Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2014 November 2

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November 2

Mock Japanese

In Finland, it has been a tradition for many decades to make up words in mock Japanese from Finnish words, in other words to write Finnish to sound like Japanese. Below I have listed some famous examples.

word	supposed meaning in mock Japanese	literal translation from Finnish
hajosikotojotasi	car repair shop	did your Toyota break down?
hitonisokitarisa	dentist	a bloody big tonsil
jokohamahumahuta	wrestler	should I whack already?
kanakusitakanasi	hen farmer	a hen peed behind you
sakotapajotakuta	police officer	give someone a fine
sikakusitakanasi	pig farmer	a pig peed behind you

Do any of these sound like anything in real Japanese? If so, what would such words in real Japanese mean? Of course they don't have to be 100% letter-to-letter matches. JIP | Talk 19:30, 2 November 2014 (UTC)

There's also sumenikonäkökyky, supposedly meaning "optician" or "opthalmologist", literally meaning "did your sense of sight get fuzzy?", but as far as I'm aware, the Japanese language doesn't use front vowels to the same extent as the Finnish language, so it's unlikely a similar-sounding word exists in real Japanese. JIP | Talk 20:18, 2 November 2014 (UTC)

What an odd custom. Whatever floats your Finnish boat, I guess. For what it's worth, Google Translate identifies two of those words as Swahili, one as Maori, and none as Japanese, but doesn't give an English translation for any of them. ‑‑Mandruss ☎ 20:29, 2 November 2014 (UTC)

Heh, don't you guys do that sort of thing in English? I thought it was pretty international. I'm sure we had some really really silly jokes of that pattern with mock Chinese in German when I was a kid, and I've heard mock-Japanese and mock-Turkish jokes in Greek too. But I have to admit the Finnish ones above look cleverer than ours. Fut.Perf. ☼ 21:48, 2 November 2014 (UTC)

• The sequence -si- in Japanese is pronounced like english -shi-. This seams to be a problem with many of the fauxpanese words. Kanakusitakansi phonetically would be Kanakushitakanashi. There are other mutations as well. μηδείς (talk) 20:36, 2 November 2014 (UTC)

• • Yes the syllables "si" and "hu" do not exist in traditional Japanese. When they are used in some styles of romanization they are actually used for syllables し/シ and ふ/フ which sound more like "shi" and "fu" resp. "Shi" and "fu" is actually what those syllables are written in the most common style of romanization. (To be more accurate the "fu" is bilabial in Japanese, not labiodental.) However for new borrowings from English you could conceivably manufacture a true "si" syllable in "new" Japanese that would be written like this: スィ and truly pronounced "si". But I can't find at the moment a specific Japanese word using it. (Note that most commonly an English word with "si" would be transcribed according to the traditional Japanese phonology, so "si" would become "shi" as in "Syria" which becomes シリア, pronounced "Shiria", not with that "new" Japanese "si" syllable; however that also depends on the age of the borrowing, older borrowings are more likely to be fully adapted to traditional Japanese phonology.) You could also in theory manufacture a real "hu" syllable along the same principles but I have never ever seen that. Contact Basemetal here 00:38, 3 November 2014 (UTC)
  • Note also that what JIP along with all Finns writes as "jo" would be (Hepburn) romanized in Japanese as "yo" for よ/ヨ. In Japanese (Hepburn) "jo" represents another syllable which can be written in two ways (じょ/ジョ or ぢょ/ヂョ; the first way is much more common) and which is pronounced differently from Finnish "jo". Contact Basemetal here 00:53, 3 November 2014 (UTC)
  • Last one I hope in this series: the h in the Japanese syllable "hi" is very strong, more like the "ch" of German "Ich" than probably a Finnish h would be before i; but before vowels other than i and u the h of Japanese and Finnish should be reasonably similar. All of this said, I'm also waiting for an imaginative Japanese speaker who, will all those caveats and approximations, will be able to make something Japanese out of those Finnish strings even though it's unlikely they will be as funny as the Finnish words. If you take "jokohamahumahuta" you could conceivably break it into Yokohama, fuma and futa. "Yokohama" is of course a city: 横浜, "futa" 蓋 means cover, and I don't know very well what to make of "fuma", but in the Japanese WP フマ is the name of a legendary bird from Iranian mythology (ペルシア神話上の伝説の鳥). So the whole thing, if used as one word would mean "the cover of a fuma mythical bird from Yokohama" but the phrase would be more likely to be: 横浜のフマの蓋 ("Yokohama no fuma no futa"). I hope that some competent Japanese speakers (certainly not my case by a long shot) can find other uses for those Finnish words so that at least one of them will make us all laugh. Contact Basemetal here 02:59, 3 November 2014 (UTC)
  • I had hoped "hi" would be the last one, but no. One has to also say something about Japanese "u" and Finnish "u": Japanese "u" (when it is a full vowel, not a whispered one) is closer (though not identical) to Finnish vowel y rather than to Finnish vowel u. Actually the timbre of Japanese "u" varies according to context but by and large I think what I said is correct. In any case see Finnish phonology and Japanese phonology for more details. And, come to think of it, I could have referred to those articles to begin with instead of going to all this trouble. Last comment (I promise): I'm surprised that whoever designed Finnish orthography (who was it?) did not elect to represent as ü what's written in Finnish as y since from the point of view of vowel harmony y is in the same position with regard to u as ä to a and ö to o. A small inconsistency I guess. I have seen worse. And it sets Finnish apart from the spelling habits of many European languages that have that sound (German, Turkish, Hungarian, and even Estonian, a close relative of Finnish). Could it be Swedish influence? In Swedish (and Norwegian and Danish) too they use y for about the same sound. Contact Basemetal here 08:25, 3 November 2014 (UTC)

