10 Japanese Brands You Pronounce Wrong! // How To Pronounce Japanese
10 Japanese brands you pronounce wrong! Do you know how to pronounce pokemon in japanese? In this video I'm showing you how to pronounce brand names in Japanese such as Toyota, Uniqlo, Nikon, Pokemon etc.
Watch if you want to know how to pronounce Japanese words correctly!
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What's up Asaginators! It's unfortunate that some people get offended by the title although I said in the intro that I'm simply sharing "Japanese brand names you pronounce differently". Please don't take the title as an offence since I choose it just for KZhead algorithm. I appreciate your feedback though! My Instagram: asagine Twitter: asagine_T Similar video: How To Pronounce Japanese Car Brands ▶ kzhead.info/sun/hJpqqNqIh2uPmnA/bejne.html
Lol, you think these are bad? How about how Japanese people butcher English words with katakana? 🤣 ウイルス??? Willis? Ohhhhhh, you mean 'virus'!!
I really enjoyed your new no BS format. Part of the reason westerners mispronounce these Japanese brands is because that is how Japanese companies market themselves overseas. Our domestic commercials for Japanese brands, made and paid for by Japanese companies, actually teach us to say them incorrectly!
It might interest you to know that many foreigners KNOW they're pronouncing it incorrectly, but they do it any ways because it sounds better. Like Nikon. We like it better the way we say it. 🤣
Asaginators, i love that !
I think it's me who must make confused face when a Japanese pronounce "Asics" as "ASHIKKUSU" cause doesn't matter how hard I try but I can't find there letters "H, S, K" the same for "UNIQLO" 😂😂😂
why is everybody so hurt? she is not judging or even asking you to use the japanese pronunciation, just chill. If you like learning languages you will find this really interesting.
Thanks for saying that!!
Because, the Japanese don't make the slightest attempt to change how they pronounce our words! They katakanize every - damn - word! The Japanize it and won't even try to say our words properly!
Because once they decided this is how their country and language pronounce it, there is no way they want to be told how it originally should sound like? I personally like to pronounce words in their original pronunciation (words like croissant, Tour de France etc) and show respect for the language, regardless of how people look at me or think of me. I cringed when I hear people say "kao" as cow (even if they are employees of the company that is based in another country). I don't feel the need to point them out though, since I'm not Japanese :) and when people can't understand what I say, I will tell them this is how it is pronounced in Japan and they can continue with their cows and I can continue with my ka-ous, all is good, no issues at all :)
@@jr9329 , understood. But, in the educational system, where japan spends millions a year and continues to get the same result century after century, it becomes a problem. And, English spelling, well, you know how that goes. Sounds and alphabet spelling or how a word is spelled is inconsistent. When kids constantly katakazie words, you're going to fail your tests. They just refuse to do the right thing and just either spell it the way it is supposed to be spelled or sound it the way it's supposed to be pronounced. And, there you have it. When consulting firms look for bilingual people they don't look towards Japan.
@@jr9329 The TOEIC and TOEFL scores are horrible. But, I had a teacher tell me once, that it's better to teach improper grammar than to teach it correctly where it's really hard!
Japanese: "You are pronouncing our brands wrong!" Also Japanese: "MakUDonArUdO"
Haha except they (the Japanese) don’t really try to use マックドナルド (makkudonarudo) when they’re speaking in a non-Japanese speaking country. I get what you’re trying to say though.
It was meant just as a joke, please don't take offence for what i wrote. I know it's just the way the Japanese language works, and when you speak other languages, you use the pronunciation from the respective language.
@@maybe867Yeah I know what you meant.
"Kito kato" too for kit kat... theres actually a song about their pronunciations cant remember the title
@@Burneth_ Tokyo Bon by Namewee for the Olympics?
1:17 Kobe 2:17 NISSIN 3:09 CALPIS/ CALPICO 4:04 TOYOTA 5:05 UNIQLO 5:42 ASICS 6:28 Nikon 7:16 CASIO 7:43 Yakult 8:32 Pokémon
Oh, so helpful and handy. Thank you.
神戸 日清 カルピコ トヨタ ユニクロ アシックス ニコン カシオ ヤクルト ポケモン
Actually Toyota in Chinese is written as 丰/豐田 (Fēng tián; note how different the pronunciation in Chinese is despite using the same script as Japanese _kanji_ ), which translates as 'Toyoda' instead in Japanese, but meanwhile Nikon is tranliterated by its phonetics instead into 尼康 (Ní kāng) for some reason
👍
:)
FUN FACT: Akio Morita, a founder of SONY, wanted to name the company something that sounded very American. In the late 40’s and 50’s, “sonny” was slang for “young man”. They dropped an ‘N’ and named the company SONY. Thank you for great video!
Some Chinese news reports translate Sony into 新力 (Xīn lì)(which literally means "new strength") & I thought that was how 'Sony' was written in Japanese _kanji_
@@lzh4950 Original comment learned from Morita’s biography. Good book! 👍🏼
Ah yes the "Young Man PlayStation"
A guy at my local gas station has "Sony" on his nametag, pronounced "Sonny"
Another fun fact: there is a Toyoda town in Hino, Tokyo. It has the same spelling, 豊田, as Toyota in Aichi.
Spanish speaker here, we pronounce almost everyone of these brands as they should be pronounced. Can confirm.
Ditto for italians
Also for Germans
Ahuevodesu
Lies, Lies, and more lies
The vowels are certainly pronounced the same. English is more aye ee eye oh you
As long as you don't say "pokeman" we can still be friends.
Get your pokemans off the floor
fr fr
Pokeman
Poky mans lol
Yeah, I got your ‘Pocket Monster’ for you, right HERE! lol
As a long-time retail worker in Canada, we had many discussions on how to pronounce words; like Nikon and Casio. We had even had representatives from the companies tell us different pronunciations. It was so frustrating. Thank you for these videos! It’s so nice to hear things from a native speaker. 💜
In your own country, pronounce it how your own people pronounce, but when you visit Japan, switch to Japanese pronunciation. Same applies for other international brands like IKEA (in Sweden it sounds more like ii kay uh not eye KEY uh) or Nokia (in Finland it is NOH kya not No Ki uh).
