So?

...those strike me as three of the easiest things to pronounce. I feel like I must be missing a joke or something.

"Shee-uh-was," "Wren-rah-coo," "Foo-chee."

As a portuguese speaking, I always found it difficult to say "Shiawase" - sometimes I think its Shee-uh-was, othertimes I think its Shee-uh-wuh-s".

My doubt in Renraku is the tonic/strong syllabe. (-ra- or -ku- ? ). Fuchi the same (Fu or shi ? ).

I always thought it was more like Shia-wah-zee

I'd say to my ear it sounds a tiny bit more like a "zay" than a "zee," or just plain ending in an S or Z, but it's awful close either way-- by American standards the last vowel sound sort of cuts off like a lot of French words do. It's tough to spell phonetically mostly because the whole word rather blends together more than a romanized spelling usually implies to those of us who aren't language experts. It throws me off even more when I hear it in context-- Native Japanese speakers talk faster than I'm capable of really keeping up with, so by my reckoning the last syllable often runs smack dab into the next word they're saying.

They are all fairly easy.

Shea-wa-say
Shea kind of like "she's a" without the 's. Wa as in wall. Say as in "I am saying something."
Ren-ra-ku
Ren as in the name Ren, or as in the bird, wren. Ra as in the sun god of Egypt. Ku as in coup.
Fu-chi
Fu as in Kung-fu. Chi as in "Chi: the spiritual energy"

I don't know anything about strong/tonic, but from context, I'm thinking ku. The 'ku' is pronounced a bit more notably than the 'ra'. You would say renraKU more than renRAku. But in general they should all be pronounced equally. As for Fuchi, it is almost said as a single syllable, and once again, you don't have emphasis on either one. You don't say FUchi or fuCHI, it is just fuchi. here you can find a sound bite of 'fuji' which sounds almost exactly like 'fuchi' and is pronounced the same way.

It should have an 'a' sound at the end. The rominaztion doesn't do too bad of a job, the problem is that most people don't know how to read at it properly. It is the characters Shi-a-wa-se, and generally each character is a syllable of its own. The only real oddity is that the se is pronounced with a hard 'a' sound at the end, like the word 'say'. Oh, and shi should be pronounced like 'she', though I think most people get that.

So my previous shea-wa-say could also be she-a-wa-say, but it would sound a bit odd (basically a foreign accent) to give the 'a' a full syllable, it tends to get rolled up into the 'she' part.

Edit: I do agree though, Japanese speakers really seem to jam their words together. It is even reflected in their writing, they don't have spaces O.o

Yeah, I often here it in the context of "shiawase na." That really gums up my ears, especially if it's used in a song-- if there's a culture out there that refuses to play it fast and loose with pronunciation for the sake of a pop song, I haven't heard of 'em yet.

Since when does Japanese have punctuation?

Japanese has punctuation! As well as suggested pauses at certain words
A thing to note when trying to pronounce Japanese words is that every syllable is either a single vowel sound, or a vowel sound with a consonant sound BEFORE it. The only exception really is the "-n" sound.
THEREFORE
"Shii-ah-wah-sei" -- Means happiness
"Reh-n-rah-kuu" -- Means Communication
"Fuu-chii" -- Word emphasis more on the Fuu, not on the chii

Note: Whenever I double a vowel, I'm suggesting that you pronounce the vowel's sound. Except for I. That is pronounced similar to "E". Actually a good rule of thumb is romanized japanese vowels have the same pronounciation as Spanish vowels. instead of English's "Ay" "Ee" "Ai" "Oh" "Ewe" Spanish gives it "Ah" "Eh" "Ee" "Oh" "Oo"

Hey that just means if you can understand a pop song in a different language, you are now fairly capable!

Great! Thats what I wanted to know.

Thanks professor.

