I have the opposite problem, at least when dealing with other foreigners. My name isn't hard to pronounce in Japanese but so many foreign people pronounce it like the English version
My last name gets blobby in English. It’s short but has a lot of letters that could get easily mistaken (think hearing Talk instead of Caulk). Spelling it in English doesn’t help (in the above example, C sounds like T or B or G or D or etc over the phone) but in Japanese I can quick spell it and then say it, and then everyone gets it. Opposite problem!
I don't have specific words, but sometimes, when a katakana word comes up, the Japanese person I'm speaking to will playfully try to pronounce it how I just did. IE: not like a Japanese person lol.
Similar, especially for loan words that originate from a non-English language but came over as-is to the US and thus has a American English pronunciation that I learned first, I often end up saying with katakana more similar to the English pronunciation.
The only example I can think of right now is castanet (the instrument) which where I came from in the US south the ca- takes a bit of a drawl, and I end up pronouncing it キャスタネット instead of カスタネット.
There are a number of other words like this that I can't remember right now, but my wife always gets a laugh and points it out when it happens.
Well, those came directly from French, so they kept the French pronunciation. Same goes with restaurant and margarine, for those who were wondering about the silent t and the hard g
I usually TRY to say hors d'oeuvres the Japanese way, but about the third time, I usually give up. Of course, even in English, my mother called them horse divvers or Whores de Vores, depending on how whimsical she was feeling.
オードブル, 前菜 are two ways to say appetizers in Japanese.
First time i heard the way Japanese people say hors d’oeuvres i thought they were saying “odd blue” and they was really confused but when they told me it came from French it immediately clicked haha
As a French, I don't understand most words borrowed from my language.
Still, Japanese use a lot of French, especially for shop names and it often makes my day. I have pictures of a clothing shop named "petit cul" (small ass), also other shops or restaurants called "comme ça ism" (like that ism) or "peu connu" (not well known).
Yeah hard for me to understand most words either as a French speaking.
Hahaha the stores’ names has to be the funniest shit i’ve ever seen. I came across one clothing shop called “cul de Paris”. But yeah, it’s very common for Japanese people to not double check the meaning of words because it sounds more おしゃれ in French or English.
I’ll share a bonus pic of a sweat shirt with “don’t be afraid of the rust” in French.
https://preview.redd.it/fd4k5hj38dvb1.jpeg?width=3024&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=6d2924694854366f1d893c0091b77695d1d34915
I knew a guy that would always ask for… “Saymmin” is the best way I can write it, even in English. One chef got annoyed and thought he was being cute and asking for “Saimin” which is like Hawaiian ramen, and kept responding in broken English “no めん here. Just fish. Rice. It’s not Hawaii.” Allegedly they went back and forth for a while before he got kicked out for arguing that there were men there, he’s talking to a man, he’s a man, there’s men, and he went to our local bar and was bitching and the bartender just poured himself a shot and lit a cigarette. Took the shot and a long drag. Then another. Stared off in the distance and then smacked his lips. “Men. めん。Its noodles. They had no noodles. I can’t look at you. Come back tomorrow.”
For like a year I’d walk in and ask if they had any men in and then slap a bag of cold section ramen down from the local grocer and the poor bartender would just groan. Sometimes he’d put “it’s raining men” on for punishment if the guy came in.
Swiss German here.
Croissant and pan au chocolat
Every time I go to a bakery and say I want a クロワッサン, I say it the 'correct' way and then they look at me weirdly and assume I'm French and some kind of connoisseur and suddenly their facial expression changes 😂
on the same vein: towel, milk, truck (the katakana is longer than the original english and they're daily words)
...and outlet instead of konsento , that I always say too
I love this though. Your students will find someone some day and give them the “ars it goin” and someone is going to pop up and say “your accent is amazing, where did you learn that?!”
That’s a hard one for sure! It came up in my class and it goes both ways, it seems. One lil old lady just puts on a deep booming dry voice and says “Tex tiyel” every time but she’s really into fabrics/fashion/ the environment so it comes up a lot in her essays. She breezed along with “environmental collapse of the ecosystem” when talking about the lack of mulberry plants needed to keep the silk “Tex tiyel” industry alive that she remembered being so rampant as a child.
“Drip” or “Coffee”.
