 vowels and 9 consonants. There are 46 basic characters, or kana, in the Japanese syllabary, and some of the kana can be combined with others to form other compounds. As someone pointed out earlier, this does not allow for a rich phoneme set, so there are sounds in languages like English that Japanese simply doesn't have. However, this is not all that uncommon across any two languages, because there are sounds in Chinese that English doesn't have, sounds in Korean that French doesn't have, etc.
2) Japanese people are very shy and do not want to stand out in the crowd. They have proverbs like "the nail that sticks out gets hammered down," meaning they believe in conformity and unity rather than individualism. In Japan, English is compulsory through the high school level. Someone with a really good pronounciation (and they *do* know what a good pronounciation sounds like) will often get "hammered down" (bullied) by their classmates. It's an interesting phonomenon that Japanese people who can make a pretty good accent in English will revert to their "katakana English" when saying English words in Japanese.
3) Pronouncing words depends on how you hear them, how you move your mouth and tongue, and your overall language aptitude. Someone said that Asians have a very small tongue, but I'm not quite sure about that. If your tongue is too large, then naturally it'd be hard to speak in any language (babies have a large tongue proportionate to the size of their mouths), so I fail to see the correlation between a small tongue and not being able to pronounce words correctly in English. Regardless, for the Japanese syllable "o" (お), note that the Japanese pronounciation is a flat "o" sound, whereas the English is a rounded "o" sound. You move your lips to create the roundness in English. This is something that a Japanese person may have a hard time doing because they are not used to doing it, and they need to recoordinate their tongue and mouth movements to make their pronounciation sound more like English. People who speak two or more languages growing up generally tend to be able to speak both with perfect accents because they have programmed themselves over the years to shape their mouths in accordance with the words they speak in the particular language. By the way, studies show that the two "windows" for native fluency of a language occur at ages 6 and 12.
4) R and L, the classic joke among Asian languages. It doesn't help that kids in Japan have to learn ro-maji (ローマ字), or Roman characters, in addition to hiragana, katakana, and kanji. What we know as "R" in romanized Japanese more or less makes a sound similar to "L", and there is no "L" in romanized Japanese. Needless to say, it is confusing. Japanese people also cannot say the English "R" (and there are several of them, depending on where you place your tongue... you just don't notice it if you're a native speaker of English) because it involves shaping their tongue in a different way than they are used to. It's a lot harder for them than it looks, so lay off the R and L jokes. =P Other pairs of difficulty are B and P, and F and V.
A few other tidbits:
Those abbreviations like pasokon (パソコン) are much like how we call "personal computer" PC. It gets rather tedious to say a commonplace item like "personal computer" much like it's tedious to say pa-sonaru konpyu-ta- (パーソナルコンピューター). Not all abbreviations are 4 syllables, though. One particular three-syllable abbreivation that immediately comes to mind is "nyuu shi" (入試), short for "nyuugaku shiken" (入学試験), or entrance examination.
Someone said this already, but katakana is used for foreign loanwords (gairaigo, 外来語). However, it is also used for onomatopoeia (giongo, 擬音語), electronic displays, animal names, names of people, and quoted speech. My take on katakana for foreign words and names is that using katakana is the accepted form for mimicking the sound of the word, not so much as the requirement that the word is foreign and must be written in katakana. There are cases of katakana words being written in hiragana, too. It gives the word a more cute look.
Saying a word "properly" is relative, but there is a "standard", "mainstream", "accepted" way to say a word with a particular pronounciation and particular semantics so everyone understands it. Someone had also mentioned that you'd have to say certain words in katakana before a Japanese person could understand it, and that is true to a certain extent. However, there is a class of words called "wasei eigo" (和製英語) that mean something different in the Japanese pronounciation. A typical example of this is "pants", which would be "pantsu" (パンツ) in katakana. In Japanese, though, it actually means "underwear", and not jeans or slacks, so the proper Japanese word would be "zubon" (ズボン).
Japanese also has some form of pitch, although not as critical as Chinese or Vietnamese. An example of this is Ame/aME (rain/candy), or HAshi/haSHI (chopsticks/bridge). What's even more interesting is that the two are reversed only in the Kansai region of Japan, i.e. aME/Ame (rain/candy) and haSHI/HAshi (chopsticks/bridge). (Another interesting fact: In Tokyo, when riding an escalator, you stand on the left and walk on the right. In Osaka, you stand on the right and walk up the left. Also, you kid around with "baka" in Tokyo and curse with "aho"; in Osaka, you kid around with "aho" and curse with "baka".) They can figure out what you're saying from context, anyway, but then they'll also figure out that you're not a native speaker of Japanese. =)
And lastly, if you think Japanese people saying English words is funny - try speaking another language with their accent and see how funny you sound to them. And I bet you're not saying "karate" or "tsunami" or "karaoke" correctly, either.
Why can't Japanese say words "properly?" There are a few reasons for this.
1) The Japanese language is syllabic and composed of distinct syllables that make up a word. The Japanese syllabary (the "alphabet" is the English syllabary; there is no such thing as a "Japanese alphabet") is made up of 5 vowels and 9 consonants. There are 46 basic characters, or kana, in the Japanese syllabary, and some of the kana can be combined with others to form other compounds. As someone pointed out earlier, this does not allow for a rich phoneme set, so there are sounds in languages like English that Japanese simply doesn't have. However, this is not all that uncommon across any two languages, because there are sounds in Chinese that English doesn't have, sounds in Korean that French doesn't have, etc.
2) Japanese people are very shy and do not want to stand out in the crowd. They have proverbs like "the nail that sticks out gets hammered down," meaning they believe in conformity and unity rather than individualism. In Japan, English is compulsory through the high school level. Someone with a really good pronounciation (and they *do* know what a good pronounciation sounds like) will often get "hammered down" (bullied) by their classmates. It's an interesting phonomenon that Japanese people who can make a pretty good accent in English will revert to their "katakana English" when saying English words in Japanese.
