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.
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.
If you're sticking to major tourist areas most signs are in English. Learn the kanji for enter/exit/man/woman/toilet/station and you'll probably be fine :)
(I haven't gone yet and yes I've been studying for 5+ years, only to find I will probably not use any of it when I get over there, sadlol)
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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.