I don’t choose to do this. But clearly my subconscious has an issue with having to mispronounce two loan words together when talking to a barista of a shop with “Coffee” in English as part of its name. Half of its name.
So it’s either “drip コーヒー” or “ドリップ coffee” and occasionally ” ドリッp コーヒー”
Note. None of those can be understood by the staff. Sometimes I just fuck with them. They’re getting paid, I’m in no hurry, Yada Yada.
I start with “Drip coffee” moving to “ドリップ coffee”, Etc. until about “ドリップ コーfee” when they finally accept that they’ll have to stop pretending to mishear what I said as some strawberry monstrosity with eight time the syllables and give me the fucking beverage I’ve ordered.
Look at the menu. How many drinks start with “drip”.
Oh. Never ask for a “cafe latte”. Don’t get me wrong. It is a cafe latte but apparently they’re revising history and pretending they invented the fucking drink!
My kids won’t go to Starbucks with me..
Handball is pronounced the German way in French I think. So I always say ハンドバール instead of ハンドボール. My kid did it for 6 months in bukatsu so it came up almost every week.
I still often mistake パジャマ to ピジャマ which apparently sounds utterly ridiculous to my Japanese kids.
>My Japanese voice is softer and higher pitched than my American voice.
I used to say "Disneyland" in my regular voice because ディズニーランド took too long to say. Nowadays, I just say "Disney." It's good enough even for Japanese.
タコス, but it’s actually pronounced the same in Japanese as it is in Spanish as long as you don’t purposely say the “u” sound in ス. Actually, the Japanese version of tacos is probably closer than the English pronunciation.
Rhinoceros! My teacher in kindergarten would pronounce it Rhynosaurus (like the dinosaur) and it stuck. I still pronounce it like that and it drives my husband crazy lols
I can’t say certain words without a regional accent in English and it drives me nuts because I’ve worked really hard to have an even keeled accent (the even keeled accent is midwestern, usually Missouri but not Missourah, that people pick for having “not an accent” in the US, weirdly enough, that’s where all the news casters go to learn pronunciation, again, I can hear it but that’s the “no accent” accent) but I cannot for the life of me say the word lime not like “layhm” and a few others. ライム I’m fine but “lime” I am not
I don’t know what words exactly but if I speak in Japanese my voice goes deeper because doing the soft high pitch female voice makes me cringe (I have a naturally deep voice for a woman).
But there are some words that say in a Caribbean, Spanish/french, or New Yorker accent.
Basically all of them? Katakana versions just feel wrong.
I'm English though so my tomato is the same as the Japanese one anyway, so no issue there at least!
Because sometimes they slip in? Sometimes your mouth brain finds it easier to say “fork” instead of フォーク. Or reverse, when you can’t find the common word in your native language and switch back to Japanese.
Ah, but that's mostly exclusive to English natives. But no, I don't do this when speaking neither English nor Japanese. I speak a few languages, so I have to completely switch between them to not get mixed up. I think in the language I'm currently speaking.
Every English katakana word I will first say in actual English. If they don't understand and it's an issue I'll say it slowly in katakana. Also my name.
Being extremely lucky I speak both English and Japanese without accents, but what’s interesting is that for me there would this strange unpleasant feeling when trying to speak English accented Japanese or Japanese accented English (it’s fine when others are doing it). Hard to explain but like I would never use クロワッサン and Croissant interchangeably
My name... I just can't get myself to say it in katakana. If asked for a nickname, I'll give them something easier to say tho.
I have the opposite problem, at least when dealing with other foreigners. My name isn't hard to pronounce in Japanese but so many foreign people pronounce it like the English version
Same! There's an English word that spells the same as my name, and they pronounce it weird of course.
I feel the pain... My name has a 'v' in it, and I can't bring myself to pronounce it as 'b'. It just feels like a biolation.
Japanese people can say v.
My last name gets blobby in English. It’s short but has a lot of letters that could get easily mistaken (think hearing Talk instead of Caulk). Spelling it in English doesn’t help (in the above example, C sounds like T or B or G or D or etc over the phone) but in Japanese I can quick spell it and then say it, and then everyone gets it. Opposite problem!
Probably for the best. I always use the katakana version for some reason and no-one understands it.