3) Pronouncing words depends on how you hear them, how you move your mouth and tongue, and your overall language aptitude. Someone said that Asians have a very small tongue, but I'm not quite sure about that. If your tongue is too large, then naturally it'd be hard to speak in any language (babies have a large tongue proportionate to the size of their mouths), so I fail to see the correlation between a small tongue and not being able to pronounce words correctly in English. Regardless, for the Japanese syllable "o" (お), note that the Japanese pronounciation is a flat "o" sound, whereas the English is a rounded "o" sound. You move your lips to create the roundness in English. This is something that a Japanese person may have a hard time doing because they are not used to doing it, and they need to recoordinate their tongue and mouth movements to make their pronounciation sound more like English. People who speak two or more languages growing up generally tend to be able to speak both with perfect accents because they have programmed themselves over the years to shape their mouths in accordance with the words they speak in the particular language. By the way, studies show that the two "windows" for native fluency of a language occur at ages 6 and 12.
4) R and L, the classic joke among Asian languages. It doesn't help that kids in Japan have to learn ro-maji (ローマ字), or Roman characters, in addition to hiragana, katakana, and kanji. What we know as "R" in romanized Japanese more or less makes a sound similar to "L", and there is no "L" in romanized Japanese. Needless to say, it is confusing. Japanese people also cannot say the English "R" (and there are several of them, depending on where you place your tongue... you just don't notice it if you're a native speaker of English) because it involves shaping their tongue in a different way than they are used to. It's a lot harder for them than it looks, so lay off the R and L jokes. =P Other pairs of difficulty are B and P, and F and V.
A few other tidbits:
Those abbreviations like pasokon (パソコン) are much like how we call "personal computer" PC. It gets rather tedious to say a commonplace item like "personal computer" much like it's tedious to say pa-sonaru konpyu-ta- (パーソナルコンピューター). Not all abbreviations are 4 syllables, though. One particular three-syllable abbreivation that immediately comes to mind is "nyuu shi" (入試), short for "nyuugaku shiken" (入学試験), or entrance examination.
Someone said this already, but katakana is used for foreign loanwords (gairaigo, 外来語). However, it is also used for onomatopoeia (giongo, 擬音語), electronic displays, animal names, names of people, and quoted speech. My take on katakana for foreign words and names is that using katakana is the accepted form for mimicking the sound of the word, not so much as the requirement that the word is foreign and must be written in katakana. There are cases of katakana words being written in hiragana, too. It gives the word a more cute look.
Saying a word "properly" is relative, but there is a "standard", "mainstream", "accepted" way to say a word with a particular pronounciation and particular semantics so everyone understands it. Someone had also mentioned that you'd have to say certain words in katakana before a Japanese person could understand it, and that is true to a certain extent. However, there is a class of words called "wasei eigo" (和製英語) that mean something different in the Japanese pronounciation. A typical example of this is "pants", which would be "pantsu" (パンツ) in katakana. In Japanese, though, it actually means "underwear", and not jeans or slacks, so the proper Japanese word would be "zubon" (ズボン).
Japanese also has some form of pitch, although not as critical as Chinese or Vietnamese. An example of this is Ame/aME (rain/candy), or HAshi/haSHI (chopsticks/bridge). What's even more interesting is that the two are reversed only in the Kansai region of Japan, i.e. aME/Ame (rain/candy) and haSHI/HAshi (chopsticks/bridge). (Another interesting fact: In Tokyo, when riding an escalator, you stand on the left and walk on the right. In Osaka, you stand on the right and walk up the left. Also, you kid around with "baka" in Tokyo and curse with "aho"; in Osaka, you kid around with "aho" and curse with "baka".) They can figure out what you're saying from context, anyway, but then they'll also figure out that you're not a native speaker of Japanese. =)
And lastly, if you think Japanese people saying English words is funny - try speaking another language with their accent and see how funny you sound to them.
And I bet you're not saying "karate" or "tsunami" or "karaoke" correctly, either.
Re: Chiming in...
shinshi360 wrote:I've been reading the posts and most of the pertinent points have already been raised, but let's summarize for the sake of completeness and clarity. I am by no means an expert, but I have studied Japanese extensively, interact with Japanese people on a very frequent basis, and learned a thing or two in linguistics.
Why can't Japanese say words "properly?" There are a few reasons for this.
1) The Japanese language is syllabic and composed of distinct syllables that make up a word. The Japanese syllabary (the "alphabet" is the English syllabary; there is no such thing as a "Japanese alphabet") is made up of 5 vowels and 9 consonants. There are 46 basic characters, or kana, in the Japanese syllabary, and some of the kana can be combined with others to form other compounds. As someone pointed out earlier, this does not allow for a rich phoneme set, so there are sounds in languages like English that Japanese simply doesn't have. However, this is not all that uncommon across any two languages, because there are sounds in Chinese that English doesn't have, sounds in Korean that French doesn't have, etc.
The "english" alphabet is not a syllabary, it's an alphabet, specifically, the Roman alphabet. Alphabets and syllabaries are mutually exclusive. An alphabet has different symbols for vowels and consonants, and syllabaries have a single character for a vowel consonant combinantion. There are also syllabic alphabets, but that's another category beyond the scope of this reply.
2) Japanese people are very shy and do not want to stand out in the crowd. They have proverbs like "the nail that sticks out gets hammered down," meaning they believe in conformity and unity rather than individualism. In Japan, English is compulsory through the high school level. Someone with a really good pronounciation (and they *do* know what a good pronounciation sounds like) will often get "hammered down" (bullied) by their classmates. It's an interesting phonomenon that Japanese people who can make a pretty good accent in English will revert to their "katakana English" when saying English words in Japanese.
Katakana English is Japanese. That's why you swiitch back, because Koohee is different from coffee in English. At least that's the case for me, and I am bilingual Japanese/English. Waseieigo is Japanese. It's kinda like how people in the states prounounce loan words according to English rules, not to the Loan language rules, take for example my previous examples of Sake & Tsunami. or how the Aztec xocolatl became Chocolate, or the Hebrew Yitzakh became Isaac. I pronounce sake Saki in english because that's how it's "properly" pronounced in English, unless I'm trying to make a statement.
