First noticed this while watching Best Motoring videos. Yesterday I was wathcing this video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4J49UdSNj5c
Notice at 1:20 the commentator says “Franku Shamrocku”.
Why is that?
A friend of mine who visits Japan regularly on business told me that it’s because consonant sounds not followed by a vowel sound are exceptionally rare or absent (I forget which) in Japanese speech.
Japanese is built of syllables, almost all of which end in a vowel. Thus, when trying to say consonant clusters and syllable-final consonants, the Japanese insert a lot of vowels.
For instamce. McDonalds (‘mik don aldz’) comes out sounding something like ‘ma ku do na la du’.
It’s because the Japanese language has a different set of rules for Phonotactics than English does. Japanese has a much shorter list of syllable-ending phones than English does. K is not a permissible end phone but U is, thus the addition of U after an ending K in a foreign word.
English also has a different set of rules than that of Vietnamese. In Vietnamese it’s permissible to have the NG sound start a syllable, which is something not found in English. When you hear most English speakers say the Vietnamese surname Nguyễn, they’ll usually pronounce it like the name Gwen or the word win. That’s far different, really, to a Vietnamese speaker for two reasons: (1) lack of the initial velar nasal, and (2) lack of the ngã tone.
Or for that matter, beisoboru (baseball).
Isn’t “n” the only consonant that can be used by itself, without a vowel attached?
Yeah, that or “m,” but it’s the same character in Japanese: ん
The hiragana “ん” represents the “n” sound, although it sometimes takes on other sounds depending on what what if comes before or after. Most men, when speaking, don’t pronounce the final “u” (or they pronounce it only slightly) after and “s”, so it often seems that that the “s” sound can stand alone. Women, otoh, do pronounce it.
Men: Ohayo gozaymas(u)
Women: Ohayo gozaymasu
One other point is that the “u” sound in Japanese is often elided or de-empnasized, which is why that vowel is used for foreign words. The added vowel sound would be much more obvious if it were an “a” or “o”, for example.
On preview, beaten to it by Mr. Mace.
Roddy
Thank you guys for the quick responses 
BTW, if you want to understand why Japanese pronounce English words a certain way, try to write them out in Kana. Katakana is what is used for foreign words.
For instance, a Japanese person might wonder why Barack Obama is called “Black Obama”. Black, in Kana would be:
バ ラ ク
pronounced: Ba-ra-ku, which is how Barack would be pronounced, too.
Hey, thanks. I’ve wondered about this myself.
Ah…no.
Similar, but no. In Japanese, it’s bu-ra-ku not ba-ra-ku (the word, black.)