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It's a really odd way, though, since "kyo" is a single syllable in Japanese and not pronounced "kee oh" like most English speakers do.
by wccrawford 10y ago
It's a really odd way, though, since "kyo" is a single syllable in Japanese and not pronounced "kee oh" like most English speakers do.
- steveklabnik 10y agoI edited my post with a link to some history, you might want to check it out. As someone with very limited 日本語 skills, I find this stuff very fascinating. (And yes, un-learning kyo vs kee-ooh was tough...)
- wccrawford 10y agoYeah, I think I still say it wrong sometimes. To me, it's a word I learned in English, and so I think of it the English way. In that way, loan-words are troublesome in both English and Japanese for words from both languages. Don't even get me started about learning French words in either of them and then learning their pronunciation in the other, and then the actual French. As an example, the Atelier game series.
- grzm 10y agoI don't know if it's entirely correct to call it wrong. The nearer a word comes to its equivalent in its source language, the higher the expectation that it's pronounced the same as the source language. This expectation is arguably correct when the word is not commonly used in the host language. Some words are very different. Germany/Deutschland. Florence/Firenze. Some are closer, even having the same spelling: Mexico/Mexico. I don't think it's not wrong per se to pronounce it the way its typically pronounced in the language you're speaking.
- grzm 10y agoI've seen it spelled Tokio in French references. And at the end of the day, it's a name. They can spell it however they want.
- wccrawford 10y agoThey can, and they're hardly the first. But it's very jarring to some people.
- EugeneOZ 10y agoRussian speakers also pronounce "kee oh", so "io" part was obvious for me :) Now I will pronounce it correct. Live and learn.
- Nadya 10y agoNot very different from hiding the 'u' in romanization. Tokyo and Toukyou are not equivalent, but are treated as such. とうきょう 「漢字：東京」 is the capital. 「ときょ」is gibberish and doesn't exist.
- wyldfire 10y agoshrug, aren't the cues provided by transliteration mostly for the sake of the English speakers (or at least non-Japanese speakers)? If so, the distinction won't matter.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- jdmichal 10y agoIt's not really as far off as you would think, since /j/ and /i/ are the same semivowel. As a single syllable, it's /kjo/ or /k ̯io/. As two syllables, it's /ki.o/.