3) Pronouncing words depends on how you hear them, how you move your mouth and tongue, and your overall language aptitude. Someone said that Asians have a very small tongue, but I'm not quite sure about that. If your tongue is too large, then naturally it'd be hard to speak in any language (babies have a large tongue proportionate to the size of their mouths), so I fail to see the correlation between a small tongue and not being able to pronounce words correctly in English. Regardless, for the Japanese syllable "o" (お), note that the Japanese pronounciation is a flat "o" sound, whereas the English is a rounded "o" sound. You move your lips to create the roundness in English. This is something that a Japanese person may have a hard time doing because they are not used to doing it, and they need to recoordinate their tongue and mouth movements to make their pronounciation sound more like English. People who speak two or more languages growing up generally tend to be able to speak both with perfect accents because they have programmed themselves over the years to shape their mouths in accordance with the words they speak in the particular language. By the way, studies show that the two "windows" for native fluency of a language occur at ages 6 and 12.
4) R and L, the classic joke among Asian languages. It doesn't help that kids in Japan have to learn ro-maji (ローマ字), or Roman characters, in addition to hiragana, katakana, and kanji. What we know as "R" in romanized Japanese more or less makes a sound similar to "L", and there is no "L" in romanized Japanese. Needless to say, it is confusing. Japanese people also cannot say the English "R" (and there are several of them, depending on where you place your tongue... you just don't notice it if you're a native speaker of English) because it involves shaping their tongue in a different way than they are used to. It's a lot harder for them than it looks, so lay off the R and L jokes. =P Other pairs of difficulty are B and P, and F and V.
The Japanese L/R is different from the english L & R. An English speaker has the same problem in prounouncing the Japanese L/R. It's just that Japanese people don't find it as hilarious, although they find it hilarious when English speakers misprounounce other words, I'm sure.
B and P are not difficult, as they are found as
バビブベボ and パピプペポ respectively. F and V were more ambiguous, but they brought back the V sound, which was common pre-war. ファフィフフェフォ and ヴァヴィヴヴェヴォ
A few other tidbits:
Those abbreviations like pasokon (パソコン) are much like how we call "personal computer" PC. It gets rather tedious to say a commonplace item like "personal computer" much like it's tedious to say pa-sonaru konpyu-ta- (パーソナルコンピューター). Not all abbreviations are 4 syllables, though. One particular three-syllable abbreivation that immediately comes to mind is "nyuu shi" (入試), short for "nyuugaku shiken" (入学試験), or entrance examination.
Someone said this already, but katakana is used for foreign loanwords (gairaigo, 外来語). However, it is also used for onomatopoeia (giongo, 擬音語), electronic displays, animal names, names of people, and quoted speech. My take on katakana for foreign words and names is that using katakana is the accepted form for mimicking the sound of the word, not so much as the requirement that the word is foreign and must be written in katakana. There are cases of katakana words being written in hiragana, too. It gives the word a more cute look.
Saying a word "properly" is relative, but there is a "standard", "mainstream", "accepted" way to say a word with a particular pronounciation and particular semantics so everyone understands it. Someone had also mentioned that you'd have to say certain words in katakana before a Japanese person could understand it, and that is true to a certain extent. However, there is a class of words called "wasei eigo" (和製英語) that mean something different in the Japanese pronounciation. A typical example of this is "pants", which would be "pantsu" (パンツ) in katakana. In Japanese, though, it actually means "underwear", and not jeans or slacks, so the proper Japanese word would be "zubon" (ズボン).
Japanese also has some form of pitch, although not as critical as Chinese or Vietnamese. An example of this is Ame/aME (rain/candy), or HAshi/haSHI (chopsticks/bridge). What's even more interesting is that the two are reversed only in the Kansai region of Japan, i.e. aME/Ame (rain/candy) and haSHI/HAshi (chopsticks/bridge). (Another interesting fact: In Tokyo, when riding an escalator, you stand on the left and walk on the right. In Osaka, you stand on the right and walk up the left. Also, you kid around with "baka" in Tokyo and curse with "aho"; in Osaka, you kid around with "aho" and curse with "baka".) They can figure out what you're saying from context, anyway, but then they'll also figure out that you're not a native speaker of Japanese. =)
Chinese and Vietnamese are not Pitch languages, they are tonal languages. Tone and pitch are two different things.
And lastly, if you think Japanese people saying English words is funny - try speaking another language with their accent and see how funny you sound to them.
Re: Chiming in...
So true!shinshi360 wrote: And lastly, if you think Japanese people saying English words is funny - try speaking another language with their accent and see how funny you sound to them.
Reminds me of the time 10 years ago when I went to Las Vegas and heard a radio station commercial. Karaoke was pronounced kuh-row-key really quickly. At the time, I really could not figure out what that commercial was about until one part of it mentioned "singing at the kuh-row-key bar" (the western pronounciation today is carry-oh-key). Other common westernized pronounciations:Arigato - a-ree-gaa-toe or a-ree-guh-toe
Furikake - Foo-ree-kaa-key
Harajuku - Ha-ruh-jew-coo
Ramen - raa-men
Sakura - saa-coo-rah
Sayonara - sa-yuh-na-rah
Tonkatsu - tone-cat-sue
Yaki (as in yakisoba, teriyaki, taiyaki) - ya-key
(for the above, the "r" isn't rolled with the tongue pressed against the palate and the "a" is pronounced in the same as in access, act, and, at instead of like how when the dentist tells you to open your mouth and say "ah")
Kimono - kuh-mow-no
Kyoto - Key-yo-toe
My favorite butchered mispronounciation I have heard is for Ikebukuro where it has been said as I-kay-bucker-row or probably the winner, Ike-buck-you-row (Ike as in "bike")
I also use katakanized english when in Japan since saying something like curry rice, double cheeseburger, or vanilla ice cream might draw a blank stare compared to kuh-ree-rai-sue, duh-boo-roo-chee-zoo-bah-gah, or ba-nee-rah i-sue-kuri-moo.
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shinshi360
- Posts: 2
- Joined: Aug 22nd, '05, 00:16
Re: Chiming in...
Yes, that is correct. Thanks for the info.drewnamis wrote:
The "english" alphabet is not a syllabary, it's an alphabet, specifically, the Roman alphabet. Alphabets and syllabaries are mutually exclusive. An alphabet has different symbols for vowels and consonants, and syllabaries have a single character for a vowel consonant combinantion. There are also syllabic alphabets, but that's another category beyond the scope of this reply.
