Oddly Pronounced English Words in Japanese

As a native English speaker, it’s nice that there are so many English loan words in use in Japanese, though in practice a lot of these words aren’t always rendered with 100% phonetic accuracy due to limitations of the katakana sound system. The Japanese often use English words for happy, positive concepts, and one word they like is “healthy”…however since it’s pronounced ヘルシー herushii, it took quite a while for my brain to get used to it. The other day I was watching a news report that mentioned a government “think tank,” but for phonetic reasons this word came out as “sink tank,” made my brain want to rebel. The most elementary English word of them all, the definite article “the,” is yet another example of pronunciation that must be re-learned, since it comes out as ザ za when the Japanese use it. Some other English words that come out oddly when rendered in Japanese include tune, steam, etiquette and artist, which are pronounced chune, su-cheemu, echi-ketto and ah-chist. There’s also the English phrase “thank you,” which for reasons of pronunciation always comes out as san kyu in Japanese. Since this sounds like the numbers 3 and 9, it’s common for March 9th to be designated a day of “thanks” by some companies, including the creators of Hatsune Miku.

And don’t even get me started on “Tirol” chocolates, pronounced chi-ROH-ru.