Japanese words are spelled wrong.

[HanshiClayton]

Have you ever wondered why Japanese karate terms are so hard to pronounce correctly? We all have a terrible time with it, and we are often criticized for our barbarian ignorance. The answer is simple: Japanese words are hard to pronounce because they are spelled wrong.

Here's one of our favorite terms: "shuto uke." The Western reader says "shoe tow ookie." The Japanese person says "stokay." Notice how the U's dropped out of the word.

"Oi zuki." The Westerner says "oy zookie." The Japanese says "oyskee." There goes that U again.

"Gyaku zuki." Western: "Gya-koo zookie." Japanese: "gyaskee." We lost a K and two U's that time.

"Kyan" (as in Chotoku Kyan). Western interpretation: "kie-ann." Japanese: "k'yawn." (In Chinese, the name is "Chan.") It's a hard Y, but that's not how it looks to a Western reader.

If these words were spelled as they are pronounced, we'd have no trouble with them. Our karate books could say "stokay" for knife-hand block, couldn't they? Who hijacked us into these unpronounceable spellings?

Well, the Japanese did. They created dictionaries of official Roman spellings for Japanese words, and they butchered the phonics.

In fairness, there are sounds in the Romance languages that the Japanese do not use, like "L". (There's a joke that a Japanese camera makes a noise that sounds like "Crick.") This is a two-way street. There are Japanese sounds that we cannot master, too. No attempt at phonetic transliteration can ever be wholly successful.

Still, it seems like we might have done better than the Romanization systems we have. The official system for Romanizing Japanese words attempts to be phonic but fails. It is really a substitution code. Certain blocks of Roman letters stand for specific Japanese kana symbols. Kana is the system of Japanese phonic writing. The Japanese reader mentally translates the Roman code groups into kana symbols, and then into phonic Japanese. They set up this system for the convenience of Japanese newspaper readers, not for Westerners.

Here's a basic hiragana substitution table, in case you have not seen one. I got it from the Wikimedia commons.


The next time a Japanese teacher corrects your barbaric gaijin pronunciation, reflect on the fact that he may pronounce the terms correctly, but he can't spell them. Then go back to practicing your gyaskee and stokay.

It is our alphabet, not theirs. They have made atrocious use of it.

(For more information on this subject that you would ever want to know, see the Wikipedia article on Romanization of Japanese.)

[Philip Sneyd]

Hi Dr Clayton,

I notice that it is not permitted to post replies to "Essays about Karate", but is it OK to post responses here?

This is a response to the essay "Japanese words are spelled wrong". http://shotokanresearch.com/phpbb2/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=66

I guess it might seem like I'm a language freak, but I felt I had to point out a small error in the above.

Romanization, or romaji, was not invented by the Japanese, it was invented by Westerners. The Japanese were well able to read and write their own language, and had no need to convert it to the Roman alphabet. We invented it so that we could read and say Japanese words and study their language without having to spend years learning their complicated writing system. Perfectly reasonable.

Specifically the first romanization system was created by Portuguese missionaries in the 16th century, and after the Christians were expelled around early 17th century, it largely disappeared until a revised system was created in the late 19th century by James Curtis Hepburn, an American.

So the blame for any shortcomings in the romanization of Japanese or our pronunciation of it, falls squarely on the shoulders of we gaijin, unfortunately.
Having said that, I don't think Western pronunciation of Japanese is all that bad, really. For the most part, it's probably just too slow. If you ask a Japanese to say something slowly, they will indeed pronounce each syllable, like "Shu-to-u-ke", "gya-ku-zu-ki" and so on. It's just that when they speak at native speed it seems like they cut out some vowel sounds.

Compare it to this: For us, "What do you want to do?" and "What are you going to do?" are completely different sentences, and we have no trouble distinguishing one from the other. But for a Japanese (or other foreign) student listening to native English speed, all they hear is something like "Whaddya wanna do?" and "Whaddya ganna do?" - the only difference being one single consonant sound in the middle!

By the way, the Japanese use Kanji for main words (nouns, verb stems etc.), and hiragana syllabary (as in the chart above) is used for all other parts of Japanese grammar (particles, prepositions, conjugation of verbs etc.). They have a second syllabary called katakana for writing foreign words or any words without a Japanese equivalent. The result is that their pronunciation of English and all other foreign words (when imported into Japanese) has a "Japanese accent" and is often very different from the respective native pronunciations. Just like romanization in reverse! So the problem works both ways.

"Shogannai" as they say in Japan - "That's life... What are you going to do?"

Philip Sneyd

[HanshiClayton]

For reasons that utterly escape me, this topic is the most popular one on the website (prior to opening up the bunkai forums, at least). I thought it would be interesting to open it up to replies. I might have to shut it down again depending on how many of the replies are about anatomical enhancement. PHPBB seems to get bombarded by spambots.

[HanshiClayton]

Japanese is fatally handicapped by masses of homonyms. "Yon" means "four." "Shi" is another word for "four," but it also means "death." "Shizan" is "stillbirth."

Also, "oshikko" is "urination." "Shishi" is Japanese baby-talk for "pee-pee." Shikko dachi is "peeing stance." This is the side stance with toes pointed outward in a natural position, rather than the kiba dachi version with the feet twisted painfully forward.

Okinawan styles use shikko dachi in their katas. Kiba dachi is a shotoism, meaning that it has no history prior to Shotokan, and no combat virtue to the stance. It's very existence is a mystery.

We say "yondan" because "shidan" somehow isn't nice. It haunts me that Shotokan's knee-wrenching kiba dachi might have been created purely so that the Japanese didn't have to mention pee-pee stance in their classes. That's not such an unreasonable guess. Funakoshi's biography says that there were homonymous words that he would angrily refuse to say out loud. Maybe "shi" was one of them.