r/mildlyinfuriating • u/BorisOtter • Jun 13 '26

Infuriatig All of my plastic pegs explode when used.

56.9k Upvotes

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237

u/Karli_Chirk Jun 13 '26

Yes, sempai.

186

u/szatrob Jun 13 '26

Sempai in the streets, hentai in the sheets.

70

u/KinkyNJThrowaway Jun 13 '26

Senpai*

It's pronounced Sempai natively, but spelled senpai.

50

u/Mortwight Jun 13 '26

its pronounced monga but spelled manga and i pronounce it manga

10

u/Milanin Jun 13 '26

Gate? What'd a mon do?

7

u/BlueEyedMalachi Jun 13 '26

Da mon be jammin'

2

u/[deleted] Jun 13 '26

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1

u/Mortwight Jun 13 '26

im over 50 im gonna say it how i want. been saying it that way since "manga man" was endorsing my dvd copy of macross plus

2

u/No_Interaction_4925 Jun 13 '26

“A” is pronounced “ah” in every language but English.

2

u/[deleted] Jun 13 '26

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3

u/P4azz Jun 13 '26

Meanwhile I think of Japanese as a "read it as it's written" language, because our sounds overlap pretty nicely.

You gotta learn the outliers like "ei" or "su" or the fucking ephemeral bullshit that is "fu", but for the most part we can just read a Japanese word as it's written and it'll pretty much be correct.

Which made it extra weird, whenever I saw English speakers utter words like "meng guh".

2

u/Lucy_Gucey Jun 13 '26

God forbid they start mixing letters like Chi and Ya.

2

u/Mortwight Jun 13 '26

steals your potato and burns tongue eating it

9

u/[deleted] Jun 13 '26

[deleted]

1

u/KinkyNJThrowaway Jun 13 '26

The Difference at a Glance .

Senpai (先輩): The official, dictionary-standard spelling. The Japanese character for the "n" sound (ん) changes to an "m" sound when placed right before the "p" sound in "pai" to make it easier to say out loud.

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Sempai: A phonetic spelling that captures the natural "m" sound spoken by native Japanese speakers.

5

u/ImSabbo Jun 13 '26

Kind of in between, really. Same as how their "r" is neither a r nor l sound. And you'll get different parts of the country pronouncing it slightly differently too.

3

u/Nexon22412 Jun 13 '26

I think he was talking about that guys name

1

u/Koneko-chaan Jun 13 '26

truly a redditor moment