Stop sounding silly.
- Kote is not pronounced “coat”.
Ko-tay
- Sune-ate is not pronounced “soon-ahtee”
Sue-neigh-ah-tay
- Osode is not pronounced “ohsoad”
O-so-day
- Mijin Gakure is not pronounced “Mai-jin Gakurrrrrr”
Mee-jin Ga-ku-ray
And how could I forget?
- Usukane is not pronounced “usu-cane”
oo-sue-ka-neigh
There are no silent syllables in Japanese. Everything is enunciated.
Oh my god! Thank you for highlighting this <3
One of my friends was very quick to point those out when the rest of us pronounced them wrong…now we just make sure to do it wrong when he’s on to annoy him! Very nice to know how to actually pronounce them though~
/logs off to play Ninja Guy-den
Haha maybe. But (and excuse the mini-rant) it’s like saying to all Americans: Tomato is not pronounced tuh-may-toh, its toe-mah-toe. Word pronunciation is pretty subjective depending on where you’re from, and as with tomato the country of origin isn’t always seen as the right pronunciation :P
One of my Dynamis shellmates refuses to acknowledge that his pronunciation of “Seckanocky” might be wrong. We’re usually laughing too hard to correct him though.
^^; I’m notorious for correcting people. I can’t help it!
The linguist in me wants to point out that these particular words don’t contain dipthongs so the “ay” sound doesn’t apply. The vowels are short and maintain their position in the mouth. “Kote” would then be pronounced something like “ko-teh” minus the “h”. Does that make sense?
Hagun
no: haaay-GUN
yes: hah-goon
I admit that, as someone who has studied Japanese and lived in Japan for a summer, even Hagun gets the better of me sometimes.
Haaaaaaaaay-you-guuuuuuuuunnnsssss~