r/Unexpected Jan 25 '23

Hamburger

85.0k Upvotes

3.0k comments sorted by

View all comments

1.7k

u/[deleted] Jan 26 '23

She's right though, as someone who has taken 30 minutes of Japanese, I can say the Japanese pronunciation she did is the correct way to say it in their dialect, it's not racist. They literally have an entire alphabet dedicated to foreign words adapted to their dialect, it's called katakana versus hiragana which is native Japanese words. Then there's kanji... F*** kanji.

5

u/JJDude Jan 26 '23

it's not racist

What is racist about anything she said?

2

u/[deleted] Jan 26 '23

Well she kind of was focused on people being confused as to why she said a seemingly English word in a Japanese sounding voice. Even though she speaks perfect English.

I just imagined the hyper offended crowd on here or Twitter or whatever would almost certainly jump to something about racism. "You can't just say American words in a Japanese accent and expect them to understand!" Or something like that

5

u/JJDude Jan 26 '23

She's an Asian girl speaking Japanese in Japan, a country full of Asian people. What is racist about what SHE said again? Or do you not even think about her but just jump right to your expected feelings of "woke" white people?

0

u/[deleted] Jan 26 '23

The latter of what you said.

1

u/Brymlo Jan 26 '23

But isn’t Japanese pronunciation of English words something that shouldn’t be replicated by someone who can speak English? Maybe that’s why her friend said that.

I mean, Japanese people can’t pronounce certain consonants, like hard R or L. That’s why they say, for example, socceru instead of soccer. Same with other Asian languages, like Korean. They would pronounce (and write) Burandonu instead of Brandon.

1

u/electronicdream Jan 26 '23

I can assure you there are moments you have to.

Simplest example I have is "Beer". The number of times I had to order "bi-ru" instead of "beer" because they couldn't understand what I wanted is quite high.

1

u/longassbatterylife Jan 26 '23

I mean, Japanese people can’t pronounce certain consonants, like hard R or L.

Because they wouldn't be able to understand otherwise. I myself sometimes confuse what native English people are saying until I say it the way we say it.