My hovercraft is full of eels
My hovercraft is full of eels, or as they say in Japanese, watashi no hobākurafuto wa unagi de ippai desu (私のホバークラフトは鰻でいっぱいです).
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12/02/2010 -
Hay is what horses eat In Japanese hay (sic) (hei - 塀) is something that horses are more likely to jump over than eat as it means "fence". Last year I started training regularly at another dojo and I noticed that after the sensei explained something they would say "hey". It is common in parts of Australia for people to end sentences in "hey" or "ay" and at first I thought that this was what was happening here. I then started to take notice of what other sensei and students actually said, not what I expected to hear, and found that most say "hey" when they mean "hai" (pronounced similar to the English "hi" or "high"). I pulled my "Kancho letter" that I received after my first GKR lesson from the archives and took another look at the Japanese Terminology on the back. Sure enough this gives the English pronunciation of the Japanese "hai" as "hay". The English pronunciation guide is inconsistent to say the least. The Romanisation of Japanese is phonetic and unlike English Japanese words in romaji (Roman characters) are pronounced phonetically. "ai" is always pronounced similar to the English "eye", never "ay/ey". The Japanese "a" is pronounced similar to the "a" in "father" and the "i" is pronounced similar to the "i" in "ski". Say the together and it sounds like "eye". The pronunciation guide correctly gives the "ai" at the ends of "sempai" and "kiai" as an "eye" sound. As for "taikyoku" being pronounced "tay-ig-yo-koo" that is just mind bogglingly wrong. |