Arabic speaker here and I'm quite surprised of how well we pronounce these Japanese brand names correctly since English isn't our first language, so it's hard to mispronounce most of these
Yeah, Arabic and Japanese have a similarity where they are both phonetic language where every characters have a consistent sound/pronunciation. English on the other hand have a very inconsistent sound, like how every "e" in Mercedes each have different sound if you pronounce it in American accent.
Nissin owners hiding the "h" and waiting for the chance to correct foreign investors during awkward business meetings😂
probably because Japanese does not have 'si' sound. They only have sa shi su se so, but I prefer your theory.
@@DeadHix There is an extended katakana sound for スィ(SI)
@@JamieJamez If presented without contexts, that will still be read as 'Shii' by the Japanese. Besides, Nissin is technically Japanese word and should not be written using katagana to begin with. You still cant convince me otherwise from those CEO trying to troll the gaijins.
There is no c. Like when japanese say see it sounds like she because the sound doesn't exist
@@popn6189 yah you are right.... i mistook the katana su with katakana shi.
As a mexican I pronounce all this brands just right. The pronunciation it's pretty similar to Spanish.
Spanish and Portuguese have the pronunciation of the words pretty close to the Japanese, for me the way the word in Romanji is write is the way i have to pronounce.
@@JeanSamyr Same to Finnish people. Vowels are pronounced the same in japanese, portuguese, spanish, italian, finnish. That helps It's rather easy to learn the right pronouncication of japanese language as a Finnish person, when you get those couple of special rules right ☺️
@@mrj.kottari8453 I think the pronunciation on our languages is the standard, English have some issues to be inconsistent on the pronunciation, in English actually don't have a specific way to say, some words simply change the pronounce out of the blue. for me the pronunciation is the hardest thing to learn in English.
@@JeanSamyr The asymmetricity and inconsistency in english come from the fact that it's vocabulary stems from at least 4 different languages; Old English, French, Old German, and Norse (proto Swedish/Danish/Norwegian) Example words that are loans from french have different logic in pronouncing than Old English or loans from Low German. I've spoke/read english for over 30yrs and I still make mistakes in pronouncing thanks to that inconsistency 😂
@@mrj.kottari8453 But Yakult would be still Yakult (not Yakurto), and Nissin would stay Nissin (instead of Nisshin). The pronunciation would be the same (also in Estonian) if all the romanizations were only correct...
Having lived in Japan for 12 years, I can see your perspective. A lot of those names have been "Americanized" for the US consumers since the last century, so we have accepted the pronunciation. The same goes true with the Korean brands as well; when I am in Korea, I hear the name brands pronounced differently on local TV.
I find the diversity of pronunciation allows me to keep an open mind about how different the rest of the world can be (on a very small level of course). Rather than seeing these as mispronounced, I just see it as different cultures adding their diverse perspectives on it. In a way, it’s almost more fun to have different takes on pronunciation. In the US, there are millions of travelers from around the world coming through here every year, and hearing their unique accents makes it fun, and reminds you that there isn’t only one way to operate in this world. I have found that there is almost no culture that pronounces the same word in the same tone. Even in America, a Californian will say certain words differently than it would be said by a traditional accent from Texas, Louisiana, or New York as an example. We’re all “American” speaking English, and yet the same words are said differently. In any event, thank you for sharing the pronunciation of these words from the origin country’s perspective. It’s always nice to learn how the culture these words came from pronounces them. Please share more if they come to you!
Can you give an example of California and Texan saying the same word differently ? It’s not that different isn’t it? That’ll be like Kyoto and Tokyo accent. Very similar.
Looks like I've been pronouncing Nikon correctly the whole time. I'm so proud of myself 😎
I'm proud of you too 👏
Seems like the way we Dutch pronounce it, is the right way too :)
I had no idea it was a Japanese brand lol.
@@harmmiddeljans6468 same in Slovakia and Czech Republic 👍, looks like Europeans know how to pronounce foreign words....not like US and UK folks 🤣
Same here, I've never pronounced it nigh-kon so I'm proud of both of us♡
Pronunciation of words really does make a difference. When I was in Japan I went to a MOS burger and ordered a cheeseburger. The person taking my order looked at me like I was speaking a different language even though I was speaking Japanese. I then realized even though cheeseburger was an English if I didn't pronounce it as if it were Japanese or written in Romaji or whatever was still like a foreign language. So After I said Chiizu Baaga everything was all good. lol
No but you see it's ok for Japanese to mispronounce words, it's not ok for us gaijin foreigners to not say Toyota correctly because it is a holy word made by the sacred Bushido tradition.
@@peterc.1419 As I german I feel similar. It's (M(ama) - air - (ca)ts - (m)a(te) - diss, Be(t) - n(o) - (ca)ts; M air ts a diss, Be n ts (That's the best transcription I could do)) Mercedes-Benz not (Merseediss, Benz)
@@marioo849 he is being sarcastic.
A friend who worked in the Navy told us that once he asked for the initials of a ship that was approaching and the sailor said: furofo. They asked again and he repeated 'furofo'. Until someone realized that he was saying four-o-four ( 404 )...
@@lotus_flower2001 He's should try to do it better then.
Thank you for sharing. Love the little history lessons behind the names, too.
Thank you for the explanation and context. I am enamored with the Japanese culture and language, it's a great combination of art and precision.
She's just teaching us how to pronounce the brands so that when we talk to japanese they will understand what we are saying.
She's too beautiful. Can't focus! 😍
Actually e.g. 'Asics' is officially 'Onitsuka Tiger' in Japan... the latin Abbreviation is made for western market.
