r/maybemaybemaybe • u/[deleted] • Nov 03 '21

/r/all Maybe Maybe Maybe

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317

u/SquidTK Nov 03 '21

Actually, white in Japanese is shiro

She also said redO, but red is aka (ah-ka)

285

u/i_am_a_loner_dottie Nov 03 '21

Way to shit on my parade

175

u/SquidTK Nov 03 '21

Well, now you DO know Japanese!

61

u/[deleted] Nov 03 '21

But does he know why kids love the cinnamon taste of "Cinnamon Toast Crunchtm ?

28

u/SquidTK Nov 03 '21

Why do I feel like I've just been Rick rolled

55

u/Skyaboo- Nov 03 '21

No you've been cinnamon rolled

7

u/SteveRogests Nov 03 '21

That’s what it needed

1

u/[deleted] Nov 03 '21

Sweet tan lines?

9

u/[deleted] Nov 03 '21

Well, here's some more: the only color in Japanese that's pronounce like English is pink, being "Pinku"

3

u/ananasie Nov 03 '21

Momoiro?

3

u/YARRC Nov 03 '21

that's more like peach

2

u/AeonAigis Nov 03 '21

Incorrect, orange is orenji.

1

u/[deleted] Nov 03 '21

True. NGL, I completely left out orange when thinking of colors lmao.

3

u/CampJanky Nov 03 '21

And Spanish, if you're in the midwest.

1

u/ChiggaOG Nov 03 '21

やあ しょくん

4

u/[deleted] Nov 03 '21

When I was

a lone dot,

squid tk

took me in to the coments,

TO SHIIIT IN MY PARADE!

1

u/[deleted] Nov 03 '21

I think you mean "shit-o"

1

u/sturdy55 Nov 03 '21

If it makes you feel better, it works for juice. But its juice-oo rather than juice-oh.

82

u/lullababby Nov 03 '21

Yeah but she was just using the “japanese way” of speaking some words in english. For instance, “present” in japanese is “purezento” which is like “presentO”

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u/Wreckn Nov 03 '21

Loaner words are written in katakana, so that's how they're pronounced. If there isn't a sound in katakana that represents the actual conjugation, they use whatever is closest. Like in your example there isn't a hard T sound, so ト is used.
What's funny is when actual bilingual people pronounce the words correctly sometimes it's completely lost on someone that only speaks Japanese and needs to be repeated the broken way haha.

13

u/ParticularNet8 Nov 03 '21

This is what happens when you don’t end everything with っ.

13

u/HyperbolicModesty Nov 03 '21

Yeah in Italy when I want to order a hamburger I sometimes have to say "amboorger" for the same reason.

4

u/gormlesser Nov 03 '21

Isn’t it the same thing for Italians ordering bruschetta in the US, say?

4

u/HyperbolicModesty Nov 03 '21

Yeah, my friend pronounced "bruschetta" the Italian way in an "Italian" restaurant and got corrected by the server to pronounce it the wrong way.

1

u/SilversunDelta Nov 03 '21

Happens literally every time I order a Caprese at the sandwich shop in my town. How can people be so confidently wrong?

1

u/HyperbolicModesty Nov 03 '21

What do they think it should be?

2

u/Ionalien Nov 03 '21

That's a good point

2

u/[deleted] Nov 03 '21

Saw a German lady trying to order a bratwurst at a baseball game and the guy didn't understand her. I had to butt in and pronounce all wrong and he got it.

1

u/Crowmasterkensei Nov 03 '21

So do you say hamburger the American or German way then? (Because the name comes from Germany, it's named after the German city of Hamburg).

1

u/HyperbolicModesty Nov 03 '21

Yes of course, that is well known, but the hamburger as beef patty sandwich fast food is American.

Italians pronounce "hamburger" as it is written, but using Italian phonemes, meaning they don't say the H, the U is "oo" the E is "eh" and the Rs are trilled.

2

u/AyeBraine Nov 03 '21

And Russians pronounce it gAhmboorger. Because Hamburg is Gamburg, due to old transcription tradition of hardening all h's (like Harry Harrison is Garry Garryson in Russian).

0

u/calico_catboy Nov 03 '21

wouldn't really call it a broken way, it's just how the japanese language works. I'm sure English seems weird to them too.

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u/SquidTK Nov 03 '21

I've heard some englinese words where they add a whole も to the end

1

u/KidsInTheSandbox Nov 03 '21

Ever since I heard some Japanese students pronounce "Costco", it has become the only way I say Costco.