I wasn't really referring to words like ko-hi-, but rather code-switched words that were pronounced in a Japanese way.drewnamis wrote: Katakana English is Japanese. That's why you swiitch back, because Koohee is different from coffee in English. At least that's the case for me, and I am bilingual Japanese/English. Waseieigo is Japanese. It's kinda like how people in the states prounounce loan words according to English rules, not to the Loan language rules, take for example my previous examples of Sake & Tsunami. or how the Aztec xocolatl became Chocolate, or the Hebrew Yitzakh became Isaac. I pronounce sake Saki in english because that's how it's "properly" pronounced in English, unless I'm trying to make a statement.
It's good to hear things from a nikkeijin (I'm assuming you are) point of view. My heritage is Taiwanese and I speak Taiwanese and some Mandarin as well, as well as Japanese, although my first language is English.
B and P are actually difficult to some people, because when I had taught English in Japan, there were several students who could not say B and P very well. They were exerting too much force on their lips for B's and not enough for P's. Each person is different, though; there were some who were able to pronounce these two well.drewnamis wrote: The Japanese L/R is different from the english L & R. An English speaker has the same problem in prounouncing the Japanese L/R. It's just that Japanese people don't find it as hilarious, although they find it hilarious when English speakers misprounounce other words, I'm sure.
B and P are not difficult, as they are found as
バビブベボ and パピプペポ respectively. F and V were more ambiguous, but they brought back the V sound, which was common pre-war. ファフィフフェフォ and ヴァヴィヴヴェヴォ
Indeed. Thanks.drewnamis wrote: Chinese and Vietnamese are not Pitch languages, they are tonal languages. Tone and pitch are two different things.
Like I said, I'm no expert.
I beg to differ, japanese is a harder language.Mythrel wrote:well typically asians have smaller tounges(no joke) so some words are harder to say. Lets face it people English isnt an easy language to master infact its said its the hardest language to learn. I give them an A for at least trying you should think how funny you sound trying to speak japanese to them.
You think so? I don't find it that hard. I find french harder lol(that could also because I find japanese more intresting than french). English is hard I guess because so many words are spelt the same but have a varity of meanings. I dunno why they say english is the hardest hell I never learnt it properly.boachan wrote:I beg to differ, japanese is a harder language.Mythrel wrote:well typically asians have smaller tounges(no joke) so some words are harder to say. Lets face it people English isnt an easy language to master infact its said its the hardest language to learn. I give them an A for at least trying you should think how funny you sound trying to speak japanese to them.
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aisu_kurimu
- Posts: 46
- Joined: Aug 17th, '05, 13:14
- Location: NY, NY
The one thing that keeps popping up is that Asians have a shorter tongue.
In Asia (or Korea at least, to my knowledge), doctors have devised a tongue-lengthening surgery (something non-invasive, I'd hope) to answer the pleas of desperate parents wanting their children to speak fluent English. But, that's bull.
I'm a Korean-American, and having been raised in America, I have no Asian accent, and I think my tongue is a perfectly acceptable size.
The reason why some Asians pronounce English words differently is simply because they weren't raised in an English-immersed environment. As the saying goes, an old dog can't be taught new tricks. People are usually in high school when they learn English formally in class, and by then, it's harder to be fluent in it. Plus, the learning process is built on a foundation of the native alphabet, and using Japanese as an example, it would be katakana. But Japanese is pronounced in a series of small syllables. By this, I mean it would be near impossible for a Japanese student to pronounce something like "everything" properly.
It would have to be broken down into the basest syllables, essentially something like "eh-bu-ri-sin", in katakana. The Asian language also lacks a few letters in the English language, like V and F, so they are substituted with B and P respectively. There is also little distinction between R and L, and there are other things I'm not going to get into. If that's hard for you to grasp, try pronouncing R and L together. I don't mean like "RL" as in "world", but a real sound that is in the Asian language, and not in English.
In Asia (or Korea at least, to my knowledge), doctors have devised a tongue-lengthening surgery (something non-invasive, I'd hope) to answer the pleas of desperate parents wanting their children to speak fluent English. But, that's bull.
I'm a Korean-American, and having been raised in America, I have no Asian accent, and I think my tongue is a perfectly acceptable size.
The reason why some Asians pronounce English words differently is simply because they weren't raised in an English-immersed environment. As the saying goes, an old dog can't be taught new tricks. People are usually in high school when they learn English formally in class, and by then, it's harder to be fluent in it. Plus, the learning process is built on a foundation of the native alphabet, and using Japanese as an example, it would be katakana. But Japanese is pronounced in a series of small syllables. By this, I mean it would be near impossible for a Japanese student to pronounce something like "everything" properly.
It would have to be broken down into the basest syllables, essentially something like "eh-bu-ri-sin", in katakana. The Asian language also lacks a few letters in the English language, like V and F, so they are substituted with B and P respectively. There is also little distinction between R and L, and there are other things I'm not going to get into. If that's hard for you to grasp, try pronouncing R and L together. I don't mean like "RL" as in "world", but a real sound that is in the Asian language, and not in English.
LOL I think I started something when I mentioned the tounge thing but my intentions were not to start a war. I personally have no problem with the way japanese or any asian country when they speak english. I can understand it I don't get what the big deal is at least they are trying.aisu_kurimu wrote:The one thing that keeps popping up is that Asians have a shorter tongue.
In Asia (or Korea at least, to my knowledge), doctors have devised a tongue-lengthening surgery (something non-invasive, I'd hope) to answer the pleas of desperate parents wanting their children to speak fluent English. But, that's bull.
I'm a Korean-American, and having been raised in America, I have no Asian accent, and I think my tongue is a perfectly acceptable size.
The reason why some Asians pronounce English words differently is simply because they weren't raised in an English-immersed environment. As the saying goes, an old dog can't be taught new tricks. People are usually in high school when they learn English formally in class, and by then, it's harder to be fluent in it. Plus, the learning process is built on a foundation of the native alphabet, and using Japanese as an example, it would be katakana. But Japanese is pronounced in a series of small syllables. By this, I mean it would be near impossible for a Japanese student to pronounce something like "everything" properly.
It would have to be broken down into the basest syllables, essentially something like "eh-bu-ri-sin", in katakana. The Asian language also lacks a few letters in the English language, like V and F, so they are substituted with B and P respectively. There is also little distinction between R and L, and there are other things I'm not going to get into. If that's hard for you to grasp, try pronouncing R and L together. I don't mean like "RL" as in "world", but a real sound that is in the Asian language, and not in English.