I had two friends one a Tamil speaker (originally from India) and the other a Finnish speaker (born in the US but having grown up in a Finnish-American mostly Finnish speaking household in the U.S.) and both were good friends as well. The Tamil fellow was always kidding the Finnish fellow by giving mock Tamil interpretations of Finnish words, especially of Finnish surnames. It was hilarious and it was not made up only very slightly stretched at times as some Finnish vowels do not have Tamil counterparts. Some real Finnish long words have funny interpretations in this way as Tamil words. Both languages can have very long words. I wish I had written down some examples. Contact Basemetal here 00:38, 3 November 2014 (UTC)

I've started watching a decade-old American public access TV show about Japanese wrestling, and the commentators are quite fond of screaming "Udehishigigyakujujigatame!" at every sort of armbar. So now I do, too. Aside from that (which is sort of a word), they don't seem to know much Japanese. But they at least don't call him Kensooky Sasaki like that phoney baloney Tony Schiavone. InedibleHulk (talk) 01:06, 3 November 2014 (UTC)

• Entirely besides the point, but the Phillies have a player named Cody Asche /kodi'æʃi/ and every time I hear his name I expect them to append "Matsumora" or the like. μηδείς (talk) 02:05, 3 November 2014 (UTC)

• • But note "ti" and "di" do not exist in traditional Japanese either. What is romanized that way in some romanization styles (though not in the most common one; see above) is actually pronounced "chi" and "ji" resp. Even in the styles of romanization that allow for "di" the Japanese "ji" syllable is more likely to be romanized as "zi" though. In other words that's another syllable that can be written in Japanese in two different ways. Just like "jo" above. Contact Basemetal here 02:22, 3 November 2014 (UTC)

Koji Kanemoto is a black t-shirt sort of guy, but I can't see him wearing this one. InedibleHulk (talk) 02:39, 3 November 2014 (UTC)

How about this guy? Contact Basemetal here 03:42, 3 November 2014 (UTC)

Ha ha! He will never defeat the awesome fighting spirit in this guy! Ha ha! InedibleHulk (talk) 04:47, 3 November 2014 (UTC)

These are the real Japanese words I found in the nonsense words in Finland. Koto is 事/a thing or a matter, 古都/an ancient city, and 琴/koto (instrument). Hitoni is 人に/to the human/to someone. Takanas(h)i/高梨/小鳥遊 is a family name like this one. Sakota/迫田 is also a family name. S(h)ikaku is 四角/a square, 死角/a blind spot, 刺客/an assassin, 視角/the optic angle, and 視覚/(the sense of) sight. S(h)itakana is "Did you do that?". If the 6th word is "shitaku shitakana", it could be "Are you　ready?". Oda Mari (talk) 10:11, 3 November 2014 (UTC)

• Some funny faux-Japanese names are made of Russian words (often swear words), here some examples.--Lüboslóv Yęzýkin (talk) 16:44, 3 November 2014 (UTC)

Car repair shop is 自動車修理工場/jidōsha shūri kōjō, dentist is 歯医者/haisha or 歯科医/shikai, wrestler is レスラー, hen farmer is 養鶏家/yōkeika, police officer is 警察官/keisatsukan, and pig farmer is 養豚家/yōtonka in real Japanese. Jokohamahumahuta sounds like Yokohama funa uta/横浜舟歌/Yokohama boat song, as far as I know, there's no such song though. Oda Mari (talk) 18:38, 3 November 2014 (UTC)

