In fact, when I was in Japan, one of my bosses, who was from Hiroshima himself, pronounced it in a way I could equally well have transliterated as hirohima and shiroshima. (And maybe also with thar soft palate noise represented by ch in German–“chirochima”.) I actually thought he had a speech impediment. I was ignorant! I later heard sinilar pronounciations of hi and shi on TV so I now think its dialectical.
re: “ka-mee” vs “commie”
I see. I have a problem with my accent. Not buying it. Maybe your explanation isn’t quite as lucid as you think, but I don’t know anyone who wouldn’t pronounce “commie” as “ka-mee.” Even folks with an “accent.” Now, maybe you’re addressing the second syllable. If that’s the case, then maybe try to represent the short i sounds as ih. Ka - mih ka - zeh. That’s at least different than ka-mee ka-zee, which one hears a lot and is clearly not authentic.
Do you pronounce “cat” differently from “cot”?
If not, then it is certainly your accent that is the problem here. I can assure you that, for me too, the a in “kamikaze” is quite different from the o in “commie”.
Wouldn’t the stereotypical New York accent (or is it Boston?) pronounce them differently? I don’t know IPA but… commie would be pronounced, to my ear, almost like “kwahmmie” and kami would not.
Quick fun quiz. Indicate which words from this list have the same first vowel sound as the first vowel sound in kamikaze.
Camshaft
Cat
Commie
Dog
Cane
Camera
Car
Kevlar
For me, the answers are: commie, dog and car. (I am from DFW but am often told I “speak without an accent”. I think the DFW area has a lot of midwest accent speakers.)
No, with Matsushita, the ‘i’ is elided, prouncing it as “Matsushta”.
There are other elisions or whatever you call them, such as “Matsuda” being pronounced “Mazda”. Here we see the ‘u’ elided, but also the “ts” morphed into a ‘z’, which doesn’t happen for lots of other ‘ts’ cases.
In any case, “shinpai suru na”. I probably spelled that wrong.
Bad example, but correct in principle.
The example is bad because the a in “cat” doesn’t sound like the a in “kah”, where the a sounds like the “o” in “cot”, for most American accents.
However, some Brit accents would pronounce “commie” and “kah-mee” differently. Most Americans wouldn’t.
Still, “shinpai suru na.”
No way does “dog” qualify, to anyone with a broadcast US or midwest accent.
It is without a doubt the same vowel sound in my accent. Not sure what the name of my accent is. Like I said, I’m from DFW, and am often told I speak “without an accent” (both by DFW people and by people in California and by people here in Indianapolis).
The sound, in my accent, is ⟨ɑ⟩ for all three words.
Only car. And I say that more like cah.
Agreed, except the vowel in the second syllable, in American English, is a short “i”, like hit. Definitely a long “e” for the last syllable. See, e.g., Merriam-Webster and MacMillan. As for the first syllable, to my ear, more the broad “a” of father than the short “o” of cot, but that’s a narrow distinction and perhaps not universal. To emphasize, this is the generally-accepted American English pronunciation. I defer to others as to the correct Japanese pronunciation. And have no basis for an opinion about the British English one.
The term kamikaze was used by the Japanese, but only as the name of the naval suicide attack unit (the “Kamikaze Special Attack Group”), not as a general term. So, for example, it did not apply to Japanese army air force suicide attack groups.
Re: the pronunciation of Matsushita.
The high vowel devoicing rule says that the high vowels i and u are devoiced:
- between two voiceless consonants (p, t, k, s, sh, ch, h, f, ts)
- between a voiceless consonant and a pause
(good thing I kept my Japanese linguistics notes!)
Oh good! Now untangle the mysteries of rendaku!
Do not try to untangle the mysteries of rendaku. You will go mad
It is dialectal. Lots of people with an authentic Osaka accent can’t pronounce “shi” and pronounce it the same as “hi”. For example 7 is “hichi”.
I recently saw a pawn shop sign in Daikokucho with an incorrect spelling based on that accent feature… they had actually written ひ instead of し.
As for names like “Matsushita”, I don’t think you’ll hear a “tsu” in there. More like “matchta-san”. Having said that, my experience in the workplace is that names are normally spoken so fast that the whole middle part of the name is elided. Kawahara-san sounds like “karasa”. Shirotsu-san sounds like “shossa”. To me, anyway.
This is dialectal. Tokyo is the opposite, with Edo-kko people saying “shi” for “hi.”
I worked with a lot of people from Matsushita and they would all say “Matsushta” with a “u” not no “i.”