Or should that be geh-dan oo-kay?
Actually it is neither.
The Japanese technique name 下段受け (げだんうけ) is romanised as "gedan uke". If the vowel "e" is pronounced "ay", which it isn't, then both occurrences of "e" in "gedan uke" should be pronounced "ay" giving "gay-dan oo-kay". The correct pronunciation is "ge-da-n u-ke" with "e" as in "egg", "da-n" as in "darn", not the shortening of "Daniel", and "u" as in "blue".
The pronunciation of the final "e" in a Japanese word as "ay" appears to be common in English speakers, not just within GKR. In every class you will hear "hajime" as "hajimay" (or worse "ha-jim-ay"), "kumite" as "kumitay" and "yame" as "yamay" although Australians tend to pronounce "karate" as "karatee" rather than "karatay". But then how do we get "carry-ow-key" out of "karaoke"?
What does "gedan uke" actually mean? If "gedan" (下段, げだん, ge-da-n) means "low(est) level" and "uke" (受け, うけ, u-ke) means "block" (receive, parry) then "gedan uke" literally means "low level block". Why then is it translated as "sweeping block" or "low level sweeping block" in GKR? Simply because it has been confused with "gedan barai" which literally means "low level sweep". "Harai" (払い, はらい, ha-ra-i), which through the phenomenon in Japanese of rendaku (a subject for another blog entry
)
becomes "barai", means "sweeping" or a "sweeping stroke". Which part of "uchi uke" and "soto uke" do you think means "hooking"?