Or just teaching us to not be stupid. Teaching us to be correct
When we talk to Japanese about brands they usually want to sell these products and they know very well what we are talking about. If we speak to ordinary people, it doesn't matter. The owners of these brands don't care how we pronounce them, they only want us to buy them. Toyota in various countries uses local way of saying Toyota. If you want to move to Japan and work for NeeSun then yeah I suppose knowing how to correctly say that is important and surely you'd need to know Japanese itself, but for the rest of us unwashed and dirty gaijin who are just barbarians we only buy the stuff and keep feeding some Japanese salaryman's enjo kosai habit.
She just trying to help educate the US population and doing a far better job than the US Government does.
I love how she explains the background story as well ☺️
Me too, my friend. Amazing video 🥰🥰
She's farting into a barrel with her naive insistence that foreigners should pronounce Japanese brand names the way the Japanese pronounce them.
Casio being "Kashio" was interesting. Here in Brazil you can find men named "Cássio", and in the US you can find it on its original latin version, Cassius. Makes me wonder if "Kashio" as a name may have originated from the portuguese missionaires/sailors that reached Japan in 1500's.
Nah, dog. You can google it. Usually the origin of popular names is no mystery. Cool theory though.
It reminds me of the lieutenant from Othello.
Yeah, lmao. I have a Cássio piano. Very good o/
Thank you so much for this video. This was so interesting! And I loved to learn the real pronunciation of the words!
*Japanese video game narrative:* “STREET FIGHTER!” Japanese: “Sutorito Faita”
Laugh so hard
@@ivankulola5847 language so hard
@@flowerofash4439 😂😂 indeed
Or for brands, "Microsoft" vs something more like "my-kuh-ro-so-fuh-to"
Sutorito faita tuh furashu ( street fighter 2 ' )
I appreciate you creating and posting this video 🙏I enjoyed learning the proper pronunciation and also the knowledge /history as well . Thank you 😌
It could have been done decently, not giving the idea of an arrogant birdbrain.
Japan is a amazing country, the people are so polite and friendly. Japanese brands are all around me I didn't know that I have pronounced them in the wrong way all along. Tks for this great vid
Didn't even know "Asics" was a japanese brand.
ive always thought Asics was derived from the word basic as in basic necessities for sports so this was really cool
And it's pronounced "Onitsuka".
It's an acronym for the latin phrase: anima sana in corpore sano = sound mind in a sound body
@@8tonystark8 Yeap we all watched the video like you did :3
@@8tonystark8 and what does that mean?
I actually learnt the English pronunciation with this video. As a French native, Japanese words sounds very easy to my ears and we pronounce many of them the same.
But Japan switched from copying France to copying Prussia after Prussia showed who's boss in 1879.
Same here, the actual Japanese pronunciation is sooo similar to ours! I didn't they had nasal vowels too
Latin languages seem to give a good base. It’s my Spanish that makes pronouncing Japanese a bit more intuitive for me.
Great, my friend
The only pronunciation I got right is Nikkon. As for the others, the stress I've put on the syllable differs.
In general, this is a typical situation since foreign countries pronounce words using their phonetics. The same can be said for English brands in Japan. Chevrolet in Japan is Shiborei. McDonalds is Makudonarudo. Apple is Ah-puru. Harry Potter is Hali Poe-tah. To learn pronunciation, one has to drop the phonetics of their language and start by just copying how the natives of that country pronounces the word. It is easier said than done since people are so ingrained to their own country's pronunciation.
As a German, I found the way we pronounce the vowels of Japanese companies much closer to your original pronunciation. Pronouncing an E as a [e] is common in Germany (none of our Es are spoken like the English ee, that's what the i is for, just like in Pizza). This is also why Pokemon is pronounced wrong: é indicates a emphasized E sound like in French. Accents are often used for decoration in English...Like Motörhead or Mötley Crue...which are extremely funny when spoken in German.
I bet us Finns find the Japanese vowels ever easier. However, I reckon Germans would probably pronounce some Japanese consonant combinations better than Finns, seeing how German is quite a consonant heavy language, whereas Finnish is a vowel heavy language. Btw, Finns and Swedes could laugh at the American scifi series Stargate because they wrote it as "STARGÅTE". That A with a circle above it is a proper Swedish vowel and sounds totally different from A. Still, in my opinion, the best American brand name is probably Häagen-Dazs (the ice cream brand). It's such a joke to try to pronounce it as it's written, with Ä and A next to each other like that. But yes, the examples you mentioned are excellent as well.
@@herrakaarme :-D I've heard German inspired the Klingon language in Star Trek....it feels familiar somehow.... And Häagen-Dazs...yes. Before I knew better, I tried to pronounce it in all of its Germano-Slavic glory....it's hilarious. With the spelling, Stargate would be closer to Star Goat than to a portal to another dimension? IIRC, Star Gate is a scenario in Goat Simulator....
Ye same here in Holland. But we also pronounce bmw, audi, volkswagen and mercedes as it should be pronounced ;p
I´m Czech. Recently I watched same video of german brands. In the end I find I pronounce mercedes wrong. But now using google translate I see the german lady was actually pronouncing it with english nor german pronouciation. She switched it. 😀
@@michalviktorin6758 Mercedes is hard to pronounce correctly. How we Germans say the car brand is not how the female name sounds in Spanish. So what is "correct" anyway?
There are so many American brands that the Japanese say it differently. For example, Costco is pronounced Kosutoko, MacDonald's is Makudonarudo, etc. But I don't think they are being pronounced incorrectly. They just got localized to fit the language of the people, whether it's Japanese or English speakers.
Well said!
That's just accent
@@jamesgazeley no, its because they spell english words with katakana and when spoken, the katakana phonetics don't match our english pronounciation. They'de need a major revamp of katakana to be able to match english pronounciation.
@@gregh7457 Well, yes, that's how an accent comes about.