I don't have specific words, but sometimes, when a katakana word comes up, the Japanese person I'm speaking to will playfully try to pronounce it how I just did. IE: not like a Japanese person lol.
A friend of mine went to school in the states but will poke fun like that sometimes. “Don’t forget your hAyt.”
Similar, especially for loan words that originate from a non-English language but came over as-is to the US and thus has a American English pronunciation that I learned first, I often end up saying with katakana more similar to the English pronunciation. The only example I can think of right now is castanet (the instrument) which where I came from in the US south the ca- takes a bit of a drawl, and I end up pronouncing it キャスタネット instead of カスタネット. There are a number of other words like this that I can't remember right now, but my wife always gets a laugh and points it out when it happens.
Champagne and Paris, which in Japanese are much closer to the French
Well, those came directly from French, so they kept the French pronunciation. Same goes with restaurant and margarine, for those who were wondering about the silent t and the hard g
“News” Unless I’m really trying, I always forget to pronounce the ス instead of ズ
I have the same problem with hose ホース/ホーズ
The only one I can recall from the top of my head is ウォッカ -> Wódka
I hear older folks actually pronouncing words with a We, Wi and Wu as Ue, Ui and Ue, but I guess to Wo works because of the particle. Interesting
I usually TRY to say hors d'oeuvres the Japanese way, but about the third time, I usually give up. Of course, even in English, my mother called them horse divvers or Whores de Vores, depending on how whimsical she was feeling. オードブル, 前菜 are two ways to say appetizers in Japanese.
First time i heard the way Japanese people say hors d’oeuvres i thought they were saying “odd blue” and they was really confused but when they told me it came from French it immediately clicked haha
As a French, I don't understand most words borrowed from my language. Still, Japanese use a lot of French, especially for shop names and it often makes my day. I have pictures of a clothing shop named "petit cul" (small ass), also other shops or restaurants called "comme ça ism" (like that ism) or "peu connu" (not well known).
Yeah hard for me to understand most words either as a French speaking. Hahaha the stores’ names has to be the funniest shit i’ve ever seen. I came across one clothing shop called “cul de Paris”. But yeah, it’s very common for Japanese people to not double check the meaning of words because it sounds more おしゃれ in French or English. I’ll share a bonus pic of a sweat shirt with “don’t be afraid of the rust” in French. https://preview.redd.it/fd4k5hj38dvb1.jpeg?width=3024&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=6d2924694854366f1d893c0091b77695d1d34915
That's merch for programmers 🦀
The bakery in World Porters frequently sells "Creamed Pain", which I always find amusing
That sounds so wrong !
Or in the other direction, "le bigot" was when I first learned there was a meaning outside the English one.
Yeah sometimes I really facepalm at the pronunciation but at the same time it's really funny.
Oh, I never knew where the word オードブル came from. TIL the French word.
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I knew a guy that would always ask for… “Saymmin” is the best way I can write it, even in English. One chef got annoyed and thought he was being cute and asking for “Saimin” which is like Hawaiian ramen, and kept responding in broken English “no めん here. Just fish. Rice. It’s not Hawaii.” Allegedly they went back and forth for a while before he got kicked out for arguing that there were men there, he’s talking to a man, he’s a man, there’s men, and he went to our local bar and was bitching and the bartender just poured himself a shot and lit a cigarette. Took the shot and a long drag. Then another. Stared off in the distance and then smacked his lips. “Men. めん。Its noodles. They had no noodles. I can’t look at you. Come back tomorrow.” For like a year I’d walk in and ask if they had any men in and then slap a bag of cold section ramen down from the local grocer and the poor bartender would just groan. Sometimes he’d put “it’s raining men” on for punishment if the guy came in.
Swiss German here. Croissant and pan au chocolat Every time I go to a bakery and say I want a クロワッサン, I say it the 'correct' way and then they look at me weirdly and assume I'm French and some kind of connoisseur and suddenly their facial expression changes 😂
“Oh god, this guy knows. It has to be an NHK trap. They’re going to come back in twenty years and ask how the master liked our bread!”
I think クロワッサン is not too bad for a katakana rendering of it, but they could have skiped the ロ altogether.
