Pronunciation of names?

[Synoptic]

She's obviously Italian.

NOOOOO! VERY NOOOOO!!!


Also, about the term of "Flower Child"... it's an old expresion in my country which refers to kids born with unknown parents.
Like, a combo of a prostitute and a client, ending with the mother ditching the baby on the streets the baby ending up in the orphanage.
Now I'm really trying not to think of Hanako that way, damnit, even though I know it's not the case.


Also, 1 thing makes me wonder...

*EDIT* also, as a general rule for names 3 syllables or more, don't stress the middle syllable.
Shizune would be shizuNE and Hanako would be hana-KO.

I was rather thinking of putting the stress on the first syllable like: SHI-zune and HA-nako.
Couldn't it work on both the first or the last syllable as long as it is not on the middle one?
I maybe wrong though, please correct me if so.

[Deimos]

The person that was the strongest Opponent to Rosa didn't like it becuase he thought it sounded Hispanic.

She's dark-haired, dark-eyed, domineering, large-breasted and talks with her hands. She's obviously Italian.

Well, can I expect her to serve me homemade pasta then?

Rebuttal:
She won the game of Risk she and Hisao were playing and major military operations since ancient Roman times always ended rather badly (The Abessinian war does not count!) for the Italians.

One question concerning the naming of the characters in KS:
How would you have justified the name Rosa? Is is fashionable for hip young Japanese to give their offspring Western names? I can not imagine Lilly with her hair to be anything else but not of complete Japanese descendance and two "exotic" foreign girls would have been pretty much overload.

[Validus Razgriz]

The only character name I find that I was pronuncing incorrectly was Shizune. I was reading it as "Shih-zoon".

I was actually reading it the same way until I ran the character names past one of my friends who knows more about anime than I do.

The person that was the strongest Opponent to Rosa didn't like it becuase he thought it sounded Hispanic.

I know that there is a character named ロザリー in the videogame Dragon Warrior 4, which was translated as Rosa in the original NES version of the game, but was translated as Rose in the DS remake. Dragon Warrior Monsters had the name translated as Rosalie.

She's dark-haired, dark-eyed, domineering, large-breasted and talks with her hands. She's obviously Italian.

Oh God, I lol'ed!

How would you have justified the name Rosa? Is is fashionable for hip young Japanese to give their offspring Western names? I can not imagine Lilly with her hair to be anything else but not of complete Japanese descendance and two "exotic" foreign girls would have been pretty much overload.

It's gonna be a lot more justified than when I call up the technical support for Cisco and I get an Indian by the name of "Bob" on the line.

[Seroanth]

I've asked a lot of people about Shizune, and even though they all say it's incorrect, I still pronounce it as "Shi-zuun"

[Deimos]

It's gonna be a lot more justified than when I call up the technical support for Cisco and I get an Indian by the name of "Bob" on the line.

That is called offshore-outsourcing and one of the wonderful things globalisation has brought upon us, I had to speak to someone in an Argentinian callcenter to reactivate my credit card and I think he called himself "Donald".

I've asked a lot of people about Shizune, and even though they all say it's incorrect, I still pronounce it as "Shi-zuun"

How do you justify the dropping of the last letter?

[Validus Razgriz]

I've asked a lot of people about Shizune, and even though they all say it's incorrect, I still pronounce it as "Shi-zuun"

How do you justify the dropping of the last letter?

Pretty easy. In English we have this lovely rule that an 'e' at the end of a word is silent.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silent_e
[/sarcasm]

[SirMax]

I've asked a lot of people about Shizune, and even though they all say it's incorrect, I still pronounce it as "Shi-zuun"

How do you justify the dropping of the last letter?

Pretty easy. In English we have this lovely rule that an 'e' at the end of a word is silent.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silent_e
[/sarcasm]

If it was an English name you'd sure have him there.

[Validus Razgriz]

If it was an English name you'd sure have him there.

That's why there's a [/sarcasm] in there. Also, that rule obviously doesn't work with loan words from other languages.

[Synoptic]

For people who's native language is a phonetic language, speaking japanese is a piece of cake.
And since my native language is phonetic, I have no problem in speaking japanese nor have I problems about english either...

I honestly don't understand what's so complicated about pronouncing something.

Maybe if your native language is not a phonetic one then is it more complicated to switch the style to a phonetic one when speaking?
Like From native english to italian?

And if your native is phonetic then its easier to switch to non phonetic ones when speaking?
Like from native italian to english?

I really don't get it. :/

Someone correct me if I'm wrong please.

