English pronunciations in Japanese shows/movies

[Idealistic]

In some Japanese shows..... The voice actors say some English words but with a different pronunciation. For example... In FF7:AC, instead of just "Cloud", they say "Cloud-o"... Stuff like that...

Is that their way of saying the words or is it just an accent?

[Munsu]

Just they way of saying foreign words, mainly because they don't have a character to represent the sound of "d". In Japanese, that name would actually be romanized as Claudo most probably.

Some other examples you can use for refference, in romaji form:

Sumisu = Smith
Raito = Light
tawaa = tower
misu = Miss
Maikeru = Michael


When using foreing words, Japanese use Katakana and such. Google for more information.

[Psyke]

Yup, Bud's got it explained perfectly. But Cloud would be romanized as Ku-ra-u-do (クラウド), as the Japanese Hiragana (or Kata) does not have sounds starting with C, L, and F (except for "fu").

Here are 2 tables of Hiragana and Katakana characters, for those who are interested. I made these 2 tables, together with the romanji back when I just started learning how to write in Japanese. :)

Hiragana
http://img340.imageshack.us/img340/845/hiragana1ab6.th.jpg (http://img340.imageshack.us/my.php?image=hiragana1ab6.jpg)

Katakana
http://img340.imageshack.us/img340/8214/katakana1mj1.th.jpg (http://img340.imageshack.us/my.php?image=katakana1mj1.jpg)

[XanBcoo]

Is that their way of saying the words or is it just an accent?
The two are synonymous.

A foreign accent is just the presence of the characteristics of one language when speaking another. Because Japanese has an inherent consonant-vowel consonant-vowel structure (well, excluding the n sound), any foreign word is also pronounced using this structure. Therefore, words ending in consonants, or words with consonant clusters are reformed to make them easier to say for a Japanese speaker.

The examples Bud and Psyke gave are pretty good.

[Munsu]

Yup, Bud's got it explained perfectly. But Cloud would be romanized as Ku-ra-u-do (クラウド), as the Japanese Hiragana (or Kata) does not have sounds starting with C, L, and F (except for "fu").

Lol, how can I have said Claudo? That's horrible.

[Board of Command]

Maikeru = Michael
More like "Mee-hai"

From my anime experience, they also don't have a genuine "J" sound.

[darkshadow]

Psyke, you got a higer res version of those to tables? i would really appreciate it.

edit: nvm imageshack was acting dumb, thx

[Munsu]

More like "Mee-hai"

From my anime experience, they also don't have a genuine "J" sound.
Mee-hai? That doesn't make sense, and Michael doesn't have a "J" sound.

[Board of Command]

Mee-hai? That doesn't make sense, and Michael doesn't have a "J" sound.
Well that's how they always pronounce it. I'm pretty sure that's a "Michael" in Monster.

And "J" is often pronounced like a "Y" (e.g. Joshua from Chrno Crusade)

[Munsu]

That's because they were trying to emulate German names and pronuciations in Monster.

[Board of Command]

Then what about GunXSword? There was a Michael in that too.

[darkshadow]

it is maikeru, soukou no strain has a michael too, and its pronounced maikeru

[Psyke]

As far as names go, there is no fixed spelling as long as it "sounds" correct. That is the purpose of Kata after all, to cater for words in other languages, not just English.

[Munsu]

Then what about GunXSword? There was a Michael in that too.
As I said, they are using the German pronuciation. If that's the case, then the romaji representing the katakana used is Mihaeru instead, and it's pronounced different than the English Michael. In the end, it's the same name but it shows what's the intended pronuciation of the name given is and the country of origin for the intended name.

As Psyke said, Katakana is used to help Japanese pronounce foreing words and names, so as long as it sounds correct it should be all good.

[XanBcoo]

I'm looking at those charts, and I don't see any characters that represent "Ja", "Jo", "Ju" etc.

So how are words like Jutsu, Jounin, and Juuken written? Are they just phonetic variants of some set of characters, or do they have their own set?

[Kraco]

I'm looking at those charts, and I don't see any characters that represent "Ja", "Jo", "Ju" etc.

Combinations of Ji plus Ya, Yo, and Yu.

[Psyke]

Yup. For words starting with J, it is written by using a Ji followed by a small ya, yu, or yo.