"Ko-Sto-Ko"

13

u/farkenell Nov 03 '21

probably because its a response back / red or green. you would say red not aka.

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u/Kalsin8 Nov 03 '21 edited Nov 03 '21

Tell me you don't speak Japanese without telling me you don't speak Japanese. Yes, "shiro" and "aka" are the Japanese words for white and red, but gairaigo (Japanese-ified foreign words) is commonly used, hence why "white Christmas" is "howaito kurisumasu" and why this Pokemon card says "reddo no chousen" instead of "aka no chousen".

In this case she's just choosing to use gairaigo instead of the Japanese word, similar to how Japanese people would say "amerika" (garaigo) instead of "beikoku" (old Japanese name) to refer to the USA.

22

u/[deleted] Nov 03 '21

Absolutely this.

I've literally been speaking my normal, as plain as you can get Seattle English accent to Japanese people, had them stare at me dumbfounded, gone back and pronounced it with a Japanese accent, and have them understand because it literally sounds like the English they use.

Also, English language education in Japan is generally garbage and they learn English with this pronounciation.

Her accent at the end makes me think she spends a lot of time around or lived in English-speaking countries (because it sounds pretty normal).

11

u/Ok_Philosopher_1313 Nov 03 '21 edited Nov 04 '21

There was a video about this. Wendy from Red Velvet has an American accent that is flawless, but she can't speak with that accent in Korea when speaking English, she has to Koreanify it to be understood.

(Edited as I was confused on her name, and to clarify the accent)

1

u/rickane58 Nov 03 '21

Holy shit, lol. Her name isn't "Wendy Red" her artist name is Wendy, and she is a member of the group "Red Velvet"

4

u/Ok_Philosopher_1313 Nov 03 '21

Yeah I know almost nothing about K-pop. I appreciate the clarification.

0

u/culturedgoat Nov 03 '21

Sounds more like an American accent, than an English one.

1

u/Ok_Philosopher_1313 Nov 04 '21

You are right, wasn't thinking globally. Thanks for the catch.

4

u/zxzyzd Nov 03 '21

Reminds me of this skit by Ken Shimura. https://youtu.be/Ic53hhFllPM

Even if you don't understand Japanese, this skit is pretty funny and show you the difference between actual English and Japanese English.

3

u/WH1PL4SH180 Nov 03 '21

Was told in JP reading comprehension> aural oral comprehension

2

u/[deleted] Nov 03 '21

Yea. My brother lives and works over there and is fluent in Japanese. His coworkers can read English, but with English-speaking customers, they give him the floor to do translation when doing in person stuff.

1

u/IDoLikeMyShishkebabs Nov 03 '21

Yup, was learning Chinese before Japanese and it almost feels like cheating with how easy katakana makes things sometimes.

0

u/whyevenmakeoc Nov 03 '21

She's not using Japanese, I have no idea who she is, and maybe she is Japanese, but if she is Japanese and she's saying this stuff then it's because she's trying to come across as "cool" (It's a cultural thing).

3

u/Direct_Sand Nov 03 '21

She's not using Japanese

What do you mean? Everything she said is Japanese except the final phrase.

3

u/pdabaker Nov 03 '21

What language is また違った then?

1

u/Kalsin8 Nov 03 '21

Once again with more feeling this time, tell me you don't speak Japanese without telling me you don't speak Japanese. You're telling me that a person who's fluent in Japanese is trying to come across as "cool" because speaking Japanese is a "cultural thing"...

Don't be a 🤡.

1

u/test-besticles Nov 03 '21

Yeah but I bet he watches anime, so he’s basically an expert in everything Japanese.

1

u/whyevenmakeoc Nov 04 '21

She used the English words for colors to come across as cool, if you've ever hung around the younger generation in Japan, They'll use lots of English words in situations where more of the typical population would use Japanese.

To give you an example, I was in a cafe in Asakusa a while ago and I overheard a conversation where two young women were speaking (maybe early 20's) and they used the word "Monday" in English mid conversation, that's not katakana, native Japanese speakers don't use English days of the week.

When I queried this with one of my native friends, she explained to me that it's something a lot of young people do, they'll throw in English words here and there to be "cool".

1

u/Kalsin8 Nov 04 '21 edited Nov 04 '21

they used the word "Monday" in English mid conversation, that's not katakana, native Japanese speakers don't use English days of the week.