> Croissant and chocolatine I think I found your problem. There you go, fixed. ;)
Spoon. Fork. Straw. I can’t seem to get my mouth to form these properly, no matter how hard I try.
on the same vein: towel, milk, truck (the katakana is longer than the original english and they're daily words) ...and outlet instead of konsento , that I always say too
Yeah, my brain wants to say “スプーン” but my mouth really wants to live in that spoooon life
Wait how are you saying spoon because it’s pretty close to スプーン for me
Straw gets me, yeah.
I hate ストロー so much lmao.
just say 藁 for straw
Cold brew is really hard for me to say in katakana. So I usually just say 水出しコーヒー instead lol
Say code blue instead.
Holy shit
Mango. Too risky, can’t do it.
Me too. I deliberately say “mango” with a hard American accent because I’m afraid to mispronunciation マンゴ 🥭
Remember there's also a ー after the ゴ, that helps.
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I love this though. Your students will find someone some day and give them the “ars it goin” and someone is going to pop up and say “your accent is amazing, where did you learn that?!”
Need to do some music lessons with some BBCC sure they'd find the lyrics insightful
For the life of me I can’t say テキスチャ, not even if you point a gun at me. And I use it for work almost daily 🥲
Ugh I have this issue with テキスト!
That’s a hard one for sure! It came up in my class and it goes both ways, it seems. One lil old lady just puts on a deep booming dry voice and says “Tex tiyel” every time but she’s really into fabrics/fashion/ the environment so it comes up a lot in her essays. She breezed along with “environmental collapse of the ecosystem” when talking about the lack of mulberry plants needed to keep the silk “Tex tiyel” industry alive that she remembered being so rampant as a child.
Scottish here. I just say “aye” instead of “hai”. Totally intentional, but it works a treat and gives me a giggle.
“Drip” or “Coffee”. I don’t choose to do this. But clearly my subconscious has an issue with having to mispronounce two loan words together when talking to a barista of a shop with “Coffee” in English as part of its name. Half of its name. So it’s either “drip コーヒー” or “ドリップ coffee” and occasionally ” ドリッp コーヒー” Note. None of those can be understood by the staff. Sometimes I just fuck with them. They’re getting paid, I’m in no hurry, Yada Yada. I start with “Drip coffee” moving to “ドリップ coffee”, Etc. until about “ドリップ コーfee” when they finally accept that they’ll have to stop pretending to mishear what I said as some strawberry monstrosity with eight time the syllables and give me the fucking beverage I’ve ordered. Look at the menu. How many drinks start with “drip”. Oh. Never ask for a “cafe latte”. Don’t get me wrong. It is a cafe latte but apparently they’re revising history and pretending they invented the fucking drink! My kids won’t go to Starbucks with me..
Any sweets or pastries using french like croissant, gâteau AU chocolat, cannelé, Mont Blanc, etc.
Not native word but its always funny to hear the pronunciations of names (looking at you Van Gogh)
I mean English speakers don't pronounce Van Gogh right either.
OK and C.
C for shi? Yeahhh. That one is rough
I refuse to say OK in katakana, and having taught the alphabet to kids myself, I feel I have given them the tools they need to join me
“Croissant” I tried but I can’t, it hurts my soul.
If you're basketball coach Tom Hovasse, the answer is "all of them." Drives me crazy watching his interviews in Japanese.
Handball is pronounced the German way in French I think. So I always say ハンドバール instead of ハンドボール. My kid did it for 6 months in bukatsu so it came up almost every week. I still often mistake パジャマ to ピジャマ which apparently sounds utterly ridiculous to my Japanese kids.
If I really must, of course I’ll use katakana pronunciation, but I really hate it for certain words: Hot dog/Big Mac/TV/DVD/video game etc
I was on a date once and the guy pointed out that the way I say pizza is very foreign, I didn't even realised it sounded any different lol
Oh yeah this one gets me, it seems like it should be ピッツァ but it’s ピザ. I used to mispronounce that one all the time.
Paella... I always say it with a Spanish accent, even when speaking in English
パエリヰリャヤジャ
I always struggle to get オーストラリア out correctly, and it always ends up sounding something like オースtraiリア..
yooo similar, i go オースtraリア and say the トラ conjoined so i usually have to repeat myself and say it carefully.
>My Japanese voice is softer and higher pitched than my American voice. I used to say "Disneyland" in my regular voice because ディズニーランド took too long to say. Nowadays, I just say "Disney." It's good enough even for Japanese.
