In the episode of Happy Days in which Arnold gets married, he has Fonzie read an announcement in Japanese, which he has written down in English phonetics so Fonzie can read it:
*Kono tabe wa.
Arnold - o Momo-no.
Kame kite NE kudasai.
Koto o ni, arigato,
Kosai masu. *
Now what I would like to see is the way this would be written in formal Japanese, and a word-for-word literal translation.
(Arnold and Mom are the groom’s and bride’s names, of course; kudasai and arigatomean respectively, I think, “please” and “thank you.”
Thanks very much.
Kono tabi wa.
Arnold wo Momo no kame kitte ne kudasai.
Koto wo ni, arigato gozaimasu.
Japanese is a strongly phonetic language, so there’s almost no differences. The two real changes tabi -> tabe and gozaimasu -> kozaimasu don’t seem like they would make anything easier for a foreigner to pronounce. Maybe the standards of romanization have changed between when the show was made and now? (wo is pronounced o)
Having the “ne” between “kitte” and “kudasai” is also a bit strange. It wouldn’t be in a formal statement at all and usually it would be at the end of the sentence. One presumes that this was the transliteration of a slightly older woman, who likes to add “ne” for no reason.
Anyways, the literal translation is something like:
This journey (we had).
Arnold, Momo’s hair cut ! please.
Such and forth, thank you.
I found some mistakes I made, by playing back the recording I made off the episode. The correct announcement reads: Kuna Sama kono tabi wa.
Arnold-o Momo-no.
Kamei ne kiti kudasai.
Koto o ni arigato
Gozaimasu.
At least, that’s as close to correct Japanese as Henry Winkler got.
I believe Pat Morita “Arnold” as a Japanese speaker but not sure how much. Anyone know? found this article fascinating: http://seinenkai.com/art-morita.html