@@jamesgazeley uh.. not exactly. they have kana all over japan and they have different accents within japan. osaka v.s. tokyo for instance
I own a Nikon camera, and am about to take photos with it. I'm 61, and have heard that brand mentioned a million times here in the US during my lifetime. Your video is the first time I ever heard another way to say it.
The confusion often comes from how to pronounce vowels since English pronounces them slightly differently. 'E' in Japan is pronounced like a hard A as in the word 'day', while 'i' is pronounced how the English 'E' is often pronounced like in the word 'He'. When people don't know the difference of how another country does something, they often fall back on to what they're familiar with which yes will often end up being wrong. I constantly hear people pronouncing Sakura wrong because we have a Japanese restaurant with the name in my city. They don't know how to properly pronounce the 'R'. I mean even I have trouble with it but that's probably because as a kid I had a speech impediment that still gives me the odd trouble. It makes people think I'm foreign on occasion lol. 'R' is pronounced by touching the tip of your tongue to the base of your teeth and gums so it ends up sounding like a mix between an English 'R' and 'L'. They also don't really pronounce the 'U' right. Lol in short, I can understand why it would sound completely off to japanese people. Most the time the easiest way to understand the pronunciations is to break up the word in it's letter pairing. For example for Sakura it would be Sa Ku Ra. However as we saw in the video this won't always work when some times a company has taken combinations from other languages and altered them to sound a little more Japanese. But Toyota is one of the most common ones we say wrong. I think the confusion from Toyota came from the evolution of pronunciation differences. I imagine people first saw the English word 'toy' in it and began pronouncing it as Toy yota, eventually pronouncing it this way lead to the slight altercation of Ty yota because it was easier to drop the 'O' from this state. But yes, I've known that I pronounce Toyota wrong ever since learning Japanese pronunciation.
True. Also interestingly enough, I feel the mispronunciation generally fit the "musicality"of the language. It really sticks out if people try to pronounce in the original language when they speak English.
it is interesting that the "Slovak" pronunciation of these words is correct, even though they are completely different languages
same for estonian and finnish, completely different language family but pronunciation is same - one letter one sound, not like in germanic languages
Italian too.
@@danieldogadajev1545 German pronunciation is very similar to japanese.
Every language has the same vowels.. bar English ..that's why
because English is not very phonetic, whereas a lot of other languages are
Not really familiar with Cal Piss, but changing the English name of this product made a lot of sense.
Germans would recommend a name change for Uniqlo too. Because "qlo" sounds like the german word "klo" which means toilet.
In french " e-tron " means ... !
@@tomkiki6499 Haha, yes i know! What a big fail for such a big company like Audi, that they didn't check the name before! 🤦
Hmmmm. Sounds like beer from a fake GTA V game ad or something similar. Brewed from the muddy water of the San Joaquin river, it’s Cal Piss!
Nice video, I liked it very much. I must apologise, but that said, I giggled when you explained, that we pronounce Kobe wrongly and then continued to say that it was "estabrished" in Kobe... 😀I mean it in a good way, it was just funny.
Love this, learning Japanese for fun so it’s great to fix my pronunciation mistakes on brand names which I should be getting right.
I think a lot of Japanese companies 'westernized' their brand names around the 1950s, in order to sell overseas while giving the impression to the customer that they're probably buying something domestic (e.g. Casio, Sony, Panasonic etc)...since many westerners (especially in the US) still had a negative opinion on Japanese products or Japan in general at the time.
That's true!
More like "anglicised"
SONY started as SONY
@@SeanAlcorn Well, actually, Sony started as Totsuko (Tokyo Tsushin Kogyo).
And now the western society are having problems with faulty products from China. I prefer to pay the extra money for genuine Japanese Electronics than Chinese products. At least Japanese Products are of quality and I found that Japanese people take pride in what they are making.
I got anxious for a bit when she broke down the meaning of the two words in CALPIS.
omg 😂
I could look at her explain pronunciation all day
Very nicely explained and thank you for teaching us the correct pronunciations😊
It is just that in english they turn "i" into "a", for me as a BR portuguese it is much easier to pronounce japanese words, I believe latin languages on general has an easier time learning other languages.
Yeah, it has to do with the phonemes and how used you are to them, or if they exist in your native language in the first place. As a Swede, I also find it easier to pronounce those words.
Also Brazilian Portuguese definitely has some perks and one of them is intonation. Makes everything a bit easier when we're trying to learn Japanese pitch accent.
As a german it's also not hard to pronounce these brands right
same in french
Realmente, eu sempre notei isso. Parece que o português facilita o pronunciamento do japonês. Deve ser porque contem todos os sons naturalmente.
I feel like Mexican Americans were saying a couple of these the right way. The Spanish language seems to share more in common with Japanese when it comes to pronunciation
the phonemes are very similar
That's because historically the Japanese had some inspiration from Portuguese. And Portuguese is a language very similar to Spanish
Vowel sounds are extremely similar between the two languages. Native Spanish speakers tend to pronounce Japanese fairly well comparatively speaking.
Not all words.
Not really bro.... I don't see that at all. More like Korean and Japanese
I am glad I was pronouncing a few of these correctly and I am glad I can learn the proper way to say the one I don't even as a older man I am always learning and to me that is something everyone needs to do because a lot of people stop trying to learn after they get out of school
Japanese is a fascinating language to me and this was super interesting - especially some of the background info. Umm… I’d be interested in a reversal, to see how the Japanese pronounce, for example, Rolls Royce, Lego, Ferrari, Lamborghini, Rolex etc.
RolloRoyco, Leigo, Rolexo, LOL When a word crosses to a new language it changes to a new style. That's a fact. No need to be precious about it. It's too hard to remember all languages words as they cross to English, LOL.
Interestingly, in Australia we pronounce Nikon as "Nikon" not "Naikon". Plus I've used Nikon cameras for many years :)
Being Australian myself and a Nikon DSLR owner, I got a little surprised hearing people pronounce it "Naikon" on youtube, it really made me question my pronunciation of it (we all pronounced it the same here).
