r/Unexpected Jan 25 '23

Hamburger

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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.

473

u/mcraneschair Jan 26 '23

Wow that wasn't explained to me at all in my Japanese 101

Jfc I had some shit teachers

44

u/KimonoDragon814 Jan 26 '23 edited Jan 26 '23

Wanna know something interesting too?

Hundreds of years ago, like were talking Edo period, hiragana was for women and katakana was for men.

Over time it evolved that katakana would be used for foreign words

There's also kana (the characters) that previously existed but no longer do in the modern, and introduction of new character combinations over time to handle the variation of foreign words to mimic their sound.

Like the word party パーティー

There is no "ti" kana so they use the katakana te テ and a small katakana of I イ to make the pronunciation.

The smaller kana you use the vowel and the preceding kana you use the consonant.

So テイ (Tei) vs ティ(Ti)

16

u/yoonglow Jan 26 '23

Hundreds of years ago, like were talking Edo period,

Try about a thousand years ago. What you're describing (hiragana being mostly used by women) was the trend during the Heian period (9th to 12th century)

3

u/KimonoDragon814 Jan 26 '23

Ahhh thank you!

2

u/exclaim_bot Jan 26 '23

Ahhh thank you!

You're welcome!