Part II >>

Introduction

I promised a while ago that I’d teach you how to read those Japanese T-Shirts which look like this:

デザイナー・クラブ

The secret behind this writing is that it’s invariably written as English words with Japanese pronunciation and script. So all you have to do is learn how Japanese people put words together, and learn the writing system (only 46 characters to learn) and you can read along with the best of them.

Warning

First off, though, a bit of fun… note that writing in this way looks (arguably) extremely cool to English-speakers, but to a Japanese-speaker may well look something like the converse… as a selection of Japanese slogans demonstrate:

Don’t Worry, Be Sex!
Hamberger friend - I feel happiness When I eat a him
Mistakes Peaple’s Make
Toilet Love

and

I’m Cock

Step One - Vowels and Consonants

So… on to step one. We won’t learn the writing system yet, we’ll save that for later. What you need to learn first is the set of sounds in the Japanese language.

This will not only help you in the long-term goal of reading those T-shirts, but will also allow you to a) understand Japanese people speaking English with a very strong accent, and also b) mimic Japanese accents perfectly.

The Japanese language has quite a strict set of sounds. There are five vowels:

a i u e o (their order, not mine)

These are pronounced largely like they are in English. The ‘a’ tends towards the Southern English pronunciation ‘father’ rather than eg. Nothern ‘hat’. The ‘u’ is more like… well, as one site beautifully describes, a surf-dude saying ‘kewl’ or ‘dude’. Vowels can be long or short.

The consonants are as follows:

k g s z t d n h b p m y r w

One of the key rules of Japanese is that every consonant (except ‘n’) must be followed by a vowel. So, for example ’steak’ becomes ’sutēki’. You hardly pronounce the ‘u’ or the ‘i’, but they must be present. Likewise, ‘train’ would become ‘torēn’. Again, don’t pronounce the ‘o’ too strongly.

Step Two - Mutations

There are a few sounds which just don’t exist in Japanese. The most notable are:

si becomes shi
tu becomes tsu
ti becomes chi
di becomes ji

If you’re going to be picky about my consonant+vowel rule above, consider ’sh’, ‘ch’ and ‘ts’ are single consonants. It’s easier that way, and will help with the writing later.

This leads to more interesting pronunciations… ‘taxi’ becomes ‘takushi’ - as usual, don’t pronounce the ‘u’ too strongly. It’s tempting for English readers to put on their best over-thinking head and pronounce this like ‘ta-KOO-shi’, when in fact, it should sound like ‘TAKushi’.

More examples: ‘radio’ becomes ‘rajio’, ’shirt becomes ’shātsu’, ‘tahiti’ becomes ‘tahichi’.

Then there’s the big giveaway… ‘l’ becomes ‘r’. The Japanese sound is actually half-way between the two, and can sometimes sound very close to our ‘l’ even thought it’s written (in Roman letters) as ‘r’.

So: ‘London’ becomes ‘rondon’, ‘club’ becomes ‘kurabu’ and ‘hotel’ becomes ‘hōteru’.

Note, that when you’re in Tokyo, riding in your takushi, if you ask for the ‘grand hotel’, the driver will not understand you. However, ask for the ‘guRAndo hōTEru‘ and he’ll take you straight there.

Step Three - Relax

That’ll do for this installment - join us next time when we revise the sounds of Japanese and begin learning the freaky-ass writing.