Ha yes we get Nikon right but AIsuzu (Isuzu) always makes me cringe...
Yes we call it Nikon as in knee con, but then some people around here pronouce it "sam-you-rye"
For me Nikon is much better for Indoor. Still good tho I prefer Sony, like damn I love sony mirrorless🤩
UK here, "Naikon" breaks British pronunciation convention, there's no "e" after the "k", there's no additional vowel before to create a diphthong. Short "i" is where it's at for us.
I'm Czech and we pronounce most of the Japanese worlds correctly. It's weird but Czech and Japanese phonology is actually very similar event through the languages are totally different.
Not similar - Japanese phonemes are a strict subset of Czech phonemes. Czech people can pronounce all the Japanese phonemes easily, but not vice versa.
We pronounce it all correctly in latin language counties too I guess
Interesting, as a portuguese speaker, I got most of them correctly also. Except ASICS. That I got very wrong.
it's a slavic and Latin thing
nah Indonesian pronounce them easily, but maybe not perfect
I’m so glad you made this video.
Great video, I really liked this content! I subscribed because you have great energy, keep it up.
Uniqlo being not expensive. Me broke AF: Nani?!!
For its quality? Yes
relate much ☺️
It is expensive in somewhere in Asean. 😭 Me hard to buy it!
@@heika77 Yes but compared to other brands, it's reasonable.
@@heika77 consider the currency rate. The Ordinary retail price is like 10usd and sold 60myr+ in my country. Its not just currency but also cost for duty,shipping and other stuffs
Just the difference between UK and US pronunciation varies quite wildly, bearing in mind their both speaking english...
Two peoples separated by a common language.
@@robertolson483 and a bloody great ocean
The kind of accents we are talking about here between the US and the UK are accents spoken from NATIVE ENGLISH SPEAKERS. In the US we also have regional accents. Accents made by non-native speakers are FORIEGN ACCENTS influenced by their mother tongues. Regional accents ≠ foreign accents. Regional accents are not that difficult to understand whereas foreign accents are hard to understand.
Nye-kee and Nu-ick comes to mind.
im Irish and we pretty much pronounced all those brands the correct way.......its just the US that can't pronounce other languages and even English.
Thank you for this video! I always try to tell my American friends the right pronounciation for Japanese things and they think I'm crazy, even though I live in Japan.
You’re English has progressed so much in such a short time.
Never mind how people say Pokémon, it's way more confusing because every language has vastly different names for all the actual Pokémon. Trying to talk to someone who plays in a different language often requires showing them a picture, because the names wouldn't make any sense.
It's like every time she talks Japanese, she switches to a totally different personality! I love that!
This is very common. It's called code switching. It's the same reason that young kids behave differently around their friends than they do with their parents.
@@mikicoal It has nothing to do with behaviour.
@@pauljordan4452 I didn't say it was. I said it was the "reason" that kids behave differently.
Greetings from Türkiye. Turkish is a language that is read as it is written, every letter nearly always sounds the same in every context. There are some exceptions in the words that has been adopted from Arabic or Persian but they are rare. Therefore we read Toyota, Nikon and Pokemon correctly as they should be read.
As a Brazilian, i already pronounce pokemon, nikon and Toyota Right
Same for French speakers (by the way, I was surprised the accent on pokémon is also present in non-french languages)
Most people in Brazil pronounce Toyota with an open O, like "Tóyóta", but it's a closed vowel "Tôyôta". For the French person above, I used ó and ô as in Portuguese just as a key for the Brazilian person above.
It seems only Americans say "Toyoda"
OK, but how do you pronounce Mazda?
Never even knew that ASICS was a Japanese brand. Wore them for years while I was in the US Army. Best damn pair of running shoes I've ever worn.
I never even knew they had it outside of Japan.
Same. My first pair was bought on base and they’ve been my favorite running shoes for decades since.
@@alukuhito kinda ironic
@@Kettvnen Right? I've lived so long in Japan and have only noticed it here in Japan. The name seemed Japanese to me. I guess it's like how most Japanese think that Auld Lang Syne is a Japanese song, because they've only heard it in Japan and it's such a normal tune that can be heard daily in Japan, and even has Japanese lyrics.
@@alukuhito the fact that auld lang syne is popular in japan surprises me
“I was very confuse when I heard Toyota” expecting it to sound totally different, so excited to learn the correct pronunciation, then basically sounds identical 😅😅😅
In Brazil most people pronounce Kawasaki as "kavazaki". Just to add one more to the list. I'm glad most of the brands cited in the video are spoken somewhat correctly here.
As a Finnish person, it really blows my mind to see that almost every one of these brand names are naturally pronounced almost exactly the same in my country. It's said that it's relatively easier for a Finn to learn Japanese and vice versa than a speaker of almost any other language, because of the similarities in the way we pronounce things.
The pronounciation would be the same in romanian too. I think italian too.
kippis!
Pretty much any language that doesn't use long vowels have it easy too. It's just that English, French, and the like aren't one of those languages. Filipinos, Indonesians, and the like also hsve it easy.
Same voul sounds as Spanish as well
Ditto for Norwegian. Except for the "Asics" one. Nobody gets that one right without having been told the specific Japanese pronunciation.
As a Hungarian, I think we say these brands very similar as Japanese natives do. Plus we use our names as Japanese, first the family name, second the first name. And the far best cars I have owned ever were Honda and Toyota. Good job.
But you don't use father's name like our mutual friends to the east :)
Almost all languages use first surname and then name.
That's because most Hungarians were decedents of Mongolians.
@@user-ru1ki By almost all, you mean the five you're aware of?
@@deanronson6331 What do you mean five?
5:23 I just discovered that I was already pronouncing in the correct way without knowing that it was correct 😂 I’m from Brazil and love the Japanese culture, watching anime as well and I tend to pronounce the name of objects and brands in a “Japanese” way and with ASICS wasn’t different.
