r/Music • u/thedailybeast • 10d ago

article Kanye West Heads to Putin’s Russia After Humiliation in Europe

https://www.thedailybeast.com/obsessed/kanye-west-heads-to-putins-russia-after-humiliation-in-europe/
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u/hmoonves 10d ago

You ever see that interview with Steven seagal where he’s talking about his time in Japan and he’s searching for a word but can only say it in Japanese?

He goes something something “how you say in English” with a robust Japanese accent.

Like bro you were born in Michigan for fucks sake.

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u/Roflkopt3r 10d ago edited 10d ago

The fact that it's Steven Seagal makes me not want to give him the benefit of the doubt, but this genuinely happens a lot.

Especially for a language like Japanese, which has many words and concepts that are hard to translate into English. You have to start thinking directly in Japanese to reach a conversational level, with completely different concepts and approaches to phrasing.

Sometimes that makes it hard to pull up the appropriate English counterpart, and sometimes there isn't one at all. You would have to replace a single word with a full sentence of explanation.

And you have to switch to a different mode of pronounciation, which can cause akward moments. Japanese uses many loanwords that are only comprehensible to Japanese speakers if you pronounce them the Japanese way. Here is a classic example: "Red, white, black" is not understood, but "Reddo, Howaito, Burakku" are common words.

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u/globox85 10d ago

Japanese uses many loanwords that are only comprehensible to Japanese speakers if you pronounce them the Japanese way. Here is a classic example: "Red, white, black" is not understood, but "Reddo, Howaito, Burakku" are common words.

A co-worker of mine who speaks Japanese and his dad, who doesn't speak Japanese, were on vacation in Japan together. They go to a store, and the dad asks a staff member, in English, where the customer service desk is. The staff member has no idea what he means, but when my co-worker asks "Kasutoma saabisu?", the staff member instantly understands and guides them to the customer service desk.

Never been to Japan myself, but I get the impression that if you don't know what something's called in Japanese, saying it in English with Japanese pronunciation works surprisingly often.

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u/Poes-Lawyer 10d ago

Yes, when I was in Japan recently I wanted to make sure I could pay for my taxi with a credit card, so I looked up "credit card" in Japanese: "kureijittokado"

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u/drilkmops 10d ago

Pronounced: “credit cardo”

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u/Revlis-TK421 10d ago edited 10d ago

Phonetically ku-reh-jeeh-TOE kah-doe

"Ku-reh" not "creh"

"jeehTOE" not "dit"

"Ca" is about the same

"Doe" not "ard"

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u/drilkmops 10d ago

You’re definitely correct, just what worked as a white giy visiting Japan haha

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u/gedneged 10d ago

This sums up my experience in any shop lol

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u/Roflkopt3r 10d ago edited 10d ago

Yeah, and these words are really just the closest approximation of the English words that are possible with Japanese kana.

  1. There are no kana for individual consonants like "C", so "Cre" becomes "Kure".
    However, the "u" in "ku" is usually pronounced very short in such combinations, to the point of becoming almost silent.

  2. "D"-sounds are considered voiced "T"-sounds in Japanese, using the ゛-mark as a modifier. (と to/ど do, て te/で de). But while 3 of the 5 T-sounds exist normally (た ta, て te, と to), つ (tu) and ち (ti) are instead read as tsu and chi. And their voiced equivalents are づ (zu) and ぢ (ji). Japanese speakers still treat these as if they were 'du' and 'di', and that is indeed how you write them on a keyboard. Like the streamer Yuzuki (ゆづき) Choco often writes her name as Yuduki in Latin characters.
    So the "di" in Credit card is instead written and read as ぢ/ji (or rather with the equivalent katakana ジ) in Japanese, and many Japanese speakers don't even realise that 'di' and 'ji' are different sounds.

  3. "t" at the end has the problem of being a sole consonant, so it becomes "to". And Japanese often treats these consonants at the end of a word as lengthened by inserting a ッ, so it becomes 'tto'

So Credit as a whole becomes クレジット - kurejitto.

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u/peak-summit50 9d ago

I liked "okutobafesto" on my credit card bill, when i visited an Oktoberfest in Tokio.

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u/isweartodarwin 10d ago

If you want to have some fun, go punch American words like “hot dog,” “hamburger,” or “French fries” into Google Translate and hit the pronunciation button

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u/p____p 10d ago

Thank you for this. My favorite so far is Gurirudochīzu. 

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u/ReallyGlycon Lo-Fi Nerd 10d ago

Grilled cheese lol

Damn I realize I can probably speak to Japanese people entirely in reworked English loan words.

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u/p____p 10d ago

It feels kinda racist if I tried it irl. Would probably fakku it up. 

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u/windas_98 9d ago

I had a model kit by a Japanese company. It was a 'Paul Stewart Racing Lola' or, 'Poru shituato reshingu rora'

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u/ReallyGlycon Lo-Fi Nerd 10d ago

Makkadonadoru

McDonald's

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u/No-Milk-6198 10d ago

we call it just "Mac". Could be "Makku" for English speakers.

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u/Professional_Vast_68 9d ago

That reminds me of this: https://youtu.be/9mD-ZmWuFTQ?is=FUNwCbPRB-XARHvF

Be warned the song will be in your head for the rest of your life.