The Japanese have their own versions of English, too. 掘った芋弄るな (Hotta imo ijuru na) = "What time is it now", made famous by a balding middle-aged TV guy who wears sunglasses and a black suit on daytime TV - primarily made for freetimers, university students, and married women (who don't work), and causes English teachers to hear this eight times a day every day, expecting us to pretend that this was the first time we heard it and laugh heartily with them, until some other fad comes along that we all get subjected to eight times a day for a few weeks, until something else, and something else, and your zombified mind wakes up and says, "Hang on, I'm getting paid for this nonsense. Whatever." And then you can start laughing again, because you realize, that for most, it's just a fun hobby for them. They are not serious about learning the language. Some are, and I respect that. Many aren't, but I respect that, too. Everyone should have a hobby. KägeTorä - (^影_虎) (Chin Wag) 20:52, 6 November 2014 (UTC)

Quebec accent

Hello, the word tête is really pronounced [taɪ̯t] in Quebec French, are Quebec French pronunciations considered as incorrect ? 199.59.78.19 (talk) 20:43, 2 November 2014 (UTC)

Well, not in Quebec, obviously, but in France, yes, the pronunciation would be considered non-standard. Dbfirs 21:29, 2 November 2014 (UTC)

Maybe a Quebecker wrote the limerick about Tate and his tête-à-tête at 8:8. —JerryFriedman (Talk) 22:45, 2 November 2014 (UTC)

I'm not sure whether you are actually the editor called Fête (pronounced like fate) from Montreal, but, if not, you might be interested in this from the French Wiktionary:

France (Paris) : [tɛt] France (Provence) : [tɛ.tə] Canada français (variante/région 1) : [tɛːt] Canada français (variante/région 2) : [tɑɛt]

sans les e caduques et où chaque prononciations correspond clairement à une région. - Dakdada (discuter) 20 février 2006 à 17:03 (UTC)

Va pour les e muets qui encombrent, mais pour ce qui est de la prononciation canadienne française il n'y en a pas vraiment deux (pas de sous-régionalisation, en tous cas). C'est juste que je ne suis pas certain de la transcription phonétique correcte. Les deux proposées semblent cerner la véritable prononciation, qui est à quelque part entre les deux... Urhixidur 22 février 2006 à 14:22 (UTC)

Ah d'accord... C'est peut-être un [æ] comme en anglais 9_9 Sinon tu pourrais plutôt faire un enregistrement (si c'est possible) ; il ne vaut mieux pas écrire la prononciation phonétique avant d'en connaitre la bonne transcription, ça pourrait induire en erreur sinon. - Dakdada (discuter) 22 février 2006 à 16:58 (UTC)

/tɛːt/ est la prononciation québécoise standard, /tɑɛt/ est la prononciation québécoise populaire. Fête

Je confirme. Nepas ledire (discussion) 29 juillet 2012 à 17:36 (UTC)

That blocked editor has a "bee in his bonnet" about Anglicised versions of the French vowel. He's probably not you if you live in Toronto. Dbfirs 23:14, 2 November 2014 (UTC)

• The French in Quebec generally retains distinctions between sounds which are lost in France and diphthongs are also often used instead of pure vowels. You may consult Quebec French phonology Diphthongization. This gives some insight on the pronunciation of "tête". --2.245.216.148 (talk) 04:14, 4 November 2014 (UTC)

That's a useful article, though I still think that the pronunciation [taɪ̯t] is an Anglicisation, or rather an Americanization of the original Fench. Dbfirs 09:05, 4 November 2014 (UTC)

I don't know, but Quebec French seems to be even more conservative than European French. It's probably the pronunciation in France, which has changed more. The introduction says Quebec French still keeps clear distinctions between some pure vowels, don't know about what caused the diphthongs though. (If I remember correctly, [ɛ̃] and [œ̃] have merged to [æ̃] in France, at least the North with Paris, where the news anchor pronunciation is from I think, but dictionaries don't change their transcriptions. I assume reasons could be that they are already used to transcribing it that way or it doesn't seem to bother anyone. Customs for IPA in French are a bit outdated.) --2.245.216.148 (talk) 22:23, 4 November 2014 (UTC)

Well tête in French was originally teste from Latin testa, so I really don't see how your claim could work. Do they say peut-aitre in Quebec, peut-être? The old form was peut estre, no "ai" sound. Dbfirs 22:30, 5 November 2014 (UTC)

Here's my understanding: As the s was lost from the Old French word, the e was lengthened to compensate: Latin testa [tɛsta] > Old French teste [tɛstə] > tête [tɛːt(ə)], which I think was the pronunciation in most accents around the time of the colonization of Canada. Then in some accents long /ɛː/ was merged with short /ɛ/, whereas it persisted in others. In (popular) Québécois, the distinction was reinforced when the /ɛː/ was diphthongized into [aɛ̯]. It could be due to English influence, but not necessarily. Diphthongization of long vowels has occurred in other languages, not necessarily because of foreign influence, e.g. in English itself (during the Great Vowel Shift) and in modern Hollandic Dutch. Lesgles (talk) 20:16, 6 November 2014 (UTC)