I studied Japanese, so I can honestly say I got most of these right, except for shortened versions of longer words/names. I cringe when people say Tokyo as "To-kee-yo", karaoke as "kara-okay", and sake as "sa-key". One time I was talking to a friend about a Japanese actor and he didn't know who I was talking about until I purposely pronounced his name wrong.
I'm french and for french people it's very easy to pronounce japanese worlds because it's literary the same sound's combinaisons, not like english.
And not like French:D
Funny fact. In Poland, we all say Toyota like Japanese. Nikon, we also pronounce it correctly. And Esperanto was invented by a Pole ;)
Mi ŝatas Esperanton. 😁
It just has something to do with the letters being accurate to pronunciation which in English it isn’t. The same applies for German speakers they will also pronounce the words more or less correctly due to this fact.
It’s funny that as a native Swahili speaker I grew up pronouncing most of these brands correctly, until I learned english, so I was convinced that I was pronouncing them wrong, so I had to re-learn them, now I’m realising that I was actually right and I have to unlearn again? Agggh😂
Just subscribed. The Japanese language is much deeper than I thought. Love this video. :)
I think we pronounce Nissin and Casio wrong because their Latin-lettered versions don't include an 'h'.
No its a name.., it should be pronounced on what the owner want you to say.
@@yohavergonzado8112 Completely agree but the problem lies with the official romanization of the East Asian languages (yes, there are official rules). If the romanization is wrong, it makes sense that people are going to pronounce it incorrectly. It's only until you learn the languages (Korean in my case) that you realise how wrong it sometimes is. Hyundai being the worst example I can think of.
@@yohavergonzado8112 My name is Riyo and I want you to pronounce it as Oreo, because it's a name and it should be pronounced as what the owner want people to say, despite of how wrong my spelling was. Or should people pronounced it as "Rambo"? Let me think about my preference of how my name to be pronounced
@@yohavergonzado8112 The owner of the name doesn't make up the rules of the spoken language. Letters make up the sounds that's how language is supposed to work.
Spell it wrong, it will be said wrong.
Being German I have noticed many times that our languages definitely share some sounds so Germans naturally pronounce these names closer to the Japanese version.
Heard germans pronounce Seiko as (Saiko)
Japanese people pronounce VW as "Folkswagen" rather than the way Americans say it: Volkswagen with a V sound, as in Victory.
@@midnightrambler6227 No they prounounce it "Fokkusuwagan" Im sure!
@@srajanverma9064 It's actually Forukusuwāgen(フォルクスワーゲン）
@@midnightrambler6227 Ya this one seems correct.. bigger than I thought!
You know whats interesting? We germans pronounce most of the japanese brands nearly right because our pronounciation of the letters in our language is more close to the japanese pronounciation than the americans. 😎👍
Yes but you speak English with a terrible German accent. LOL!
@@AlfDagg That's true, unfortunately. I feel ashamed every time one of our politicians tries to speak English. 😂 I didn't learn my English at school but from poems, songs and films. I lived in London for a while as a kid, so I don't have that awful German dialect. Whenever I hear Germans speaking English, i get stomachaches. 😅😅🙈
One of my favorites is Nintendo. Which actually started out as an American only “brand name” and eventually became adopted in Japan to distinguish the brand from the product, Famicom. Non product words I like to hear include Karaoke and Karate. Pronounced caryokee and karatee in American English.
I mean, it's not like I couldn't have guessed the actual japanese pronounciation, but if I say kashio nobody knows what I mean anymore 🤷🏻♂️
The change of the brand name from Toyoda to Toyota was also linked to the number of brush strokes to write the name in Katakana, the former being 10 strokes and the latter being 8. As I have read in articles discussing the Toyota Katakana emblem, the number 8 is considered lucky in Japan, which was a contributing factor to the change. That emblem can be seen on the truck in my profile picture.
Wow that emblem is very cool
LATTER*
@@GabeWatchesAnime Thanks.
This was awesome !!!! I remember watching this kung fu movie and the one guy was introducing the new fighters. When he got to the last man he said, " Mr. Yuhh /Maw/ Ha. I'm like, whatttt ?? and I call my motorcycle, " YAM/a'/ HAW...Yamaha, lol. Love your shows !!!!!
I came across this video and I find you very smart, and very funny! I am a new sub!
The Japanese pronunciations of Kobe, Toyota and Nikon are exactly the same as in German.
Japaner betonen jede Silbe gleich lang, ohne eine Silbe besonders zu betonen, soweit ich weiß. Im Deutschen betonen wir bei Toyota die zweite Silbe. Bei Kobe betonen wir die erste Silbe. Und bei Nikon sprechen wir das n anders aus, nicht so nasal wie die Japaner.
They are the same everywhere in the world, not only in German. Vowels pronunciation is basically the same in every language but English, because of the vowel shift English went through in the 16th-17th century. In mostly every language the standard way of pronouncing words written in Latin characters is the same it was in Latin: A like MAmA, E like fathEr or mEn, I like bEEn or pIn, O like pOt, U like pUt, or small variations of those. When you write Japanese words in Romanji, Latin alphabet, they pronounce it in the same way as everyone else -- but English.
Same as in Hebrew. In general, native English speakers use different vowel pronounciation when it comes to Latin alphabet vowels. Let's take the word SHALOM in Hebrew for example, native English speakers would pronounce it more as SHAeLOWM.
Or in French, but French is just Italian with a German accent lol.
Also in Spanish. Although b can pronounced like v depending on speaker.
As a listener who spent more than a few years in Japan as an English dialect coach, I'm mightily impressed by your mastery of L/R distinction and being able to say "sea" differentiated from "she." If these came to you naturally, that's very fortunate, but I suspect you've worked at it to very good effect. 素敵な発音！
Thank you for sharing. I will be pronouncing these brand names correctly for the next 5 minutes then I will slip back into old habits.