Fluency has nothing to do with "native" pronounciation. Take for example Henry Kissenger. Speaks English with a German accent, but uses words more eloquently and has a greater vocabulary than most native speakers.aisu_kurimu wrote:
The reason why some Asians pronounce English words differently is simply because they weren't raised in an English-immersed environment. As the saying goes, an old dog can't be taught new tricks. People are usually in high school when they learn English formally in class, and by then, it's harder to be fluent in it. Plus, the learning process is built on a foundation of the native alphabet, and using Japanese as an example, it would be katakana. But Japanese is pronounced in a series of small syllables. By this, I mean it would be near impossible for a Japanese student to pronounce something like "everything" properly.
When you say "the Asian Language" which one are you talking about? Japanese does have V and F, as I've mentioned previously.The Asian language also lacks a few letters in the English language, like V and F, so they are substituted with B and P respectively.
It’s not easy to learn some other language, I know that by experience. English is not my native language. I was 15 when I started taking English classes and believe me it is hard; the pronunciation is just a pain in the neck, some times I would spend hours trying to say a word and in the end it never came out right. Mastering a language comes from emerging yourself into the language and from time, not just a few months but years. It has been five years since I started learning English and still some times there are words I just can't pronounce right. So I give them applause for the effort.
cyclops wrote:It’s not easy to learn some other language, I know that by experience. English is not my native language. I was 15 when I started taking English classes and believe me it is hard; the pronunciation is just a pain in the neck, some times I would spend hours trying to say a word and in the end it never came out right. Mastering a language comes from emerging yourself into the language and from time, not just a few months but years. It has been five years since I started learning English and still some times there are words I just can't pronounce right. So I give them applause for the effort.
Hey you deserve some applause too. your english is better than mine and this is the only language I speak. My boss doesn't speak perfect english but I understand him, most people can't but really they are not putting the effort into listening to him. I appreciate anyone who takes their time and effort into learning any language and as long as they are trying its good enough for me.
Yeah, it's an issue with being immersed & learning a language. You get stuck using the sounds from that language and it gets hard to deviate. Listen to some Americans speak Japanese words. To me, I can't see how they can mispronouce them, but it's because it's natural to me. Immediate examples that come to mind are wasabi, nori, daikon, karate, etc.
There are some sounds in English that have no exact match in Japanese. Thus you get the Japanese version English. With enough training or learning at an early age, Japanese could speak perfectly fine English. I know a number of people who can, and i'm very envious of them. They are truly bilingual and sound like native speakers in both languages, down to slang & colloquailisms.
There are some sounds in English that have no exact match in Japanese. Thus you get the Japanese version English. With enough training or learning at an early age, Japanese could speak perfectly fine English. I know a number of people who can, and i'm very envious of them. They are truly bilingual and sound like native speakers in both languages, down to slang & colloquailisms.
Another japanese word that gets shreded is Kamikaze. I really wish my parents spoke another language. Although I think I probably would have been more confused.taro wrote:Yeah, it's an issue with being immersed & learning a language. You get stuck using the sounds from that language and it gets hard to deviate. Listen to some Americans speak Japanese words. To me, I can't see how they can mispronouce them, but it's because it's natural to me. Immediate examples that come to mind are wasabi, nori, daikon, karate, etc.
There are some sounds in English that have no exact match in Japanese. Thus you get the Japanese version English. With enough training or learning at an early age, Japanese could speak perfectly fine English. I know a number of people who can, and i'm very envious of them. They are truly bilingual and sound like native speakers in both languages, down to slang & colloquailisms.
Y'all should read Peter Payne's web site:
http://www.peterpayne.net
He's the owner of J-List, one of the larger e-stores of Japanese junk. He's originally from San Diego, CA USA. He married a Japanese woman, and then together moved to Iesaki, Gunma Prefecture where he operates the e-store. I believe they have two kids. The interesting thing about Peter's situation is that he teaches his children both English and Japanese. In Japan, the kids speak Japanese, which is their first language. But when they travel to San Diego to visit Peter's side of the family, they're required to speak English. From what I understand, the kids are fluent in both languages, right down to the slang and such.
The above link is basically his blog. He also has a mailing list (I'm on it). His e-mails are one of the most interesting I've ever read. He basically talks about his experiences as a gaijin. Most of the topics are related to language variations between English and Japanese.
WARNING: His site also has some JAV content, so watch out for it.
--- groink
http://www.peterpayne.net
He's the owner of J-List, one of the larger e-stores of Japanese junk. He's originally from San Diego, CA USA. He married a Japanese woman, and then together moved to Iesaki, Gunma Prefecture where he operates the e-store. I believe they have two kids. The interesting thing about Peter's situation is that he teaches his children both English and Japanese. In Japan, the kids speak Japanese, which is their first language. But when they travel to San Diego to visit Peter's side of the family, they're required to speak English. From what I understand, the kids are fluent in both languages, right down to the slang and such.
The above link is basically his blog. He also has a mailing list (I'm on it). His e-mails are one of the most interesting I've ever read. He basically talks about his experiences as a gaijin. Most of the topics are related to language variations between English and Japanese.
WARNING: His site also has some JAV content, so watch out for it.
--- groink
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spacecommand
- Posts: 175
- Joined: Jun 3rd, '05, 04:02
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aisu_kurimu
- Posts: 46
- Joined: Aug 17th, '05, 13:14
- Location: NY, NY
You're right about the fluency. I was having a hard time trying to explain it and wasn't really spending too much time searching for the right word. In any case, I meant that having a native pronunciation is more difficult when you're only starting to learn it when you're older after not being immersed in it in childhood. I wasn't trying to start a war about tongue lengths. I was merely disputing that misleading bit of crack science.drewnamis wrote:Fluency has nothing to do with "native" pronounciation. Take for example Henry Kissenger. Speaks English with a German accent, but uses words more eloquently and has a greater vocabulary than most native speakers.aisu_kurimu wrote:
The reason why some Asians pronounce English words differently is simply because they weren't raised in an English-immersed environment. As the saying goes, an old dog can't be taught new tricks. People are usually in high school when they learn English formally in class, and by then, it's harder to be fluent in it. Plus, the learning process is built on a foundation of the native alphabet, and using Japanese as an example, it would be katakana. But Japanese is pronounced in a series of small syllables. By this, I mean it would be near impossible for a Japanese student to pronounce something like "everything" properly.