I always pronounced them Shy-uh-wace like the "wais" from the word "waist". And Ren-rack-oo and Fuu-chii. Granted I first started pronouncing these when I was like 10 and didn't understand world languages outside of English, French, and Spanish and old habits die hard.

Sooo...yukatas and beer?

By the way, I think Katanas are pronouced.. Kah-tah-NAH (the last syllabe is the strongest).

And I think the same goes to MitsuhaMA (last syllae is strongest).


Can someone with japanese knowledge confirm?

probably closer to "KAH-tah-nah"

No real emphasis on this word here. "MII-tsu-HAH-mah" if anything.

Fun fact, the term "katana" being used to refer to any given japanese sword is much more of a western adoption than anything else. I believe the term is derived specifically from the japanese sword type "uchigatana" which refers to a specific design. The Kanji for katana simply means "blade" or "sword", same character for the chinese broadsword (dao. For the less specific words referring to japanese blades, the word "ken" (simply meaning sword) or "nihon-to" (Japanese sword) are used.

While the proper Japanese pronunciations are useful, I think the "street level" pronunciations, especially in other countries and by people who speak little to no Japanese, would vary significantly (as shown by the different ideas of folks on this thread!) I'd imagine runners in Seattle or CalFree, what with the heavy Japanacorp presence, would pronounce Renraku or Shiawase different from those in, say, the CAS. There's a lot of real world examples of this. For instance, the Korean car maker Hyundai is pronounced [hjəndɛ] by native speakers but [h​ʌndeɪ] by most Americans. Plus, Americans love their complex accent structures, with secondary and even tertiary stresses on different syllables in multisyllabic words. ren-ra-ku may be the way the Japanese pronounce it, you may know that, but if you're an English speaker it's much more likely you pronounce it ren-RA-ku, or more rarely REN-ra-ku if you want to sound a little more authentic. Just my .02 nuyen...

What? No one has mentioned that "Fuchi" is pronounced "Novatech" or "NeoNet" yet?

Nice catch Ray.

But it is also nice to know how they would be pronounced. I'm sure that any ads for example would have the correct pronunciation.

Not quite. 幸せ certainly does, but Shiawase the company is named after the founder (presumably 幸福), and so it doesn't really "mean" anything.

Edit: also, why did you make the initial shi and final se long? They shouldn't be.

~J

Oh totally; not trying to bash the subject of the post at all. Just wanted to add another layer to the discussion; the way an SR icon like Renraku's name is pronounced by different NPCs could give more information about their background and so forth.

Indeed. Many Japanese names are like this. They 'mean' something, but they aren't really taken to mean anything. Yamamoto is a very common example. It 'means' mountain, but you don't really take it to mean anything when you are talking to Mr. Yamamoto.

And yeah, I agree, you wouldn't extend the shi or the se. Could just be a communication problem. It is a big problem in English that pronunciation is very difficult to communicate in writing.

Go Ghoti!

Many names have meaning, period. It's just that we don't put much into those meanings any longer.

I mean, look at how many people out there are named "Smith" and have never touched an anvil?

Yeah, you're not really thinking "God's Favored, this is Defender of Men" when you're introducing John to Alex these days.

I'd like to point out that in the examples above I'm not in fact using the Romaji phoenetics for the japanese words. I am instead writing them using standard english with examples on why I used ii and such following the examples. I COULD have used Romaji but answering "how do you pronounce 'Shiawase'" by replying "shi-a-wa-se" is kinda a jerk or smartass thing to do. Rendering it in the appropriate kana would be even worse. Especially since read phoenetically with english "shi" could sound similar to "ship" (minus p) instead of sounding like "sheep" (minus the p). Even in english, there are locales which says the second word very similar to the first one. So, instead of trying to explain the entirety of the way japanese is pronounced, I simply made a few key notes on how I would represent them, and how I thought it would be more easily understood

Also yes, I admit to only reading theromaji for meanings behind the company names. Sorry, dropped the ball there.