I once made a Music Video for the Japanese Rock Band "The Blue Hearts", when they were in the USA in about 1990. None of the band members spoke English but one of them said that because he was lazy in school, he had studied Spanish. I spoke some Spanish then (I speak a lot better now), so we were able to communicate. He proceeded to tell me (in Spanish) that Spanish was much easier for Japanese speakers because they do not need to learn new sounds and that Romanized Japanese words could be read as if they were Spanish, and visa versa. I guess he learned far more Spanish than the other band members had learned English. That is not lazy, it is effective. I see that as true aside from the Fact that Toyota would be Tóyota, and Pokémon just as it is written a Spanish speaker would pronounce it correctly. Yakult is very common in Mexico by the way, and I think Hitachi would be Hítachi, with accent over first "i" , but the H is nearly silent in Spanish. BTW in Grade school in the 1960s they told us that Esperanto would become the International Language. I noticed she pronounced it in the video Much like "Espelanto" which is also typical of many dialects of Spanish where the name "Enrique" is almost pronounced as "Enlique"
They literally tell you how to pronounce Pokémon in the word in English. Yet everyone seems to ignore the accent. At least the original VA for Ash in the English dub always said it correctly.
I love that you gave some background on the origin of each brand name - thank you!
Arigato it’s nice hearing the correct pronunciation of these companies.
This video made me realize how similar German vowels are to Japanese vowels. Our pronunciation of these brands definitely is closer to the original one than the English one
I tried saying "Twitter" to some Japanese people in many different ways, but they were so confused about what I was trying to say until I showed them the app on my phone. The Toyoda thing is a particular thing we do in American English. Often when a 't" is between certain vowels sounds, the sound changes to a blended - "d" sound; for example, better becomes "bedder", Twitter becomes "Twidder", water becomes "water", battle becomes "baddle"
American voiced tapped t sounds like tapped r to speakers of a lot of other languages. Better becomes berer, water becomes waaaarer, got to becomes gara and so on.
@@Sylkis89amazing! So they don't hear the consonant sound flap 'T' at all? To me as a native speaker of English the /d/sound really stands out even though I know apparently its not quite a full /d/ sound
@@kabedondon most dialects of English don't have a tapped r. I guess Scottish English has and some very old fashioned English people sometimes tap the r in some contexts. But I never heard USAmericans do that, but it's rather theatrical nowadays. USamericans always pronounce it either as a liquid r or as a rhoticised schwa vowel, depends on a context. Never tapped. At least to my knowledge. If someone does it's a dead giveaway it's an immigrant lol Also, mind the difference between tapped and trilled. Like in Spanish a single r is tapped, and double rr is trilled and it makes a phonemic difference. Also, other dialects of English usually don't have the American tapped t. It's actually unique to North American dialects, for the most part at least, cause surely you will be able to find instances of it in other dialects, but it's just very rare. You're more likely to come across glottal stops instead in other English speaking regions. Tapped r and tapped t don't sound exactly the same, physically it's a slightly different shape/position of the tongue, but are phonetically they are extremely similar to unstrained ears and it's an objective fact. They are very hard to distinguish when listening to a recording to most people who did not learn to be sensitive to the nuances when they're well accustomed to both sounds. Of course once you fo learn the difference your brain will pick up on the nuances and big them up in your head, create an illusion to make the distinction easier for you. And if whilst technical untrained you think they're not similar it's probably because your mind is already playing the same tricks on you by creating an illusion of tapped r sounding more like liquid r than it really does, and tapped t sounding more like regular d than it does. Which infact I say tapped t because I refer to the letter, but it's accually more of a tapped d phonetically and you do have a tapped d in American pronunciation as well and there's no difference in sound between them, just in spelling you write them dow differently and it may affect how you think about them that they're separate despite sounding the same. Which is probably why you associate tapped t with d - cause you do in some contexts tap both, but because you also voice the tapped t it makes those variants of t and d sound the same, but you still notice it's not exactly the same as a regular plosive d. But yeah if you ask for instance a Polish person to transcribe how they hear USAmerican accent with Polish orthography, if you give them a phrase like "We've got to move out" they will write down "łi gara muw ałt" (Polish ł sound like w in English and Polish w sounds like v in English lol). I know Spanish speakers also often think that water is pronounced warer and get confused when you tell them it's actually not lol but remember that they think of a different r than the liquid r USAmericans associate with this letter. Bonus fact. Japanese lateral r is technically a yet different sound physically but it's also very similar sounding to tapped r to untrained ears. But because it's lateral that's why it makes it difficult for many Japanese people to tell the difference between r and l lol and once they learn how to pronoucne American style liquid r they also pronounce l that way a lot of times and it takes some work for them to actually learn the nuances that neither English r not l sound like the Japanese r, that Japanese r is just something in between the two. It's kinda like if I pronoucned Polish sz and ś to you, you will probably hear both as sh and will have a hard time learning the difference lol
@@kabedondon when you learn a language's phonology, your brain makes perceptual adjustments whenever hearing speech, makes some approximations. Otherwise it would be impossible to communicate as everyone speaks a little differently, even the same person will speak less clearly when tired after jogging or drunk and so on yet you understand them. The same mechanism kicks in when you listen to a foreign language and your brain tries to apply approximations of your native langauges phonology and makes you misinterpret some things as a result and it is sometimes hard to learn to perceive it otherwise, learn to hear the nuances. For me a lot of English vowels still feel like they rhyme even if they don't for native speakers, despite me being able to easily tell the difference at this point and also pronounce them correctly the non-native feel towards them remains. Like in American English I'd say that 'matter' and 'butter' rhyme despite me being to easily tell that the a and the u are not pronoucned the same. They still feel simialr to me because we don't have so many vowels in Polish and the contrast between some English vowels would be just intonation in Polish perception.
@@Sylkis89 You could hear an 'r' instead of a 'd' in Southern accents, but not everyone in the States talks like that.