When you say "the Asian Language" which one are you talking about? Japanese does have V and F, as I've mentioned previously.The Asian language also lacks a few letters in the English language, like V and F, so they are substituted with B and P respectively.
I was referencing Korean mainly. Japanese is different because its language is mixed with some European words, which is why it has F, although it's pronounced like "fhuu"... very softly, as opposed to the way a native American pronounces it.
I want to add something to that "hard language" topic. I'm Polish, English isn't such a hard language here, German also. Japanese is more difficult, but the reason isn't the speech, more the writing. I think Chinese or Korean are way harder.
oh... And I must say that polish isn't easy to. Most of the people can't even say my name.
oh... And I must say that polish isn't easy to. Most of the people can't even say my name.
I still have trouble pronouncing Pope JP II's name.killy wrote:I want to add something to that "hard language" topic. I'm Polish, English isn't such a hard language here, German also. Japanese is more difficult, but the reason isn't the speech, more the writing. I think Chinese or Korean are way harder.
oh... And I must say that polish isn't easy to. Most of the people can't even say my name.
I'm a japanese raised in South America living in Japan now... / skipping "my short tongue topic" / ...I can speak spanish, japanese, english and a little of portuguese. And i don't think english is considered "the hardest language to learn". My english is not perfect but i think english grammar is pretty simple. The pronunciation is difficult yes, but I think it happens with every language, japaneses' english may be funny, but americans' japanese is also funny.Mythrel wrote:well typically asians have smaller tounges(no joke) so some words are harder to say. Lets face it people English isnt an easy language to master infact its said its the hardest language to learn. I give them an A for at least trying you should think how funny you sound trying to speak japanese to them.
It do now, it didn' used tot. That's why elders can't pronunciate those "new characters" very well.drewnamis wrote:Japanese does have V and F, as I've mentioned previously.
About the japanesed words, it's japanese, not english. Thats why japaneses dont even try to pronunciate them "correctly". And not only the pronunciation is different, sometimes the meaning is also different... why? because its not a bad pronouncied english word with a different meaning and ussage, its japanese.
It's not a rule, nobody will kill you if you do that (it may be strange, funny or weird). And it dependes on the song, the phrase, and the rhyme i guess.groink wrote:When you sing in Japanese around other Japanese speakers, it is best to stick with the Katakana, rather than using your English experience and pronounce the words properly. It's basically good manners. For example, when I sing the EXILE song "CARRY ON", I should pronounce that phrase as 「カリオン」 (ka+ri+o+n').
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aisu_kurimu
- Posts: 46
- Joined: Aug 17th, '05, 13:14
- Location: NY, NY
Hehe, I do the same thing in the kareoke bars. When I say "everything," I usually say "e-bu-ri-sin" because... it seems to flow better. I have a slightly different mindset when I speak English and switch to Korean.furikake wrote:It's not a rule, nobody will kill you if you do that (it may be strange, funny or weird). And it dependes on the song, the phrase, and the rhyme i guess.groink wrote:When you sing in Japanese around other Japanese speakers, it is best to stick with the Katakana, rather than using your English experience and pronounce the words properly. It's basically good manners. For example, when I sing the EXILE song "CARRY ON", I should pronounce that phrase as 「カリオン」 (ka+ri+o+n').
Speaking about Polish: Our correspondent in Poland reports that Wojciech Jaruzelski, Tadeusz Mazowiecki and Lech Walesa met in a summit conference, and the only thing that they could agree on was that George Bush has a funny name.
But that's an old joke, all of these guys are hopefully retired now – after all the peak of their activities was about 20 years ago. Still I wonder how many people here besides killy can pronounce their names correctly.
If anyone of you knows the Ghost in the Shell Standaolne Complex you may have noticed the beginning theme. It's Inner Universe by Yoko Kanno and performed by Origa. It's sung in Russian, Latin and English, and the cool thing is (if you like puzzles) that there's a multitude of interpretations for the second phrase of the song. Just out of idle curiosity I asked a Russian girl today what she thought of it and… she didn't recognize Russian as a language in the song at all.
There's a random tidbit someone might find interesting to know: it dates back another 20 years, but here goes: you can't identify a person's voiceprint if he/she is speaking another language. The phonetic apparatus simply switches to another mode to accommodate for the sound groups you are supposed to produce. If it doesn't, then an accent is observed.
http://slovensko.com/forum/read.php?11,27545 is a copy of an article that you can find in about 1001 places, probably because the native speakers don't want their language to be easy. Quite a few other apologists out there like to point out a few dozen homonyms or homographs apparently not realizing these happen in most languages.
English spelling (or is it actually pronunciation) indeed borders on ridiculous. Often attributed to G.B.Shaw it has been suggested that by all merits the correct spelling of 'fish' should actually be 'ghoti'. You see: "gh" as in "cough", "o" as in "women", "ti" as in "nation".
Now take it from the viewpoint of the Japanese or the Finns (Philip Seymour suggests Finnish is very easy to learn to read, so he can simply be written off as the nutcase he is) where the sounds stay the same as long as the letter combinations are the same. (Well, yeah, the Japanese have their ready-made syllables for that purpose, but nevertheless…) It never enters ones mind that 'tea' and 'head' should sound different, or that actually a suffix like "-tion" should be pronounced with two sounds rather than four.
Curiously its' the other way round as well. It's pretty hard for an English speaker to realize that a diphthong (a vowel combination) is actually pronounced as separate sounds for each vowel. Or that there are palatalized versions of "l" besides the non-palatalized ones dominant in English, Russian and... Finnish that has nothing similar with the other two. In all honesty, I have met both English speakers and Japanese who speak Estonian (a language that is very similar to Finnish and one that I know pretty well) and only the Japanese can do so without a noticeable accent. It's part of the WYSIWYH upbringing. Yes – what you see is what you hear. Then again, I truly take off my hat for any English speaker who can maintain the 14 word cases of Estonian applying them to the correct words in a sentence. It's a feat that cannot be repeated by numbers of native Estonians – yesterday I again found a number of bright and proud Estonians who didn't know the cases for the simplest word 'beer'.