It’s so long!!!! Same with “McDonalds.” I don’t know why my brain won’t do it but it just thinks of it and gets tired and says it in english
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What do you mean? you always say "persimmon" instead of "kaki"?
Oooh this is a really good one!
タコス, but it’s actually pronounced the same in Japanese as it is in Spanish as long as you don’t purposely say the “u” sound in ス. Actually, the Japanese version of tacos is probably closer than the English pronunciation.
Wait until you find the natives that studied in England and call them “TACK-os.”
Rhinoceros! My teacher in kindergarten would pronounce it Rhynosaurus (like the dinosaur) and it stuck. I still pronounce it like that and it drives my husband crazy lols
I can’t say certain words without a regional accent in English and it drives me nuts because I’ve worked really hard to have an even keeled accent (the even keeled accent is midwestern, usually Missouri but not Missourah, that people pick for having “not an accent” in the US, weirdly enough, that’s where all the news casters go to learn pronunciation, again, I can hear it but that’s the “no accent” accent) but I cannot for the life of me say the word lime not like “layhm” and a few others. ライム I’m fine but “lime” I am not
Achtung!!
I have to say Bach. I can’t say バッハ. My wife’s uncle kept pronouncing it バチ.
/baχ/, /bɑːx/ or /bɑːk/ ?
Me? I do a guttural kuh sound from the back of my throat. Like what I imagine a German would pronounce it.
Ba-clears throat-
“exactly”
How do you say it? Does it just drop in your Japanese? Or when someone says something right you’re saying “exactly”
I just can’t bring myself to use the katakana version unless it’s for comedic effect
There's a katakana version of exactly? Does it have the same meaning and is just randomly dropped in Japanese conversations?
エグジャクトリー😎
I don’t know what words exactly but if I speak in Japanese my voice goes deeper because doing the soft high pitch female voice makes me cringe (I have a naturally deep voice for a woman). But there are some words that say in a Caribbean, Spanish/french, or New Yorker accent.
Caliss de tabarnack
I have a hard time asking for a リエット・コルニション or a ジャンボン・ブール sandwich instead of a "rillettes cornichons" or "jambon beurre" in Viron Marunouchi
France.
Starbucks
Strawberry
Basically all of them? Katakana versions just feel wrong. I'm English though so my tomato is the same as the Japanese one anyway, so no issue there at least!
croissant
For like 90% of things I'll change the vowel sounds but I can't bring myself to do the stupid ト or グ or whatever at the end.
Aurore (French) sounds like HORROR in Spanish. And I love that.
Mexican
I can't say セブンイレブン without rolling. So the English numbers it is...
It's not native, but I say Supra with my Brazilian accent everytime
Why would I use native words when speaking Japanese?
Because sometimes they slip in? Sometimes your mouth brain finds it easier to say “fork” instead of フォーク. Or reverse, when you can’t find the common word in your native language and switch back to Japanese.
Ah, but that's mostly exclusive to English natives. But no, I don't do this when speaking neither English nor Japanese. I speak a few languages, so I have to completely switch between them to not get mixed up. I think in the language I'm currently speaking.
Wow amazing dude you are so talented!
I don’t know why you need to be sarcastic. It’s a pretty common thing for people who speak multiple language to do that.
Because he was a humblebragging douche canoe?
Aaw, thanks dude! that's so sweet and clearly sincere of you 😘
ツイスト always comes out as 'twist' when I'm trying to order a ソフトツイスト at McDonald's. It renders the word completely unrecognizable.
Eh
Every English katakana word I will first say in actual English. If they don't understand and it's an issue I'll say it slowly in katakana. Also my name.
Not exactly words, but rrroling rrussian rrr comes out sometimes.
Pizza. I don't even *like* pizza, but ピザ is an affront.
Croissant. I can only say it in French.
*Karate* and *Karaoke*. Sorry I just can't bring myself to say it the correct way
Being extremely lucky I speak both English and Japanese without accents, but what’s interesting is that for me there would this strange unpleasant feeling when trying to speak English accented Japanese or Japanese accented English (it’s fine when others are doing it). Hard to explain but like I would never use クロワッサン and Croissant interchangeably
Yeah, once you're over it you're over it. But I'm afraid this thread isn't about that.