https://www.fantasyflightgames.com/en/news/2018/7/17/a-most-distinguished-guide/

I've been saying Bayushi and Akodo wrong for like 14 years ?

That's pretty much how I'd been pronouncing them all. From what I can see they are going with a strict Japanese pronunciation for everything where they can.

Oh noes!

This is just going to heat up the debate about Schmoozies' use of the oo being better than Manchu's use of the u

#schmanchunichi

I was surprised to find Kachiko is pronounced like "CATCH-koh", with that "i" almost being not pronounced at all. For the longest time, while playing the CCG, I pronounced it "kah-CHEEK-koh". One of the writers speaks Japanese and has been helpful in ensuring we get the pronunciations reasonably correct.

years ago I had a Japanese speaker in my rpg group and he was playing an investigator. And that family should be pronounced KITS-key.

8 minutes ago, DGLaderoute said:

I was surprised to find Kachiko is pronounced like "CATCH-koh", with that "i" almost being not pronounced at all. For the longest time, while playing the CCG, I pronounced it "kah-CHEEK-koh". One of the writers speaks Japanese and has been helpful in ensuring we get the pronunciations reasonably correct.

I've always followed the rough rule that you should end each sound with a vowel, but that's just how I was taught basic pronunciation.

Personally i'm still uncertain on how to pronounce "shugenja"

i've been hearing some podcast adopting SHEE-GEN-JAH

and that still sounds wrong to me

Shoe (as in the footwear)-gen(as in ken)-gah(as in gambit). Thats how I and my entire group pronounces it.

Ive been pronouncing hitoshi wrong. I use to pronounce the Hi par as he

1 hour ago, Schmoozies said:

I've always followed the rough rule that you should end each sound with a vowel, but that's just how I was taught basic pronunciation.

I believe the only thing in Japanese that would break that rule is the "N" sounds in names like Ren, Kenshin or Shugenja. Japanese is a collection of syllables than end in a vowel sound or are entirely a vowel sound though also they can append the "N" sound. The confusion comes in because we are romanticizing a language that doesn't actually use our alphabet. Each syllable is it's own character in Japanese. So you'd break the previous names up like this Re-N, Ke-N-Shi-N, Shu-Ge-N-Ja. The nice thing is those syllables themselves are always pronounced the same exact way. We don't have that luxury in the English language unfortunately I think the important thing also to understand is Japanese do not stress these syllables like we do in English. Each syllable has the same stress as any other. That I think is what causes issue with for example the way DGL was pronouncing Kachiko.

My understanding as a non-native speaker is Shugenja would be Shu (SHOE) - GeN (GEN with a G as in the word GUY) - Ja (JAH with a J as in the word JAY)

I just noticed i typed -gah (as in gambit). I meant jah (with the a sounding as it does in gambit, as ooposed to the a from age)

1 hour ago, phillos said:

I believe the only thing in Japanese that would break that rule is the "N" sounds in names like Ren, Kenshin or Shugenja.

That's basically true. The semi-exception is that there's a mark in Japanese that means you sort of sit on the initial consonant of a syllable for twice as long; a word like "hyakki" therefore looks as if the first syllable ends with a K, but it doesn't. (The way it's written is actually "hya-(tsu)-ki," where the "tsu" is written smaller than usual, but it isn't pronounced "tsu.")

The vowel thing with Kachiko: it breaks down to kah-chee-koh, but there are circumstances where you kind of swallow the vowel, and this is one of them. But you won't be wildly wrong if you pronounce all the vowels, and following that rule is likely to lead you closer to the real pronunciation than the Anglophone tendency to pick and choose which ones get said and how. ?

The only thing in the OP that makes me go "buh???" is Sugi being "soo-jee." It should be soo-gee -- G is always hard in Japanese, and the "soft g" is represented with J.

28 minutes ago, Kinzen said:

The only thing in the OP that makes me go "buh???" is Sugi being "soo-jee." It should be soo-gee -- G is always hard in Japanese, and the "soft g" is represented with J.

I agree that seemed weird to me when I read it over, but I let it go because I thought there was something there that I was missing.

In Spain, we don’t have different pronunciations for the same syllables. There’s just one correct pronunciation, so everything sounds as you read it.

