asian-invasion

When you see the word “Hide” written by itself, you would immediately think of concealment and pronounce it as one syllable. Anyone initiated with the most rudimentary basics of the Japanese language, however, will see something completely different. In Japan, “hide” is the revered name of the late, great former guitarist of their legendary hard rock band, X (not to be confused with the 70s-era L.A. punk band of the same name).

In Japan, hide is pronounced “hee-day”…in two syllables.

Here’s the rundown. Syllables in the Japanese language are made up of “ka,” “ke,” “ki,”, “ko,” or “ku;” never “k” on its own.

The vowel sounds, without exception, are a (ah), e (eh), i (ee), o (oh), and u (oo). For example, many English-speaking people will see the word “manga” (Japanese “graphic novel”) and pronounce it “mayn-guh.” The proper pronunciation, as it is a Japanese word, would be “mahn-gah.”

As explained in the opening of today’s lesson, English rules of pronunciation do not apply to Japanese. Every syllable is pronounced. As another example, the name Kazue would be pronounced “kah-zoo-eh” rather than “ka-zoo” since there is no concept of silent e in the Japanese language.

You will rarely, if ever, encounter double vowels and “nn” in any Japanese name or word (aa, ee, ii, oo, uu). unless the pairing comes at the end of the word.

The best way to understand these rules is to listen to someone speaking Japanese while reading along. It is quite possible to speak the language competently if you understand the rules of pronunciation and keep them separate from English. Certainly, there is much more to Japanese than this. For now, just toy around with what you’ve been given and, in the future, we’ll cover gradually bigger things such as pronouns, word and sentence structure, and some necessary words and phrases to get you going.

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