Maybe YOU'RE not

On the topic, and forgive me if this is obvious...how do you correctly pronounce Ehran?

Eh? Ran?

That's my best guess, but I don't really know.

On that note, I always pronounce Fuchi like in 鬼が淵沼

But yeah. I didn't know that Shiawase was a legitimate surname until I looked it up for this thread; still probably pulled out of some dev's random Japanese vocabulary, but I'm willing to award a point even if it is by accident.

~J

I also say it like that. Though since I don't exactly have any formal training in Japanese I had to spend some time translating what you wrote >_<

@Neurosis: I mentally read the name similar to the name "Aaron". Only more pretentious. Or I just stick to "Wordsmyth"

With the interrogative upward lilts and everything? : P

Shiawase:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UrnHY2KcEwM
Yeah, no, i don't think i'll ever be able to take that one serious again, after seeing/hearing this video song ^^

I think my brain is shutting down trying to understand how that guy filled an auditorium with fans while singing "If you're happy and you know it."

I... ...
yeah no I got nothing.

On the 'eh' part yes

*snickers*

Very relevant:
Shiawase in a pop song (kinda)...

She-ah-waas, Ren-rah-koo, fu-she

Foo(t/d)-G

Thanks.

Now gimme a song for Renraku.

Is it Toe-yoe-ta or Toy-yoda...

If you mean the current car company, both. The cars are Toy-oh-tah. The family that owns the company is Toy-oh-da.

Huh. I'd always heard that "Toyota" was a localization error that got backported, but apparently it was just executive preference.

~J

Unfortunately, after a little digging, all I can give you is how a vocaloid would say it.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H2d3pNQVges

"renraku" spoken at about 1:38.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IWats2Yyy2E

For female voice vocaloid, above link aroud 1:56-58. Same song though

With the RL Japanese company I think they were originally an aircraft company or at least air engines and branched into cars but wanted a different name so the two would not be confused. Maybe the 1 letter change is significant to the Japanese ear in a way english speakers can't appreciate.


For some reason I seem to recall it as air-heh-ran

It is. Japanese can be difficult to listen to because very slight differences can make huge differences in meaning. A double vowel for example (pp compared to just p) is generally impossible to distinguish in English, but very important in Japanese.

Wikipedia's version of events has it being someone who married into the family (and thus wasn't attached to the name) preferring a "lucky" number of brush strokes and the appearance and sound without the voicing.

The change in sound probably is lost on an English-speaking audience, since the pronunciation of both the t-sound and d-sound is subtly different than is typical in English ("less forceful" is about the best I can capture it).

~J

Phonetically speaking, that's the difference between a voiced and voiceless velar stop... the t being voiceless, for all its "force."

Quick notes from my old Nihongo Journal:

Japanese is flat. It has very few, if any, stressed or emphasized syllables. It is not OI-shii, o-II-shii, or o-i-SHII. Simply oi-shii. [Still can't remember why, for the life of my, I chose the word "yummy, Tasty" for this example...]

'a' as in father
'e' as in play
'i' as in week
'o' as in October
'u' as in shoot

For all of its strange intricacies, the language is simplistic in its pronounciation. At least they don't have to deal with "your; you're" "there, their, they're" or "Hoarse, horse, whores"

Amen that. Rough, Bough, Dough. Three words. Same except for first letter. Three different pronunciations. WTF english!

Added to that there's different accents, like pronouncing "Sheep" like "Ship" or if people pronounce "Our" as "hour" or "are".

There is no "toy" sound in Japanese. It is To Yo Ta (rhymes with go no ha). The family's name is Toyoda, same rhyme.

Mesh

Yeah, that's always annoyed me about that particular immortal elf. Although I suppose he's old enough for it to be pronounced with a Semitic (Arabic/Amharic/Hebrew) accent, so it would be "ech-ran," with the glottal fricative 'ch' like in German. That kinda amuses me; I should start pronouncing his name like that from now on.