Re-Learning English Pronunciation

One odd thing about learning Japanese is getting used to revised versions of words from your native language. The Japanese import a lot of words from English, but they aren’t always rendered with 100% phonetic accuracy due to limitations of the katakana sound system. Also, the longer a word has been in use, the more it will likely have changed into some unrecognizable form, like ramune, the famous lemon-lime drink which got its name from lemonade. The Japanese often use English words for happy, positive concepts, and one word they like is “healthy”…however since it’s pronounced herushii, it took quite a while for my brain to get used to it. Another phrase that sounded weird at first is “thank you,” pronounced san kyu, or the word “sexy,” rendered as sekushii. A fairly common way to say “don’t worry about it” is don-mai (DOHN-mai), which started out as “don’t mind” back in the Showa Period, and if you want to surprise a Japanese person, try using this word with them. The most elementary English word of them all, the definite article “the,” is yet another example of pronunciation that must be re-learned, and making one’s brain accept za as correct was not easy. Of course, sometimes these “English” words sound strange because they’re not English at all, like the word “theme” which comes out like teh-mah in Japanese, since it was imported from German (thema).

“Za Sale” is an advertising word thrown around a lot in Japan.