Most people don’t even notice if you say the tsu in tsunami. It’s too close.
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A little off-topic, but I went on a mini rant when watching a UK dark comedy that included a scene with a quiz. The question was “what the are the two largest cities in Japan, whose names are anagrams of each other?”
Only in English does the anagram apply. The Kanji differ.
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Well, even if they have different kanji, they could still be anagrams in Japanese if the kana could be rearranged to make both of them. Though that’s obviously not possible either.
What’s more egregious to me is that Kyoto isn’t really all that close to being one of the top 2 cities by population.
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Spanish is my first language, so I don’t have this problem for the most part (Spanish and Japanese phonetics are very similar). I’m fine with people having accents and all, but…I have to say that it does bug me when some English speakers in particular don’t put any effort.
AAA-RRI-GAATO
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I preserve the Japanese ‘r’ sound in words like ありがとう or さようなら if those come up in an English conversation. Saying those words with the english ‘r’ sound just makes me cringe now.
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definitely certain things i don’t go out of my way for but like everyone else is saying, sa-ki is the worst haha.
also interesting, i have an instructor who is Japanese. i don’t try to speak japanese with him and if i have to use Japanese words (I am studying acupuncture, and a lot of techniques and herbs were adapted by the Japanese and took on Japanese names) i say them to him with my normal accent, but with anyone else i say it in japanese accent. It somehow feels more respectful to me to be honest because he seems to have no interest in English speakers speaking japanese. for instance one of my other instructors started learning japanese when he was in 7th grade and speaks it fluently, and told me that every time he speaks Japanese to Dr. Takeda, Dr. Takeda exclusively responds in English 
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I may not be remembering the question accurately. It may have been “2 of the largest”.
It’s even worse since sake is just the general word for alcohol and nihonshu is the commonly accepted word for rice wine. Using sake to refer only to nihonshu WILL result in confusion when speaking to Japanese people, although it seems most are aware that the confusion exists, so can recover.
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Transphonation! Woohoo!
I prefer to say long お as “aw/or” and long え as “air” - in Australian English those sounds are much closer to Japanese than “oh” and “ay” and Standard West Aussie English has relatively steady (“pure”) vowel sounds for these compared to other parts of the country. あ usually comes out like “uh” (as in bucket) or “ahh” depending on length - both vowels are more centre-of-mouth than the Japanese version but they work fine.
So for おおぜき たかけいしょう it’s “aw-zecky tucker-care-sure” like NHK’s Murray Johnson (who’s from the same rough area of the same city as me), and not “oh-zecky tahkah-kay-show” like Jason’s Sumo Channel. Not to bag on Jason tho, he’s awesome. 
The “tap” sound of Japanese r is an allophone in Aus English for t/d between vowels (えり and “Eddie” are said almost exactly the same) so I soften the tap to more like a native English r in words like せきとり. I try to preserve the effects of vowel devoicing and translate pitch accent to syllable stress as well so it’s “die-ski” for 大好き and TAnook for タヌキ (unless I’m playing Mario Kart). I centralise my “u” a bit for short う as well, so not the “oo” of book but more like a short version of the Australian “oo” in choose.
But! If it’s a well-known Japanese word that’s been assimilated into English, or if the romaji suggests an English pronunciation which requires awkward amounts of explanation, then I go with the established or “obvious” pronunciation instead. So during demoscener meetups in the 1990s I was “kit-soon” because people had no clue who this “kee-tsu-neh” dude was.
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I watched this video years ago, and this is how I feel when I try to use the Japanese pronunciation in English or vice versa:
So I just stick with the speech patterns of whatever main language I’m using. I just can’t stand the cringe of being “that guy”.
