When the wife and I had our brief introduction to Japanese, a few years back, I was amazed at the number of everyday words/names we were, in fact, pronouncing incorrectly.

For example, Toyota. Most people would simply say Toy-ota. In fact it's really three syllables, To-yo-ta (with the first letter of each being pronounced hard).

Similarly Kimono is not, Kee-mow-no, it's Ki-mo-no.

Oh, and it's not Techneeks, or whatever; it's Ma-tsu-shi-ta. And Sony decided upon their name with a view to western pronunciation - we being an uncultured bunch, they thought it would be easier for us. (And I pronounce it So (hard o) -ny by the way).


This message was edited by djy on 03/25/04 03:29.