And everybody applied that rule here with L5R. So we get a lot of names wrong. And we knew. But we don’t care. ?

3 hours ago, phillos said:

Each syllable is it's own character in Japanese. So you'd break the previous names up like this Re-N, Ke-N-Shi-N, Shu-Ge-N-Ja. The nice thing is those syllables themselves are always pronounced the same exact way.

This is not, strictly speaking, true. The <n> in these words is not really its own syllable (though it is its own mora) and is pronounced differently depending on what follows:

• In <Ren> and at the end of <Kenshin>, where <n> precedes a pause, it's pronounced as a uvular nasal or it isn't pronounced at all.
• In the middle of <Kenshin>, it's pronounced as a nasalized vowel .
• In <Shugenja>, it's pronounced as a palatal nasal.

3 hours ago, phillos said:

I think the important thing also to understand is Japanese do not stress these syllables like we do in English. Each syllable has the same stress as any other. 

Japanese has something called pitch accent instead of a stress accent, where different syllables (or morae) have different tones. It's different, but it more or less achieves the same thing.

1 hour ago, Kinzen said:

That's basically true. The semi-exception is that there's a mark in Japanese that means you sort of sit on the initial consonant of a syllable for twice as long; a word like "hyakki" therefore looks as if the first syllable ends with a K, but it doesn't. (The way it's written is actually "hya-(tsu)-ki," where the "tsu" is written smaller than usual, but it isn't pronounced "tsu.")

There is sort of a k at the end of the first syllable. This sort of thing is called consonant gemination: you have the same consonant on both sides of a syllable boundary. Hence, hyakki would be syllabified hyak.ki . This is realized phonetically as a longer closure before the k is released.

1 hour ago, Kinzen said:

The vowel thing with Kachiko: it breaks down to kah-chee-koh, but there are circumstances where you kind of swallow the vowel, and this is one of them.

The vowel-swallowing is called vowel devoicing, which is somewhat similar to whispering. It happens when vowels are at the ends of words or between two voiceless consonants, unless the vowel is accented (i.e. stressed), among other restrictions. The "ee" in Kachiko is devoiced because it's sandwiched between voiceless ch and k and is not accented.

I'm a little confused at the suggested pronunciation for Sugi myself.

2 hours ago, Tabris2k said:

In Spain, we don’t have different pronunciations for the same syllables. There’s just one correct pronunciation, so everything sounds as you read it.

And everybody applied that rule here with L5R. So we get a lot of names wrong. And we knew. But we don’t care. ?

Spanish pronunciation is actually quite close to Japanese, at least in the vowels. There's a reason why I and every other person I know who went from studying Spanish to studying Japanese continaully mashed the two together by accident. >_<

8 hours ago, DGLaderoute said:

I was surprised to find Kachiko is pronounced like "CATCH-koh", with that "i" almost being not pronounced at all.

The hard "k" following on the "ch" creates an aspiration, which is transliterated as short "i" as in English "sit". You can just barely hear it, but it's definitely there - as opposed to not pronouncing it, which sounds like the name of an extermination company: Catch Co.

17 hours ago, Wugs said:

This sort of thing is called consonant gemination

I was keeping the explanations non-technical. ?

22 hours ago, Tonbo Karasu said:

years ago I had a Japanese speaker in my rpg group and he was playing an investigator. And that family should be pronounced KITS-key.

Same for Yasuki.

Other than Sugi, which has me rasing an eyebrow, that's how I've been pronouncing it.

But I do have an advantage being Portuguese, as our pronounciation is very close to Japanese.

On 7/17/2018 at 12:46 PM, DGLaderoute said:

I was surprised to find Kachiko is pronounced like "CATCH-koh", with that "i" almost being not pronounced at all. For the longest time, while playing the CCG, I pronounced it "kah-CHEEK-koh". One of the writers speaks Japanese and has been helpful in ensuring we get the pronunciations reasonably correct.

I remember I originally pronounced it kah-CHEEK-koh as well. Then I went to the Y2C (Your 2000th Card) celebration in LA where AEG held a mini-con and heard one of teh story or design people clarify the proper pronunciation. After that, I tried to pay closer attention to the proper phonetic pronunciation of all of the names in the game.

I still fondly remember people pronouncing it "Hentai."