Eg: じゃ = Ja (Jya)、じゅ = Ju (Jyu) 、じょ = Jo (Jyo)

[Danad_corps]

In case you are wondering, the Ji sounds comes from an alternative to the "shi" character. The alternatives goes as follows.

Starts with Turns into
K G
... i'll just scan a page or two from my Jap txt to show u. it'll be easier

http://img50.imageshack.us/img50/905/jwriting1uq4.th.jpg (http://img50.imageshack.us/my.php?image=jwriting1uq4.jpg) http://img50.imageshack.us/img50/8972/jwriting2wa8.th.jpg (http://img50.imageshack.us/my.php?image=jwriting2wa8.jpg) http://img50.imageshack.us/img50/3143/jwriting3zs5.th.jpg (http://img50.imageshack.us/my.php?image=jwriting3zs5.jpg) http://img50.imageshack.us/img50/8150/jwriting4yt8.th.jpg (http://img50.imageshack.us/my.php?image=jwriting4yt8.jpg)

http://img50.imageshack.us/img50/2994/jwriting5iu5.th.jpg (http://img50.imageshack.us/my.php?image=jwriting5iu5.jpg) http://img49.imageshack.us/img49/2956/jwriting6kc7.th.jpg (http://img49.imageshack.us/my.php?image=jwriting6kc7.jpg) http://img49.imageshack.us/img49/1912/jwriting7yg5.th.jpg (http://img49.imageshack.us/my.php?image=jwriting7yg5.jpg)

This'll show you how words are formed using hiragana and katana. If you want to make a word from another language, you use katakana.

And um, i don't think "its all good as long as it sounds right" works. I mean, they teach this stuff to kids in Japan and im sure the teachers woudln't want to see 10 variances of the same word. Not only that, but my teacher wouldn't have corrected the katakana on our in-class dialogue project if there wasn't a correct spelling of the word.

[Munsu]

I was oversimplifying... Of course there's going to be some correct way to spell things. What you have to realize is that there isn't one set way to spell all the Names since there are various ways to pronounce it; you can use the Michael example above. So it all depends on the intended pronounciation you're looking for and having the correct set of characters to represent those sounds.

Also, your Japanese teacher is not absolute... the Japanese language is complicated as it is, that I'm sure that even the teachers are still learning some things about the language. I know I've seen a lot of discrepancies between teachers and the romanization of the small "u" character.

For example, some would argue that "Tookyoo" is the correct romanization while others would argue it's "Toukyou".

[Danad_corps]

I see what you mean. Just like all languages spoken today, it evolves as time passes.

[Winged Dancer]

First of all, as a non-native English speaker, I can say this.... English is a BITCH to pronounce. Spanish and Japanese are way easier, as they are mostly pronounced the way they are written....

Meanwhile, English has The Chaos (http://www.unique.cc/ron/estuff.htm), which makes all students of English choose death rather than reading that aloud.

The thing about Japanese is that it is a syllabic language. All of its "letters" are actually [I]simple[/I[ syllables, composed of a consonant and a vocal:
K+a = Ka (か)
W+o= Wo (を)
S+e= Se (せ)
And the wonderful exeptions of "N" (ん) and "Tsu" (つ), and even those depend on how they are romanized.

Because of that structure, it is very difficult for them to pronounce syllables composed of more than two letters and, even more so syllables with more than two consonants and words ending in a letter other than "N".

So, to take one of your examples,
Cloud
In English, it divides into "Clo - ud", but since a sound like "Cl" is impossible to write in Japanese (same with the final "d"), they guide themselves by sound and write it "Ku-ra-u-do".

Most Japanese agree that the reason they can't speak good English is because of the Katakana, too. Quoting my Okaasan, "If a kid goes to school and the teachers tell him "I like milk" but the kid writes "Ai raiku miruku", he'll never be able to pronouce it and will never get an understanding of it."

So now you know. The day characters are called "Cloud" and not クラウド is the day the the common Japanese will be able to pronounce English.

[Kraco]

It's interesting how deeply the syllabic system affects their thinking (capabilities). After all, they should all learn also the latin alphabets in school, and thus, in theory, they should also be able to use them to write, speak and think western words in a correct way. But I guess it's not that simple.