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A Guide to Proper Pronunciation of Japanese Names – Part 1
Fresh year, fresh start for your business with Japan! And calling people by their right names is the first step in building friendship or a business relationship.
⛔What are the most common traps for foreigners when pronouncing tricky Japanese names?
Exchanging name cards is an essential part of the Japanese business culture. As an #interpreter , I have witnessed many a bewildered face as German or other international hosts attempt to decipher strange-sounding Japanese names.
Rule 1️⃣
Get away from your habit of vowel-to-vowel liaison!
👉 Basics:
Most Japanese (family) names are written with #Kanji漢字 , Chinese characters partially adopted for Japan. Their pronunciations consist of syllable(s), namely a vowel with or without a consonant.
🔎 Case Study:
“Couldn’t you just leave out one of the duplicate letters at the end? “
When I heard this rather naive question addressed to Mr. Horii, I had to laugh.
Mr. Horii (堀井) would certainly not have been happy to have his name changed to Hori (掘). These are two completely different names!
The name Horii contains two Kanji characters,
the first one 掘 (=“digging” or “a moat”) pronounced as “Hori”,
and the second one 井 (= “a well”) pronounced as “i”.
➡ Combining these two characters, the name reads Hori-i
By calling Mr. Horii (堀井) Mr Hori (掘), his identity is quickly turned from a person “digging a well” to “a moat”.
On top of that, “ii” should never be pronounced “ee” like in tree.
No wonder the famous film director from Japan, Hirokazu Kore-eda prefers to spell his family name with an unusual hyphen. Otherwise, chances are high that he'd be called Ko-ree-da [ko r: da].
His family name is written 是枝 – the first Kanji character is pronounced Kore and the second, Eda.
The same fate is shared by names such as Ishii (石井), Inui (乾), Ueki (植木), Iida (飯田), Maeda (前田), Inoue (井上), Tomonou (友納), Torii (鳥井) as well as Moe (萌), Sanae (早苗), Toshie (としえ), Mieko (みえこ) and Rie (りえ) and so on. An unintended liaison of vowels is a common headache for them.
💡 The lesson learnt here:
Always pronounce each vowel in Japanese names as a separate entity, even if written one after the other.
#Tipps from #Japanese #Interpreter in #Germany
Translation Service S. Arai