Okay, how do I explain this… Well, welcome to your first japanese lesson! No, not really. But I just thought I would share something w you guys that I still find very amusing. Let’s start from the beginning; there are three different ways of writing in japanese. KANJI, where the characters look really creepy and complicated; 中国語, HIRAGANA w characters that are round and swirly; れいぞうこ, and finally KATAKANA with strokes that are more straight and pointy; ホッチキス. One single kanji can be an entire word, where as hiragana and katakana work more like our alphabet. Except that each character usually consists of two letters, SO, RA, NI, MO… and so on. But anyway… What I wanted to talk about is the KATAKANA which is used to write words from foreign languages. They are really keen on taking english words and writing them in their katakana. Cus of the transition from the english alphabet to their katakana, the words get completley fucked up, u’ll see what I mean in a sec. It’s like a guessing game! A single “H”, for example, doesn’t exist. It’s paired up with either A, I, U, E or O- HA, HI, HU (pronounced FU tho) and HO. And when taking the english words and spelling them the japanese way, you get all of those extra characters thrown in there. KATAKANA is kinda evil in that way, tricking them into thinking it’s “correct” english. They might think they’re talking english, but it sure doesn’t sound like it. It’s freakin handy for me who doesn’t know japanese yet tho. The first day I got here and went to the grocery store, I managed to figure out what bottles were shampoo and which ones were conditioner. All written in KATAKANA, japaninglish! It can be pretty fun sometimes to see what they come up with!
So let’s give it a try! Can you guess what the words are in ENGLISH? (Hint: Sometimes, but just sometimes, “R” is pronounced like a “L”) (When I’ve written a double “ee” or “aa” or any other vowel, just prounounce it like a long “eeeeeeeeeeeeeee” or “aaaaaaaaaaaaaa”.)
1. biiru
2. erubeetaa
3. koohii
4. keeki
5. masshuruumu
6. tchokoretoo
7. uisukii
8. onzerokku (hint: number 7 and 8 are related)