I speak English often with an accent myself. Occasionally on purpose, occasionally unconsciously when I'm tried. There's no 'z' sound in my language (like in "rose" or the plurals of some words), neither is there a sound for 'th' or 'sh' or even 'g' as in 'george'. Well, the sounds are there in assimilated foreign words, but not in native words. So I occasionally fall back to the wrong pronunciation patterns. I can fool some people some of the time, but will never get close to fooling all people all of the time. The same applies to a few more languages. My German, I hear, has a thick English accent, as does my French.
I have never had the chance to say something in Japanese to a Japanese, but I'm pretty confident he/she would get cramps eventually realizing what I was attempting to say. Hopefully out of laughter, not pain. I'm an old dog and not likely to learn new tricks any more. I was over 40 when I first came to contact with Japanese aside from a few Kurosawa movies that always had convenient Finnish subtitles on TV soon after they had won their golden prizes they always did.
All in all, expecting assimilated load words to sound anything like their original counterparts is a bit too much. It also will, quite definitely, influence the nationwide grasp of the foreign language. Besides that – I cannot at the moment pinpoint the "culture clash" articles that have suggested that the way English is taught in Japan today there can be no realistic expectations of fluent Japanese with only slight accent from the common education system. Well, http://www.atimes.com/japan-econ/DF27Dh01.html anyway.
Anyway, I'm gonna dive into http://www.estat.us/id86.html now - it looks like much fun.
Did I waste your time well?
But that's an old joke, all of these guys are hopefully retired now – after all the peak of their activities was about 20 years ago. Still I wonder how many people here besides killy can pronounce their names correctly.
If anyone of you knows the Ghost in the Shell Standaolne Complex you may have noticed the beginning theme. It's Inner Universe by Yoko Kanno and performed by Origa. It's sung in Russian, Latin and English, and the cool thing is (if you like puzzles) that there's a multitude of interpretations for the second phrase of the song. Just out of idle curiosity I asked a Russian girl today what she thought of it and… she didn't recognize Russian as a language in the song at all.
There's a random tidbit someone might find interesting to know: it dates back another 20 years, but here goes: you can't identify a person's voiceprint if he/she is speaking another language. The phonetic apparatus simply switches to another mode to accommodate for the sound groups you are supposed to produce. If it doesn't, then an accent is observed.
http://slovensko.com/forum/read.php?11,27545 is a copy of an article that you can find in about 1001 places, probably because the native speakers don't want their language to be easy.
Quite a few other apologists out there like to point out a few dozen homonyms or homographs apparently not realizing these happen in most languages.English spelling (or is it actually pronunciation) indeed borders on ridiculous. Often attributed to G.B.Shaw it has been suggested that by all merits the correct spelling of 'fish' should actually be 'ghoti'. You see: "gh" as in "cough", "o" as in "women", "ti" as in "nation".
Now take it from the viewpoint of the Japanese or the Finns (Philip Seymour suggests Finnish is very easy to learn to read, so he can simply be written off as the nutcase he is) where the sounds stay the same as long as the letter combinations are the same. (Well, yeah, the Japanese have their ready-made syllables for that purpose, but nevertheless…) It never enters ones mind that 'tea' and 'head' should sound different, or that actually a suffix like "-tion" should be pronounced with two sounds rather than four.
Curiously its' the other way round as well. It's pretty hard for an English speaker to realize that a diphthong (a vowel combination) is actually pronounced as separate sounds for each vowel. Or that there are palatalized versions of "l" besides the non-palatalized ones dominant in English, Russian and... Finnish that has nothing similar with the other two. In all honesty, I have met both English speakers and Japanese who speak Estonian (a language that is very similar to Finnish and one that I know pretty well) and only the Japanese can do so without a noticeable accent. It's part of the WYSIWYH upbringing. Yes – what you see is what you hear. Then again, I truly take off my hat for any English speaker who can maintain the 14 word cases of Estonian applying them to the correct words in a sentence. It's a feat that cannot be repeated by numbers of native Estonians – yesterday I again found a number of bright and proud Estonians who didn't know the cases for the simplest word 'beer'.
I speak English often with an accent myself. Occasionally on purpose, occasionally unconsciously when I'm tried. There's no 'z' sound in my language (like in "rose" or the plurals of some words), neither is there a sound for 'th' or 'sh' or even 'g' as in 'george'. Well, the sounds are there in assimilated foreign words, but not in native words. So I occasionally fall back to the wrong pronunciation patterns. I can fool some people some of the time, but will never get close to fooling all people all of the time. The same applies to a few more languages. My German, I hear, has a thick English accent, as does my French.
I have never had the chance to say something in Japanese to a Japanese, but I'm pretty confident he/she would get cramps eventually realizing what I was attempting to say. Hopefully out of laughter, not pain. I'm an old dog and not likely to learn new tricks any more. I was over 40 when I first came to contact with Japanese aside from a few Kurosawa movies that always had convenient Finnish subtitles on TV soon after they had won their golden prizes they always did.
All in all, expecting assimilated load words to sound anything like their original counterparts is a bit too much. It also will, quite definitely, influence the nationwide grasp of the foreign language. Besides that – I cannot at the moment pinpoint the "culture clash" articles that have suggested that the way English is taught in Japan today there can be no realistic expectations of fluent Japanese with only slight accent from the common education system. Well, http://www.atimes.com/japan-econ/DF27Dh01.html anyway.
Anyway, I'm gonna dive into http://www.estat.us/id86.html now - it looks like much fun.
Did I waste your time well?
Actually it did. My aunt who is in her 70s was the one who pointed it out to me. I wish I could find scholarly sources on it, but the V sound was used in prewar Japanese.furikake wrote:It do now, it didn' used tot. That's why elders can't pronunciate those "new characters" very well.drewnamis wrote:Japanese does have V and F, as I've mentioned previously.
My point was that those characterers were developed to represent foreign sounds (words). They were not part of the original japanese katakana alphabet because there are not japanese words with those sounds. And are only used in "new words" like DVD ディヴィディ. Older words are written with ビ, バ, ウ, etc, ex: Visa ビザ, Violin バイオリン, Virus ウイルス, Television テレビ, etc.drewnamis wrote:Actually it did. My aunt who is in her 70s was the one who pointed it out to me. I wish I could find scholarly sources on it, but the V sound was used in prewar Japanese.