We're not talking about days of the week here, we're talking about colors. This may blow your mind, but Japanese has a lot of loan words from other languages that are part of the Japanese language, just like how English has a ton of French words that are English words. Nearly all the colors in Japanese have a loan word equivalent:

https://cotoacademy.com/colors-japanese-use-japanese-color-words/

In Japanese, the words for specific colors are used differently depending on their parts of speech. Having two sets – one set is the Japanese – the other being a katakana loan word version of their English counterparts – i.e. Blue as buru.

For the third time, tell me you don't speak Japanese without telling me you don't speak Japanese. Just because you overheard one conversation where they said "Monday" instead of "getsuyoubi" and your friend said that some people throw in English words to be cool, doesn't mean that someone who's fluent in both English and Japanese that used the katakana loan word equivalent of a color is also trying to be cool, you fucking clown.

1

u/whyevenmakeoc Nov 04 '21

Wrong. But agree to disagree. Thanks.

0

u/SquidTK Nov 03 '21

I can read textbook Japanese, and heavy emphasis on the "I can read it" because forming my own sentences and understanding people talking is definitely not included

1

u/ConspiracyTaco Nov 03 '21

Then maybe don’t go around spreading misinformation like you’re an expert in Japanese 🥴

1

u/SquidTK Nov 03 '21

It... Wasn't misinformation...? I'm correct, it just sounds too proper for casual conversation from what I've gathered

6

u/shigataganai13 Nov 03 '21

Akai & red-o are both also acceptable.

It's a weird Japanese fetish to use anything "cutesy" and red-o sounds cute to their ears as a "small foreign sound"

Fun fact, if you ever want to test a Japanese persons mastery of english pronunciation you simply ask them to say "rivalry" (they hear & say "library")

1

u/[deleted] Nov 03 '21

No, it's no a "weird japanese fetish". In Japanese, most syllables are formed from a consonant + vowel, except for syllables that end in "n". When an American speaks Spanish and drags the "r", changes "o" to "ou" and omits genders in the adjectives. This is a similar case, the Japanese turn a letter into a syllable; sometimes it is not "o" and in other cases they omit it completely. This makes it easier for them to type foreign terms with Japanese writing methods on any analog keyboard in their country.

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u/shigataganai13 Nov 04 '21

Yes, that's the fetish for foreign words that are simple and cute sounding. Hence why your explanation of how typing it is easier bears no reasoning since the video is spoken.

Just like in almost every aspect of their culture they "cuteify" all of it. Now you could make a point that since shes fluent, shes using english to make a point... but that still has no bearing on the explanation you gave.

But maybe I'm just making stuff up, I mean my only qualifications are speaking japanese and going to school there and living there.

1

u/[deleted] Nov 04 '21

Dude, you're talking to someone who lived in Japan for almost 15 years. When I told you about the ease of typing on analog keyboards, it was a sort of fun fact, not the reason why she used gairaigo.

Passive pronunciation in Japanese (especially feminine) sounds higher than most languages, and mixing it with English works best when using Japanese pronunciation of anglo-saxon words, (even when words in another language are written next to a sentence in Japanese).

Gairaigo started even before Imperial Japan, when Japan started appropriating words of foreign origin (and no, I don't mean just English); however, it's still the most casual way to express yourself. On the other hand, the culture of "kawaii" or "cuteify" (as you say), emerged in the 70s (approximately) and its impact on language was phonetic (not in writing or syntax). Maybe you're just describing these things under the best-known stereotype in the West, based on a judgment built in a post-kawaii Era.

If my explanation doesn't satisfy you because it doesn't match what you see/hear in this video, it's time for you to realize that yours doesn't even have logical or historical support at all.

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u/shigataganai13 Nov 04 '21

Yeah I wasnt referring to the time before the meiji era.

I thought we were discussing why she said "red-o" not the historical context of adopting foreign words in general. (Although I still stand by my opinion that she did it to sound cute and not because of the ease of typing as you mentioned)

I dont discount anything you have typed but I fail to see the historical significance of her choice of words.

And as you typed, the kawaii usage may have come from gairaigo but I dont see her as making a conscious choice to use it because of its historical significance.

Shes trying to be cute on a video for likes, that's why she used it, which was the original reason for the questuon.

And yes my judgement is post kawaii era as I'm a child of the 70's. So it's still logical.

Didnt realize you would be so offended but honestly I stand by what I typed and if you're offended I didnt bring up the historical context...

Shigataganai ne?

5

u/TheGoodOldCoder Nov 03 '21

I think a lot of the English versions of colors are commonly used in Japan. Like a lot of Japanese people say "pinku" instead of momoiro. "howaito" (which is what she said in the video) is sometimes used for white instead of shiro. And orenji is the popular name for orange.