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yeah that’s a thing i didn’t know until now. in defense of sake though, nihonshuu is quite a mouthful and, well, there’s a lot of lazy people out there. not saying it’s riiiight, but, you know… laziness
definitely though now that i know that i think i would use that in place of sake when talking to people who know the difference
They have “that guy” in Japanese too, when people insist on using katakana loanwords for difficult concepts that would normally be expressed in kanji. Like, it’s not enough that you’re talking about something difficult to understand using “big” kanji compounds, you have to go one step farther and use loanwords from English that would be on Eiken level 1.
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Yeah, that reminds me of Dogen’s “Japanese in 10 Years” video. The more Japanese I learn the funnier, and sadder, it becomes. かなしくてわらうのは
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I agree that not all Japanese words that come up are loanwords (think names, for example).
However, I would argue that the examples you gave are loanwords, with the understanding that loanwords are just words brought into another language without translation. We could have made a new word for those places, like happens in plenty of other instances, but we didn’t, and instead brought in and anglicized the native word. In my opinion, that anglicization in combination with a widespread use and understanding of the word makes it English.
Just as an example, the capital of France is Paris, pronounced in English with the “s” at the end /ˈpæɹ.ɪs/, despite the fact the original pronunciation of the French word is /pa.ʁi/. We pronounce it differently from the French. Despite the fact that it’s a city in France, the English pronunciation includes the “s” sound while the French pronunciation does not. The word has become English.
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Yeah, place names are often like that. Same with Paris, right, you’ll just sound pretentious and/or confuse people if you leave the s silent (or suddenly switch to a french r…)
For me it depends, I’ve changed my pronuciations of Osaka, Hiroshima and Fukushima for example since those don’t sound out of place in a Swedish/English sentence either way.
On the other hand, there’s no way I’m gonna pronounce sumo the Japanese way in English, people would think I’m nuts!
Other examples that sound unnatural are Tokyo like mentioned above, or karate or a ton of other words where the intonation is very non-English.
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Since Japanese pronunciation is closer to Polish then English i use more Polish, some words are spelled latterly the same as Polish words. One Japanese person told me he can understand me better then English people because my polish accent.
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I thought it was funny in the book Mariabeetle where one of the main characters’ dad was giving him a lesson about alcoholism.
The dad said something like 依存症のメカニズム, whereupon the main character, annoyed, told him to stop using difficult katakana words
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@Chellykins Gonna have to take on Blue Oyster Cult then
Such a catchy song but something in me dies a little bit every time they say to-ki-yo
On topic, I basically say the Japanese pronunciation for every word that’s not really translatable (like sushi, tsunami, sake, etc.), but I’ll do a more Americanized version of the harder ones (like leaving off the r/l sound) so they become some weird hybrid of pronunciations. Honestly at this point it’s just habit, and my family is all used to it and will make an effort to say it the Japanese way because that’s just how they are, but reading through this thread now is making me think that I probably sound pretentious when I do so, so I might have to change that… 
Edit: I have to add that I’ve been using actual, translatable Japanese words (like nenkyuu, kyouikuinkai, etc.) with my family and friends because I’m so used to just speaking Japanese, so that’s more of a problem I think at this point 
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I generally pronounce them as similarly as I can without sounding like I’m actually slipping into another language.
I also try to get other people to pronounce Japanese words better. I still haven’t got my parents to say karaage instead of kaRARGAY, but I think they’re getting better.
Come to think of it, I do this with most words from foreign languages if I know how they’re pronounced. I cringe every time someone says craypes instead of crêpes or pina instead of piña (even though those are really common pronunciations and probably correct in English). I just like pronouncing things “correctly” ig.
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Just like how I use the Japanese pronunciation of English words when speaking Japanese, I use the English pronunciation of Japanese words when speaking English.
For instance, if I said McDonald’s to a Japanese person, it might take them a while to understand what I am referring to. If I were to say マクドナルド or even マクド they would understand immediately. I consider it a courtesy.
The same applies when I am speaking English. If I were to pronounce words like 東京 correctly, an English speaker would be confused for a couple of seconds. So I just pronounce it Tokio, because that moment of confusion just doesn’t need to be there.
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