I pointed out elders pronunciation because its different, even their english with japanese accent sounds different. Ex: A lot of them can't pronunciate ティ, ファ, or ヴィ, they say チ, フア, and ブイ／ウイ.
But it would be different if you sing Dragon Ash or Def Tech right?aisu_kurimu wrote:Hehe, I do the same thing in the kareoke bars. When I say "everything," I usually say "e-bu-ri-sin" because... it seems to flow better.
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Prof Plum
- Posts: 19
- Joined: Mar 25th, '05, 06:32
- Location: United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland
After a certain age languages are hard to pick up. Your brains language learning centres start to shut down and it becomes more and more difficult. So whatever language your trying to learn the unfamiliar phonemes in the new languages are more difficult to articulate and distinguish.
Also the idea and the collection of phonemes (the lexeme together with all the inflections and conjugations) which represents that idea are more difficult to connect. When there is a connection, for example, you can think of a fish and brain knows how to make he sound in the language and when you hear the word you recognise the idea it represents. As you get older it takes more practice to reinforce those connections. In cases where children have been neglected or deliberately isolated it is difficult for them to learn a first language never mind a second.
Another thing which makes languages difficult to 'learn" is the growth and variation of the language. That also makes it more difficult for non native speakers to feel completely confident. English is still growing quite rapidly - new words and dialects appear daily and the Internet proliferates those words. As a native English speaker I don't understand many slang words and dialects. The variation in pronunciation within the British Isles alone is remarkably varied. I speak with what is described as "received pronunciation." At least I try my best to be understood by everyone. Many English speakers keep to their natural accent and way of speaking. Many of them in the UK would regard me as "posh" for not using my natural accent - but then those people would judge me if I did use my natural accent and it was different from theirs!
My Japanese teacher told me at the end of my last course "Of course, what I'm teaching you won't help you communicate. No one actually speaks like this." So I suppose the same is true when learning English and probably Polish too. You take lessons to pass exams. Hopefully, somewhere along the way, it will come in useful.
Compared to the speaking and listening, reading and writing is a breeze. It's a little more difficult going from West to East. 26 Alphabetic characters compared with over 2000 (Kana + Kanji) I'm not sure I'd like to learn English grammar from scratch.
Also the idea and the collection of phonemes (the lexeme together with all the inflections and conjugations) which represents that idea are more difficult to connect. When there is a connection, for example, you can think of a fish and brain knows how to make he sound in the language and when you hear the word you recognise the idea it represents. As you get older it takes more practice to reinforce those connections. In cases where children have been neglected or deliberately isolated it is difficult for them to learn a first language never mind a second.
Another thing which makes languages difficult to 'learn" is the growth and variation of the language. That also makes it more difficult for non native speakers to feel completely confident. English is still growing quite rapidly - new words and dialects appear daily and the Internet proliferates those words. As a native English speaker I don't understand many slang words and dialects. The variation in pronunciation within the British Isles alone is remarkably varied. I speak with what is described as "received pronunciation." At least I try my best to be understood by everyone. Many English speakers keep to their natural accent and way of speaking. Many of them in the UK would regard me as "posh" for not using my natural accent - but then those people would judge me if I did use my natural accent and it was different from theirs!
My Japanese teacher told me at the end of my last course "Of course, what I'm teaching you won't help you communicate. No one actually speaks like this." So I suppose the same is true when learning English and probably Polish too. You take lessons to pass exams. Hopefully, somewhere along the way, it will come in useful.
Compared to the speaking and listening, reading and writing is a breeze. It's a little more difficult going from West to East. 26 Alphabetic characters compared with over 2000 (Kana + Kanji) I'm not sure I'd like to learn English grammar from scratch.
Last edited by Prof Plum on Sep 6th, '05, 23:04, edited 1 time in total.
Being raised in a certain city/country helps a lot when learning Japanese. In Hawaii, virtually every resident is explosed to most Southeastern and Eastern Asian languages. Even if a Hawaiian (not ethnic Hawaiian, but a person in Hawaii) doesn't speak Japanese, he actually pronounces some of the common Japanese words correctly. Words like karaoke, nori, shoyu, furukake, among others are properly pronounced by most of the residents I've run into.
But it's not just Japanese words -- most common words in most Asian languages are pronounced correctly among Hawaiians. I strongly believe it is because seeing we're brought up in a melting pot of ethnic and national cultures, we do our best to pronounce words correct purely out of respect for the cultures.
My major language of study back in college was Hawaiian. Even among the local TV newspeople, they're starting to focus a lot more on pronouncing Hawaiian words correctly. One of my Hawaiian professors may be responsible for that... She constantly wrote to all the TV stations complaining that the University's women's team is not the "Rainbow Wai-hee-nees" LOL.
At least in Hawaii, that's the way it is. I can't speak for the mainland U.S. or other parts of the western world.
--- groink
But it's not just Japanese words -- most common words in most Asian languages are pronounced correctly among Hawaiians. I strongly believe it is because seeing we're brought up in a melting pot of ethnic and national cultures, we do our best to pronounce words correct purely out of respect for the cultures.
My major language of study back in college was Hawaiian. Even among the local TV newspeople, they're starting to focus a lot more on pronouncing Hawaiian words correctly. One of my Hawaiian professors may be responsible for that... She constantly wrote to all the TV stations complaining that the University's women's team is not the "Rainbow Wai-hee-nees" LOL.
At least in Hawaii, that's the way it is. I can't speak for the mainland U.S. or other parts of the western world.
--- groink
Learning new languages shows only basics. How to pronounce words correctly and etc. lays in your own issue.
The environment is important too. Since I was a child I watched German programs and talked with my grandmother in German (don't ask why, it's a long story). Now I speak this language better then people that studied it for years and I haven't had a single lesson.
I'm learning Russian, English and Latin in school. My Russian is so so... English is better. And Latin is Latin, what can I say... My teacher for this subject said that we will never learn how to speak Latin correctly and that you can only learn a language really if think in that language.
The environment is important too. Since I was a child I watched German programs and talked with my grandmother in German (don't ask why, it's a long story). Now I speak this language better then people that studied it for years and I haven't had a single lesson.
I'm learning Russian, English and Latin in school. My Russian is so so... English is better. And Latin is Latin, what can I say... My teacher for this subject said that we will never learn how to speak Latin correctly and that you can only learn a language really if think in that language.
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