I think Mazda is also an interesting one: matsuda!
Even SUZUKI
@@rafaellucero5098 não cara, se vc acha que a pronúncia certa de _suzuki_ é _sudzuki_ , vc tá enganado. A pronúncia certa é exatamente igual a gente fala aqui mesmo What Karim Maassen said btw was news to me, I didn't no, but makes sence, because _matsuda_ is an actual japanese surname (tsu, not dzu)
I learned that after moving to Hiroshima 😂
@@99Gara99 "suzu (fast pronunciation) -ki"
As a kid who grew up in the US, that’s how my mom said it. Then realized it was a Japanese brand. 🙄
Being that im born and raised in hawaii and the islands have alot of japanese influence i also have 2 children half hawaiian half japanese thanks to their japanese grandmother they can speak 3 languages. But i also learned how to pronounce a few words i didnt know i was saying wrong. But one thing is for sure toyoda in hawaii is pronounce exactly that aloha
I pronounced most of those right. I pronounced yakult wrong partially because with that spelling I would never have guessed it was Japanese. I've only had it one time 15 years ago, but I thought it was a Middle Eastern or Indian brand and when I saw it on here I was shocked and had to check for myself.
Coming up next: 10,000 + English words that Asagi pronounces wrong.
snapped her up!
lmao...most likely hahaha!
Don't you mean Americans?
@@B-A-L I--- I'm not ready for this.
It is indeed incredible how many brands actually come from Japan AND how much influence Japanese art has on western culture.
I think opposite is true.
Ya the U.S. had more of a influence on Japan after WWII when we were helping rebuild there country.
Europe and America sure had some influences on life and art in Japan but one of the major differences between western influences on Japan and japanese influences on the west is that: Japan is and always was an assimilation culture. Meaning they apopt something and make it Japanese while wester culture tends to simply immitate. To get an idea I recommand to read Peter Schilling's "Encyclodepia of Japanese Pop Culture".
@@corneliusdobeneck4081 I'm not sure. There are many non-European things which were assimilated into Western culture. Take something like food in the States, you have everything from Chinese to Russian to French etc... even if much of the time it's been changed, eg pizza outside of Italy vs Italian pizza. I think there isn't a difference otherwise we have to ask... are Japanese different people to Europeans or everyone else? There is no basis for this in biology or sociology. Japanese are island people. But so are the British and Irish. So are the Taiwanese. Even the Swiss could be thought to be isolated as though Island people...
@@corneliusdobeneck4081 But I was even going to mention aspects of Asian dress which made it's way into European culture, food, music, algebra... etc... from East. Coffee is a good example. There is also tea. Westerners made these their own.... then Japan took from the West coffee and tea....
The thing with this video is a lot of people don't hear the difference because our minds block out sounds we aren't use to hearing. So to many people the "correct" way and the "wrong" way *sound exactly the same*
Thank you for a very interesting video. The word "Asics" brought me here. Because a friend of mine and I pronounce the word differently, I wanted to know which was the correct pronunciation. It turned out that none of us were correct. I didn't know that Asics was a Japanese brand, I just assumed it was American, so I have pronounced it as such. But now I know. Keep up the good work, don't let rude know- it- alls dim your light.
Good explanation! Once my friend said “I drive Super Roof” that’s what I heard. But it was Subaru😆
4:47 In Spanish we pronounce "uniculo", and this mean for the language "culo" is "ass", and today with this video I discover how to say this brand today, thanks.
In German you'd read "uniqlo" as "uni-klo" and "klo" means "toilet" in German. Calling it "unikuru", same as in Japanese, would make way more sense.
In Colorado, Toyota is such a loved brand of truck it is often pronounced 'Good' or 'Nice' as in 'Good Tundra', 'Nice Forerunner' etc....
I am so glad I found your channel.
My dad learned Esperanto in school in the UK in the 1960s. I feel like a lot of these mispronunciations stem from the fact that Roman alphabet languages often pronounce down to letter phonemes, whereas Japanese is based more around syllables as base units of sounds.
You sure it was Esperanto? The made up language devised in the late 19th century? Schools in Nottingham only taught latin, French and German in the 60s.
Yes, Nihongo (and Tagalog) are syllabic languages. Ta, Ka, Tse, Ba, and so on. Romance languages, Korean, Chinese, etc. are letter based. However, I also noticed that vowel pronunciations between Asian and Western languages are different too. Here in Asia, regardless if it is syllabic or letter-based, vowels are pronounced one way, like "a" is "ah" not "ey". So apple is "ah-pol" not "ey-pol", and so on. Many, if not all, Western languages have weird vowel pronunciations which in turn causes confusion when one tries to read Asian languages. For example, the Filipino food "taho" or "balut"/"balot". I've heard Western foreigners say it as "tey-ho" and "bey-lut" respectively. Another example is ASEAN. Asian pronunciations are: ah-syan and ah-si-yan. Westerners pronounce it as "ey-sea-an"; and without proper context, we can't understand it. 😅😅😅😅
1:00 In America we call it basketball, not basket, if you say basket to foreigners they'll think you're talking about actual baskets lol
I somehow forgot to say "ball" 🥴
@@AsagisLifeNoBSJapan a Japanese using "basket" to refer to "basketball" is actually prety common, so you're not exactly in the wrong either
except in France where basketball is called basket (and the shoo too^^)!
@@Burneth_ We all know that, I'm telling her that most know it as basketball lol
@@paulgrougnie7028 are you french my friend
I remember I felt a shock when I was watching american video about Nikon cameras for the first time many years ago. When he said Naikon I was like: "WHAT???!!! What did you say?" I rewinded to hear it again... and I didn't mishear.
So glad someone clarified the Nikon pronunciation.
So the main reason for Toyoda to the change to Toyota was the amount of strokes it takes to write it. Went from 10 to 8(8 being lucky prosperity number in Japan)