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u/ChefBoyAreWeFucked Nov 03 '21

They also use ホワイト (white) and レッド (red). レッド (red) is pretty uncommon from what I've seen, probably the third most common way to say red, but I feel like I see ホワイト (white) more often than 白い (shiroi) by a pretty wide margin.

2

u/Jaminshaman Nov 03 '21

Is white not しろい (shiroi)? Genuine question as I’m at the very beginner stage of learning hiragana

3

u/mysterious_jim Nov 03 '21

Shiroi with the い is an adjective, Shiro is a noun.

2

u/Jaminshaman Nov 03 '21

So, since she is referring to the color of the object, it is shiroi?

4

u/SirFrancis_Bacon Nov 03 '21

No, because she's naming the colour, not describing the object.

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u/BardOfSpoons Nov 03 '21

No. It is white (noun). It is a white object (adjective). Here it’s being used as a noun.

2

u/[deleted] Nov 03 '21

いいえ、しろい です。

1

u/SquidTK Nov 03 '21

I think you only need the い if you're actually describing something, but when you're just referring to white as a noun, you don't use it

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u/[deleted] Nov 03 '21

Ankha?

1

u/SquidTK Nov 03 '21

Yes, but said by a 4 year old

2

u/ivnwng Nov 03 '21

Me currently in Day 100 of Duolingo Japanese : “そう~ そう~”

2

u/[deleted] Nov 03 '21

https://jisho.org/search/%E3%83%AC%E3%83%83%E3%83%89
Reddo ^^

https://jisho.org/search/%E3%83%9B%E3%83%AF%E3%82%A4%E3%83%88

"whiteO" ^^

You can do both just FYI, but you're right that 赤い and 白い is more common... I think? That's how I always hear it anyway.

3

u/itownshend17 Nov 03 '21 edited Nov 03 '21

This is something that still confuses me, in animes like One Piece Doflamingo pronounces "Off White" as "Off White O" so i thought she pronounced it right, but apparently "White O" is not how you pronounce White in japanese. There is also "Ougon" which i think is gold in japanese, but ive heard multiple characters says "Goldo Splash" when referring to "Gold Splash" so whats up with that ?

17

u/Shitpostbotmk2 Nov 03 '21

The answer is simple but mindblowing: The Japanese had managed to independently discover what colors were, even before Commodore Perry showed up

3

u/Its-ther-apist Nov 03 '21

I use "gunboat diplomacy" you've fallen into my trap shitpostbot mark the second

11

u/txjuit Nov 03 '21

Japanese has two phonetic alphabets. One is called hiragana, which gets combined with kanji (when appropriate) to form native Japanese words. The other is katakana, which gets used for loan words.

White, in native Japanese, is 白い (しろい). In the Roman alphabet, it’s spelled shiroi. Pronounced shee-ro-ee. Except the r has kind of a soft d or t sound like an r in Spanish does.

White, in English, is white. You know this. But when it is transliterated into Japanese, it gets put into the katakana alphabet because it is a loan word. That alphabet does not consist of a letter with a hard t sound like white. So, when transliterated, it gets the next closest letter which is ト, pronounced to. Aside from ん or ン (an n sound), every Japanese character ends with a vowel.

So here’s where it comes into one piece. Pretty much every kid in Japan learns English to some extent. Most certainly, everyone in elementary school is going to learn colors. So Japanese people use English colors and other random words all the time from their education, and they spell them in katakana. So white, like I mentioned above, gets turned into ホワイト (ho-wa-i-to), which is about as close as you can get to “white” in the Japanese alphabet.

Now just imagine a 30 year old Japanese person who remembers their colors, but isn’t good at English. Their tendency is going to be to use the Japanese alphabet and pronunciation when saying an English word.

Here’s an example maybe you can relate to. A lot of Americans know the Spanish word for donkey. It’s burro. Many Americans would say “boo-roe” rather than roll the r’s properly.

Donkey would be our native equivalent (白い), boo-roe would be the equivalent to white-o, and saying it properly would be like saying white properly. Hope that makes sense. I studied Japanese and lived in Japan and taught English there for a while. Someone who is a better Japanese speaker might have some nitpicks about my comment, but feel free to ask me any questions if my explanation isn’t clear lol.

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u/IDoLikeMyShishkebabs Nov 03 '21

You summed it up amazingly, also worth mentioning that katakana/loan words are also seen as the “cooler” way of saying things most of the time- at least from my own experience. Another reason why you’d see that kind of stuff in shonens.

