This has been driving me crazy...

[Ozymil]

So, being the uneducated-in-Japanese kind of person I am, I have to know: is it pronounced "Kuh-TAH-wah Shoe-joe" or "KAH-tuh-wah Sho-jo"?

[Pimmy]

Kah tah wah sho jo

also japanese doesn't regularly accent syllables

[Aura]

[ka̠ta̠ɰ͡β̞a̠ ɕo̞:zo̞]

the w and vowels are the hard part for native english speakers (I think), and yes each mora has equal stress, no accents anywhere.

[toast]

I just kinda butcher it whichever way i feel at the time.

[ever17]

[ka̠ta̠ɰ͡β̞a̠ ɕo̞:zo̞]

the w and vowels are the hard part for native english speakers (I think), and yes each mora has equal stress, no accents anywhere.

So, does anyone even know how to read that sort of phonetic alphabet?

I think just saying "kah-tah-wa sho-jo with no stress on any syllables" is good enough ;P

[Caesius]

[ka̠ta̠ɰ͡β̞a̠ ɕo̞:zo̞]

the w and vowels are the hard part for native english speakers (I think), and yes each mora has equal stress, no accents anywhere.

So, does anyone even know how to read that sort of phonetic alphabet?

The ɰ, β, and ɕ represent non-English sounds. I doubt there are many people that can produce every sound represented in IPA, let alone read them, so probably not.

[Aura]

The entire point of IPA is that they are universal and everyone can (potentially) pronounce them. If you say "pronounce it like kah-tah-wah", people whose native language is not english and even people speaking various dialects of English will not pronounce it like you'd think. That's why it's not a good idea.

[G3n0c1de]

The problem is that the Joe Average probably can't pronounce things using the IPA, or like me, haven't even heard of it.

[Aura]

Yeah but on the internet it's not a problem, due to the power of google and wikipedia. In face to face conversations it's obviously quite unnecessary, unless all participants have an interest in linguistics.

[EternalLurker]

Um...In face-to-face conversation how would you spell in IPA anyway? o_O

[Aura]

In a face-to-face conversation you can actually pronounce words as an example, that should be simplest. The individual IPA can't be spelled, but they have names that you can refer to, like the ɕ from shoujo is called alveolo-palatal fricative and the o in japanese is a "mid back rounded vowel". Not very useful for a casual conversation though.

[EternalLurker]

Well, yeah, you can describe the sounds as my brother loves to do (even in casual conversation; he's a hobbyist linguist, or used to be, inspired by LotR). I just considered that to be "describing the sounds" rather than "naming IPA letters", I guess. A bit of a chicken-and-egg thing, which potentially has a real answer that I could look up if I weren't currently feeling extraordinarily lazy even by my own standards. I'll probably do so after this week of tests.

[Gash]

Whats the translated version?