PS: From what I know phonetic languages are those which you read them the exact way you write them, letter by letter.
Example phonetic language write god -> read god
Example non-phonetic language write god -> read gawd
Am I wrong?
Someone correct me if I'm wrong please.

[Bara]

PS: From what I know phonetic languages are those which you read them the exact way you write them, letter by letter.
Example phonetic language write god -> read god
Example non-phonetic language write god -> read gawd
Am I wrong?
Someone correct me if I'm wrong please.

I think that is more of an issue of regional accent than proper pronounciation in english. At least for the word you have chosen as an example. Just like any language english is prone to regional accents and slang. I was wealy shocked to find out that thewe awe people who talk like Elmew Fudd does in the old Bugs Bunny cawtoons.
It seems to be a regional accent from somewhere in New Jersey.

[Validus Razgriz]

@Synoptic

It's not really that simple. When I was in high school, we had about 10 foreign exchanges students (hilarious considering that my graduating class was only 70). 6 of them were German, and I wound up hanging out with them a lot of the time I was in school. Even though they all knew English very well and I didn't have any problems understanding them, none of them could pronounce every word correctly. 4 of them often did the stereotypical "German accent" mispronunciation of the letter 'w' like a 'v'. Walk was pronounced 'Vak', war was pronounced 'vor', and so on.

[DuaneMoody]

I was wealy shocked to find out that thewe awe people who talk like Elmew Fudd does in the old Bugs Bunny cawtoons.
It seems to be a regional accent from somewhere in New Jersey.

The glyph 'R' is a polite fiction which is used to describe a wide variety of sounds formed differently in different places in the mouth. What I've read of Japanese pronunciation indicates that the Japanese R is closer to D or L in its formation (this is what Human Japanese tells me fwiw). It's disappointing but not surprising to hear fucked up regional variations.

[The Commissar]

For people who's native language is a phonetic language, speaking japanese is a piece of cake.
And since my native language is phonetic, I have no problem in speaking japanese nor have I problems about english either...

I honestly don't understand what's so complicated about pronouncing something.

Maybe if your native language is not a phonetic one then is it more complicated to switch the style to a phonetic one when speaking?
Like From native english to italian?

And if your native is phonetic then its easier to switch to non phonetic ones when speaking?
Like from native italian to english?

I really don't get it. :/

Someone correct me if I'm wrong please.

PS: From what I know phonetic languages are those which you read them the exact way you write them, letter by letter.
Example phonetic language write god -> read god
Example non-phonetic language write god -> read gawd
Am I wrong?
Someone correct me if I'm wrong please.

My native language is English, but I can read Italian simply, and did well learning it. It wasn't very hard, as their were few rules to learn about speaking ("oh, an 'i' changes the 'g' and 'c' to a soft letter"). I can speak the words if I spend a second remembering that I'm changing languages (it helps when all your grandparents spoke to you is Italian and heavily accented English), so I have no trouble pronouncing Japanese words (even if I don't know what they mean).

I have not learned something like German or Dutch (read one Dutch word, my mind died trying to pronounce the vowels), so I have no other experience.

[Deimos]

It's not really that simple. When I was in high school, we had about 10 foreign exchanges students (hilarious considering that my graduating class was only 70). 6 of them were German, and I wound up hanging out with them a lot of the time I was in school. Even though they all knew English very well and I didn't have any problems understanding them, none of them could pronounce every word correctly. 4 of them often did the stereotypical "German accent" mispronunciation of the letter 'w' like a 'v'. Walk was pronounced 'Vak', war was pronounced 'vor', and so on.

On the contrary, English native speakers German (or at least the German that is taught in English schools) tends to sound like a Bavarian dialect which makes it extremely hilarious for every native-speaking German who is not born in Bavaria.
When I was in England at a boarding school I regularly wound up making the call to the pizza service because of all people including the native speakers I was the most intelligible.

The best or "easiest to understand-" English comes from Scandinavia although I can not be certain if their pronounciation is always right the words normally seem very clear to me.

[Validus Razgriz]

On the contrary, English native speakers German (or at least the German that is taught in English schools) tends to sound like a Bavarian dialect which makes it extremely hilarious for every native-speaking German who is not born in Bavaria.

That's pretty funny. Maybe everyone over here in the US who's teaching German learned the Bavarian dialect, or something. But yeah, whenever I tried speaking the little amount of German I knew with the students, they seemed to think it was funny. Ironically, one of the areas my German heritage comes from is around Bavaria. The older generations of my family know German well, but as some of the German students pointed out, they speak German from about 150 years ago, lol.