Pronunciation

I don't know about everyone else but I find tertiary one of the hardest words to pronounce and it's not even Japanese. Maybe we should add a few American mispronounced words in the thread while we're at it? That way I won't sound like a completely illiterate imbecile when I'm talking bonsai around other hobbyists. Just a thought..

ter·ti·ar·y /ˈtərSHēˌerē,ˈtərSHərē/
 
Great stuff folks.

In my other hobby of Nishikigoi ("koi" to most folks), we use Japanese native language so we can all be on the same page when discussing. There are subtlties that can be missed by English language. Take "tail" for instance. When discussing koi we might talk of the ozutsu (the region behind the dorsal but before the tail). It's a concise area in which we all can know what is being discussed by one word. If we say we had a kuchibeni kohaku, we know that the kohaku has red on it's lips (kuchi=lips, beni=red). Easy to understand and discuss.

Currently I am reading a Japanese Landscaping book that was given as a Christmas gift. It has been wonderful to understand the history behind the gardens. Understanding koi, bonsai, stones, fences, bridges, walkways, etc... gives me an appreciation for the Japanese culture. I know little about bonsai (yet!), but it makes sense to me to use the proper language to discuss.

"Hey ya'll, look at my tree with a couple dead branches."
 
jeremy_norbury said:
Only "some" people - and they all seem to be Americans in my experience, pronounce bonsai as "bone sigh" - in Europe it is never pronounced that way.

Watch any youtube video you like... Walter Pall, Graham Potter, Peter Warren, Lindsay Farr, Ryan Neil, they all say "Bon sigh".
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I slip back and forth between bone-sigh and bon-sigh, but never banzai. I dunno why, but the only misuse of a word that bothers me is saying banzais when talking about multiple plants. :mad: :p
 
During the war before the Fat man and the Little Boy were dropped. People in Japan were saying, "Nippon Banzai!"
 
Giga said:
I come very a very ethnic back ground, my wife is Russian. Grew up in Hawaii, and one aunt is Chinese and one is Vietnamese, all fluent in their native tounge. I took japanese in college and speak it decently. Funny thing is 99% of people miss pronounce Honda, :p I still screw up a billion words especially Russian, or I get lazy and don't try but it is nice to see people take the effort to know how to speak properly.
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And then there's the generational issue. The pre-war genertion of Japanese speakers in the USA find they have a difficult time understanding the modern Japanese idiom. My wife's aunt was born in Japan, grew up there and left as WWII became imminent. She served as a translator for the US Navy in WWII, then served in the US Embassy in Japan for several years after the war. Jackie and I took her back for a farewell visit to her "home" in 2001. She discovered that while she was still quite fluent in the language, she had quite a bit of trouble understanding shopkeepers and hotel staff at first.

Japanese friends from Hawaii tell me their parents have similar trouble when they visit Japan.
 
jkl said:
And then there's the generational issue. The pre-war genertion of Japanese speakers in the USA find they have a difficult time understanding the modern Japanese idiom. My wife's aunt was born in Japan, grew up there and left as WWII became imminent. She served as a translator for the US Navy in WWII, then served in the US Embassy in Japan for several years after the war. Jackie and I took her back for a farewell visit to her "home" in 2001. She discovered that while she was still quite fluent in the language, she had quite a bit of trouble understanding shopkeepers and hotel staff at first.

Japanese friends from Hawaii tell me their parents have similar trouble when they visit Japan.
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I find the same thing but reversed, I didn't grow up speaking Japanese so I don't have a say really but what I learned doesn't always line up
 
Juniperus chinensis, joo-NIP-ur-us chye-NEN-siss or Chinese juniper

Like the illiterate imbecile I am, I've been pronouncing this joo-NIP-ur-us chye-NEE-siss :eek:
 
@MACH5 Thanks for reviving an old thread :rolleyes:

New word. Sounds like...

charades.jpg

Kiyohime

Can't even begin to pronounce it. (and I have two of them)
 
LOL, fun thread to read thru. I think it's important to learn the correct japanese pronunciation. And bonsai as a hobby is not exclusive to improperly pronounced verbage. As a koi nut for over 40 years, there is a five colored carp called "go-she-key". The brits pronounce it "gosh-key". So don't be embarresed, do your best to learn. And if you want one on the japanese, here is
a true story. back in the late 30's, japanese farmers went to germany to learn about their mirroe carp and scaleless carp varieties. When asking their hosts thier names they were told they were german carp "deuch" (meaning german for german". Th japanese couldn't ptonounce it so they called them doutsu. Which now the entire koi world mispronounces to be "japanese" correct.
 
In romanji,
ki sounds like 'key'
kai sounds like I assume ya'll say 'ki' - it is two syllables 'ka' (sounds like kah) and 'i' (sounds like eeeeeeeeeeeeeee).

It is indeed key - yoh - he - meh, unless some duffus wrote what he though he heard under some other phonetic scheme.

Now, how does one write sniffle and a nasal raspberry? :confused:
 
0soyoung said:
In romanji,
ki sounds like 'key'
kai sounds like I assume ya'll say 'ki' - it is two syllables 'ka' (sounds like kah) and 'i' (sounds like eeeeeeeeeeeeeee).

It is indeed key - yoh - he - meh, unless some duffus wrote what he though he heard under some other phonetic scheme.

Now, how does one write sniffle and a nasal raspberry? :confused:
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Possibly different across the Pond then. Very "int" - "ress" - "tin" as we say down South. :)
 
qwade said:
My relatively short participation in the hobby of bonsai has been entirely online. A place where no one speaks.
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As a long time reader (back before smart phones when you had to dial up the internet) I often ran across words and just assumed their pronunciation. Biggest foot-in-mouth: Calliope which I pronounced CAL-e-ope. Luckily this one doesn't come up in conversation much, but Eurydice in my mind was euro-DICE.
It's all Greek to me apparently.
CW
 
I remember hearing that the Japanese do not adopt words from other places. They have their own word for computer, baseball or whatever. Which is different than spanish, which adopts and adapts to sound right in spanish. Computadora for computer. Baseball becomes bass bol. I think spanish is as close to latin as we can get. I speak english and spanish along with some german. English is harder IMO because we dont fallow rules much. Stuff like to, too, and two are hard for others. If you learn the rules for spanish, words are written like they sound. They dont have several sounds for A,E, I and so on. It sounds like japanese is similar, just written strangely (to us).
Id say use the words that the most people will understand. We do adopt words and names but write them in our way, which I imagine makes for confusion. Use what works.
 
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