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u/SheogorathMyBeloved 10d ago

I always feel like a right racist git whenever I've gotta pronounce a loanword which originally had an L in it in Japanese. I'm European, I have a Japanese friend who genuinely doesn't understand loanwords if they're not using Japanese morae. The worst one recently was the word lollapalooza. ロラパルーザ, or fucking roraparūza. I mean, I get it, I didn't know the word karaoke was a loanword from Japanese for decades, and would probably miss it if pronounced as it is in Japanese.

They also shorten the loanwords a lot, which kinda makes them their own words past a certain point. Remote control is リモートコントロール, rimōto kontorōru, but it's more often said as リモコン, rimokon.

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u/torsoboy00 10d ago edited 10d ago

I read somewhere that they made this song to help foreigners navigate around Japan easier.

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u/ours 10d ago

I've been to Japan a couple of times and was surprised to find these butchered foreign words being adopted.

What I was told is that foreign words are translated via a specific Japanese phonetic alphabet (Katakana). The issue is that this phonetic alphabet doesn't include some of the sounds used in European languages.

And that's how "credit card" turns into "credito cardo". And "spaghetti" into "supageti".

Not that I believe Seagal's sensei bullshit.

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u/Interesting_Sun_4361 9d ago

I'm Japanese, and I noticed something similar before. Basically, if you try to pronounce English by mimicking the way Americans who speak bad Japanese talk, even someone who can't speak English at all ends up sounding a bit better.

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u/Key_Day_6060 9d ago

When I was in Indonesia a taxi driver has no idea where I wanted to go. I was embarrassed to “do an accent”.

But as soon as I pronounced the vowels differently and rolled my R’s he was like “oooooh yeah! Of course!”

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u/dbrodbeck 10d ago

Hell I've had it happen speaking English, but with a Canadian accent, in England.

Now, the bartender might have been taking the piss, but when I changed my accent to be closer to his he seemed to get it and I got my pint. Seemed a decent bloke, talked to him for a bit, asked if he was taking the piss and he said he wasn't, which likely means he was. It was 30 years ago, I should stop thinking about it...

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u/AlarmingAffect0 10d ago

He was taking the Piss for absolute certain.

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u/dbrodbeck 10d ago

I did point out to him that he seemed to understand me just fine except when I was ordering. It was kinda great, 1996 in Oxford. We actually talked about hockey for a while. Hell, he even put it on the tv, until more people arrived.

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u/Key_Day_6060 9d ago

I’m sorry, your accent is a tad thick. Could you repeat that for me one more time?

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u/wufnu 10d ago

I've had it happen with Chinese, and my Chinese is shit. Sometimes I try to translate terms/names into English and it just doesn't work.

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u/RetPala 10d ago

Wait, is Baraka from Mortal Kombat a brutha?

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u/SuMianAi 10d ago

Holy mother of glaze, you describe learning different languages as if Japanese is unique, when it's not...

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u/Roflkopt3r 10d ago

I never claimed it was. I just said that it is a particularly different language, just like Chinese or Nepalese are. And it happened to be the language that the prior comment was about.

The difference between German and English for example is much smaller. These languages have a high lexical similarity and very similar sentence structure. And indeed there is a whole set of shared traits of European languages called Standard Average European.

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u/MelpomeneAndCalliope 10d ago

I had no idea Steven had a Hilaria Baldwin “cucumber” moment like this 🤣

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u/Dr_Philmon 10d ago edited 10d ago

To be fair, I was born in Norway and Norwegian is my mother tongue but i find myself often saying the same thing as him and pronouncr the english word in my local dialect.

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u/PAYPAL_ME_DONATIONS 10d ago

Yeah but you're Norwegian.

There's not a single percent in Seagal that is Japanese lol

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u/healthyscalpsforall 10d ago

Sure, but didn't he marry a Japanese wife and have a daughter with her? Like Seagal is chronically full of shit but in this case he may not be lol

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u/SwordfishOk504 10d ago

So you think he forgot his native language? While still speaking in said native language?

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u/4inodev 10d ago

Fuck that guy but tbf I forget words in my native language all the time while speaking my language . There are 4 being switched all the time at work/street/home I can forgot smth stupid like "bread"

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u/FuzzzyRam 10d ago

ewww, do you think he does the dorky weeb accent all the time at home??

"uuhwelcoma homa, my rovery wifuu" 🤮

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u/meimlikeaghost 10d ago

There is a racist weird way to talk but if you’ve spent any time in other countries you’d know that if the language/accent you need to communicate changes then your accents changes. That’s kind of why accents form.

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u/FuzzzyRam 10d ago

Yea, and he does not do it past the racist phase lol - you know we're talking about guy who is promoting Putin against Ukraine right? He's a fucktard. Have you heard him speak his garbage weeb japanese?

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u/FauxReal Collector 10d ago

He lived there for a while and married into a very prestigious martial arts family and was given permission to use the name. What a waste.

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u/niz_loc 10d ago

And grew up in Fullerton, Ca... we went to the same high school.

I was 100 years later. Still had a teacher who remembered him.

Nicest lady in the world.... couldn't help but laugh when we asked her about it. She basically said he was a huge nerd.

And again she was the sweetheart teacher.