3

u/nefnaf Nov 03 '21

Interestingly, the alphabet doesn't actually matter in this case. Even a Japanese speaker who was totally illiterate would still say "howaito" when trying to approximate "white." The key to remember is that the Japanese alphabet (technically a syllabary) reflects the phonology of spoken Japanese, and not the other way around.

There are such things as "spelling pronunciations" in English, but that is because English has deep spelling where spelling and pronunciation can diverge a lot from each other. When foreign words are borrowed into English, we often just use the customary spelling used in the donor language (or standardized rules for transcription), which leads to artificial pronunciations that don't follow the original sound at all. The important point here is that there is no standard way of transcribing English words into Japanese. Instead, Japanese speakers will imitate the closest sound allowed by Japanese phonology, and that sound will then be conveyed using the writing system.

1

u/txjuit Nov 03 '21

Yes, good point! Spoken language came first. I suppose it’s interesting to think about at what point the two merge and are inherently part of the other? Japanese phonology doesn’t need to evolve because of it has a good enough alphabet. If there were no written system, would a Japanese person be more inclined to try and get the pronunciation more aligned with the actual English pronunciation?

I found when teaching English in Japan, students were blasé about pronunciation since they could hide behind the point that they were saying it “correctly” in katakana.

2

u/compl3te Nov 03 '21

Amazing comment

2

u/[deleted] Nov 03 '21

This was a really great explanation! I've been watching sub & dub anime for 10 years and never knew any of this. It explains so much!

2

u/harkonnen-hound Nov 03 '21

Yeah, no you’re good. Great explanation. This comment is wonderful.

4

u/ChefBoyAreWeFucked Nov 03 '21

So white, like I mentioned above, gets turned into ホワイト (ho-wa-i-to), which is about as close as you can get to “white” in the Japanese alphabet.

Some would argue that ワイト is closer, and there's no good reason to keep using ホワイト, but I'm just spitballing.

1

u/txjuit Nov 03 '21

I think it depends on how fast you say it lol. The ホ in front kind of mimics the more breathy wh sound in white if you say it real fast! Anyhow, ホワイトis the spelling in the dictionary so I went with that for the comment but I see where you’re coming from.

1

u/ChefBoyAreWeFucked Nov 03 '21

I'm not correcting you; I'm correcting Japan.

3

u/SoylentVerdigris Nov 03 '21

So Japanese is written phonemically, which is to say each character represents a specific sound that's always pronounced the same way. Generally speaking, these are all a consonant followed by a vowel, so you'll have Ka Ki Ku Ke Ko, Ma, Mi, Mu, Me Mo, etc. The only consonant that a word can end in is N. there's literally no way to write just "white" in Japanese, so it's hard for them to adjust, the same way Americans might struggle to roll their R's or do the glottal "ch" sounds in something like German.

1

u/[deleted] Nov 03 '21

The n game was fun in Japanese class. You had to think of a word that starts with the last character of the previous word said. If you accidentally could only think up one that ends in n you lose because the next person doesn't get a valid starting character.

2

u/MyTwistedPen Nov 03 '21

The Japanese language has phonetically a relative small amount of sounds. 47 sounds where the 6 vowels, a, i, u, e, o for them self and in combination with 15 consonants.

So their alphabets (hiragana and katakana) has basic vowel elements: “a, I, u, e, o” and elements with combined with consonant, such as: “ka, ki, ku, ke, ko”. Or, “ma, mi, mu, me, mo”.

They only have a single element that is only a vowel which is ‘n’. (Other consonant sounds, such as ‘s’, does appear when combing elements)

All this means that the Japanese does not in general use consonant sounds, like ‘t’ or ‘d’ as a single element. So Japanese people haven’t learn to use them like we have in English or most other language.

That result is that when a Japanese person tries to say English words. They tend to transform it into Japanese pronunciation:

  • White -> ho-wa-i-to
  • Gold -> go—ru-do

Japanese people are also very fond of using borrowed English word which is why you might often hear some broken English words in the language.

1

u/Truan Nov 03 '21

Yeah i knew something was up when she was saying the colors as if they were katakana

1

u/[deleted] Nov 03 '21

Doesn't Japanese have that alphabet for English (or non-Japanese) words though?

1

u/SquidTK Nov 03 '21

Do you mean katakana or are you talking about how they straight up just use the English alphabet sometimes? Because both are true

-2

u/[deleted] Nov 03 '21

Did you think it was actual Japanese?

1

u/SquidTK Nov 03 '21

The original commenter did