How far do you go when pronouncing Japanese words in English?

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The only pronunciation that matters:

And to weigh in on the discussion, I pronounce it TO-kyo (TOE-kyoh) and it doesn’t feel especially cringe-y coming out of my mouth

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I just pronounce it in correct Japanese. I might get a weird glance every once in a while. But…

It’s not a “samurai sword”, it’s not a “kat-tana”, it’s a “ka-ta-na”.
It’s not “Yokuuska”, it’s “Yokosuka”.
The list goes on.

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I’m not really sure what this would sound like… Is it a double t sound? Is kat said like “cat”? I usually hear people put stress on the second syllable, making it kaTAna.

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This.
I’ve also heard: “kuh-TA-na” and “ka-tain-na” (guess which part of the States I’m from!)

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When a Japanese word comes up, I have a tendency to accidentally say it in the Japanese pronunciation; Granted, when I say a word the people usually know I study Japanese, and also my family lived in Hawaii for a long time, so they’re used to the sound of Japanese. Normally it’s easy, as the pronunciation isn’t far off, but when the word is “arare” or “furikake” (pronounced by my family as “ah rah ree” and “foo ree kah key” respectively) i end up saying it both ways

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I tend to ‘mispronounce’ foreign words in the way that feels natural in the language I’m speaking. I know pronouncing Osaka ‘O-sah-kah’ is wrong, but I don’t think it’s some huge sin against language or culture or whatever.

It goes both ways - my name is Chris, when my wife says my name while speaking English she says it ‘correctly’, when she’s speaking Japanese she says Kurisu. Mc Donald’s becomes マクドナルド, and so on. Certain pronunciations just fit more naturally into the flow of speaking each language.

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I had a bit of a change of heart on this topic, actually.

Before I started studying Japanese I (obviously) said them with the English pronunciation.

Then, after I had studied for a bit, I made it a point to say them with the Japanese pronunciation because it was “correct.”

But then I thought about learners who refuse to pronounce katakana vocabulary in Japanese, and instead say the entire sentence in Japanese except for the single katakana word, which they say in English. That’s not how language works and it’s (naturally) hard for Japanese speakers to understand, because despite the fact that it’s an “English word,” it’s been imported and now is for all intents and purposes being used as Japanese vocabulary. It’s the reverse when saying a Japanese word in English. Once the word was imported to English, it became a word in English.

(It’s a little different when I talk to other bilingual people, because we sort of switch languages mid-sentence or pick whichever language can best express a thought, but that’s a unique situation.)

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I’ll say everything with English pronunciation mainly because the only time where I would even have the chance to say anything with jp pronunciation is with my friends and they would definitely have a wtf reaction. If we karaoke a jp song we’ll all try to use jp pronunciation but never in regular conversation. It just sounds a bit weird switching between accents mid sentence for any language.

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I usually use the pronunciation of the language I am using.
Conversely, when I am using words (e.g. names) from English or from my native language in Japanese, I will katakanize them up so that people can understand.

Unrelated, but nice avatar :ok_hand:

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Depends on the word and also depends on how much a tool I want to sound like. There is nothing worse than being around someone who is obsessed with showing off their knowledge of another language, or gets off on correcting others in it. A single, gentle correction is fine, but some folks really like to do it.
I have a friend who likes to say “hiri-kiri”. It’s a common pronunciation for hara-kiri in the USA and can be found in a lot of movies and tv shows. It’s flat wrong. I told him once that it’s incorrect, he didn’t seem to care, I stopped correcting him. When I say it, I’ll say tge word correctly but not make a big deal out of it.
I have another friend named Dan who purports to speak spanish. He insists on rolling his r’s whenever he wants to order a burrito or something. Even at a taco bell. He generally comes off as a giant tool to most people. Don’t be like Dan. Use correct pronunciation when you say Japanese words but don’t make a big deal about it; also beware of sounding like a weeb :smiley:

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I try to say things correctly whenever I have the opportunity, but I do have some exceptions like karate and karaoke because you can sound like a pretentious idiot when you try to say them correctly lol

Although I really hate it when people mispronounce sakura or say MANG-a instead of manga…but then again I still say anime wrong :sweat_smile:

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I definitely agree with you on pronouncing words the way they are in the language you’re speaking, but I wouldn’t consider all Japanese words that come up to be imported/loanwords. For example, tsunami is a loanword because it describes a phenomenon that can happen anywhere in the world, but the word sushi only refers to Japanese food, or Tokyo only refers to a Japanese location, so I wouldn’t say those words are really part of English.

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I pronounce them as accurately as possible. Not my fault the English language has butchered the pronunciation. Kamikaze, for instance. All my life I’ve heard it not only mispronounced but also referred to as meaning “suicide pilots”. Harakiri is another one that has been grossly mispronounced.

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This is really funny because my Japanese friend says it like this when he’s speaking in English.

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I’ve always heard harakiri prounounced “hairy carry” … all the way back to a Cheap Trick song in the 70’s. Cheap Trick, "Auf Wiedersehen" - YouTube around 1:45 I think…

There‘s still „translations“ of place names into other languages. In German it’s spelled Tokio. Or just take Cologne. It’s not even close to the original „Köln“, but nobody would understand me if I said Köln instead of Cologne in English or ケルン in Japanese, so what’s the point? Another example is Los Angeles, which is pronounced pretty differently in Japanese (ロスアンゼルス), so it would just sound weird to suddenly say „Los Angeles“ with the proper pronunciation in the middle of a Japanese sentence.

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Yes. I’d rather get an odd look than have an internal cringe.

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I call my husband Kurisu when I want to annoy him. I think I’ve done it too many times, he doesn’t react anymore.

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No I definitely agree that they should be pronounced like that, I was just picking out that I wouldn’t consider those words loanwords.