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HalloranElder
Ok then,

How do you pronounce Shiawase? As far as I am aware it's the Japanese word for "Happiness", and I believe it's pronounced as She-a-wa-say.

Am I close enough?

Enjoy
Random
Fortune
QUOTE (HalloranElder)
Am I close enough?

Close enough for me. smile.gif
Kagetenshi
����。

~J, utterly unhelpful smile.gif

Edit: ok, I'm being helpful now: there's a set of audio files most of the way down the page here—queue up "si.wav", "a.wav", "wa.wav", and "se.wav", play them all together, and then try to edit out the gaps with your mind. There's more to the pronunciation, but that gets into intonation, which I am sadly not particularly proficient at. Maybe if we have a more advanced learner or a native speaker around.

The word means, according to EDICT, "happiness, good fortune, luck, blessing".
Adarael
Shiawase nara te o tatako...
"If you're happy and you know it, clap your hands."

I learned the Japanese version of that song in school. I laughed and laughed every time it came up, because I imagined Shiawase employees greeting eachother in darkened rooms by solemnly clapping.
Stahlseele
bwahahaahaha
that's golden ^^
Fortune
I'm just going to have to put that into my game. biggrin.gif

I can just see the entire employee base rising in place for the Corporate pledge, and then singing and clapping and stamping their feet together, getting into the spirit of the company song.
Naysayer
Like so?!

Adarael
Oh my god. I think I just gave myself epilepsy. Yes, just like that, only slightly less surreal.
Miyavi makes anything more surreal, though.
Sir_Psycho
Oh? She-a-wa-say? I've always said Shy-a-wase (Like waste without the T).

I must say the former sounds much less sinister, which I expect from such a nuclear powered and insidious family-oriented corporation.
Whipstitch
QUOTE (Adarael)
Japan makes anything more surreal, though.

Fixed! grinbig.gif
Kagetenshi
QUOTE (Sir_Psycho)
Oh? She-a-wa-say? I've always said Shy-a-wase (Like waste without the T).

I must say the former sounds much less sinister, which I expect from such a nuclear powered and insidious family-oriented corporation.

On the other hand, the latter would most likely mean "gratitude lined kimono", which has much less potential for sinister interpretation than "happiness".

~J
Sir_Psycho
That definitely has connotations of a bunraku doll with low standards of hygiene, though.

Edit: OH... Did I just say doll doll?
Adarael
I believe you specifically stated "music figure doll" or perhaps "art music doll", owing to the fact that "bunraku" is composed of 文 and 楽, which are "literature, (visible) figures, art" and "comfort, music" respectively.
I know that doesn't literally make much sense, but that's because bunraku isn't the original name of the art form. The original name roughly translates to "Puppet chanting" (人形浄瑠璃).

Bunraku is some strange stuff. So is Noh, when you get down to it. They have some...unusual roots.
mfb
i know it's supposed to be pronounced "shee-ah-wah-say", or something similar, but i usually have a hard time remembering that. my natural inclination is to pronounce is "shy-uh-ways", as someone else mentioned above.
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