It’s tougher when on seeing any reference to Australia, people instantly begin quoting Paul Hogan (shrimp on barbie - that ad never played down here), that one episode of the Simpsons, mention infinite lethal Australian animals out to murder us (despite that we don’t have bears or large cat-like animals here). Still waiting for dingos eating babies, Crocodile Hunter references, slang nobody’s used since the 1970s outside of country pubs…
Here’s a fresh one for you all: “who’s your prime minister this week?”
Speaking of Rule 3 though (and I hope this isn’t stepping over the line), there’s a way that I remember かん as the reading for 官. The Australian English long a and short u (cut, car) are both pretty close to あ, and our accent tends not to let out that puff of air that signifies a “t” in words like “dent” (though we do pronounce the t with a puff of air in “dented” and “dents” - yay phonetics!)
So for Australians it should be easy to remember that 官 (government) is read as かん
My Japanese lecturer (who is native Japanese) assured us that Australians tend to have little to no accent when they speak in Japanese, compared to American speakers. Possibly she was just pandering to us, though I confess I have gotten good enough at Japanese to be able to hear an American accent…
This would be interesting to hear actual audio of. Like a blind test where you try to sort people into Australian or American by hearing them speak Japanese.
I like to think that my Japanese pronunciation is pretty good (putting aside pitch accent of course), so I’m having trouble imagining what an American accent in Japanese would sound like.
Curiously, although we appear to be from the same part of Australia, I pronounce どう, そう, しょう etc, and the さん, だん etc exactly as you, but けい, へい etc as per the WK mnemonics.
I recently saw a thing. The thing said the あ sound should rhyme with “buy”. Not on my Aussie tongue
I then spent about 5 minutes trying out different American accents to make it rhyme. Francis Underwwod from House of Cards was the best I could think of
Americans and Canadians, does your あ rhyme with “buy” and if so, where are you from?
The mnemonics are mostly to help you remember the reading, rather than the exact way to pronounce something. I’ve run into countless examples (as an American) where it’s clear to me that the mnemonic isn’t trying to tell me how to pronounce the reading, but how to remember it. Lots of them are a real stretch with regards to pronunciation even for us.
If you have a strong foundation in your hiragana, you shouldn’t run into too much trouble with this.
Yeah as a Kiwi I’ve had to substitute a bunch of my own mnemonics as well, although now I try and just come up with Japanese mnemonics because I find that sticks better.
Aussie here too. I had just thought the mnemonics gave a really bad accent. Most of them don’t sound much like my accent どう sounds neither like door or dough to me. I have had to just spend a lot of time listening to the pronunciations and then melding the mnemonics with them.
