The proper spelling of the convenience store name is 7-eleven. I cringe when I see it spelled 7-11.
Some people insist on mispronouncing mischievous as miss-CHEE-vee-us!!! This is not a pronunciation found in ANY dictionary! There is NO I after the V!!! arghh!! Get off my lawn!!!
The bird, with h – as opposed to the sometimes-aggrieved rural toiler, without – scary?? Does your friend suffer from a rarely-met-with phobia?
More typically, 7-Eleven with a capital “E,” although if you’re trying to ape the sign, it’d be 7-ELEVEN, though that last “N” is stylized as a lowercase “n” that has its height adjusted to be as tall as the other uppercase characters.
Just saw a whole episode of Bob’s Burgers centered around finding a hidden netsuke. The character Linda pronounces it variously:
netflixy
nutsky
netsadoodle
netslinky
napster
nescafé
To my ears, “ne tsu kay” (根付) is correct. “tsu” is pronounced like ‘sue’ as there is no ‘net’ or ‘ski’ in the Japanese consonants.
nah, knee, nu, nay, no
na, ni, nu ne, no
sa, she, sue, say, sew
sa, shi, su, se, so
ca (like Boston car), key, coo (like zoo), kay, co (as is co[ve])
ka, ki, ku, ke, ko
To my ears, with a quick Google search for “netsuke Japanese pronunciation”, the first pronunciation of the first video and pronunciation are correct.
The word ‘suki’ すき (like) sounds like “ski” but are not the characters used in netsuke (根付)
SIGH Japanese is so complex!
It’s like a variation of defining art for me. I don’t understand it, but I know what it’s supposed to sound like. 
Huh? Of course there is no “i” as in “ski” or “ay” as in “kay”. The official roman spelling (why do you say it is complex?) is ne-tsu-ke, both e’s being the same mid front unrounded vowel, and “tsu” is not pronounded like “sue”, there is a definite “ts” affricate to it.
Perhaps “net-ské” is a basic approximation.
OED is giving two pronunciations, neither of which are net su kay. Same as with this one. NHK doesn’t either.
I used ‘sue’ as the closest approximation to the “ts” sound in “tsu” as it doesn’t exist in English. Argghh…I’m guilty of simplifying the pronunciation! :eek:
What I’m saying is complex is translating romanized Japanese (or any Asian language) into something that is closer to the actual pronunciation of the word. I’m fine with “net-ske”, but not “net-ski”.
I may have posted this before, but here’s a great video of native Koreans trying to read/pronounce romanized Hangul: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SuQEDKZpKsg
The first video is the first one I referred to in my Google search link. I was wrong, she says “ne tsu ke” as the second, not the first pronunciation. And I hear ne tsu ke in the NHK link you provided.
It’s like backwards masking and hearing “ghost sounds” or the “yanny vs. laurel” video that was making the rounds. Once we hear something one way, it’s hard to hear it another way. I hear “su ke” as “ski”, even though I know there’s no “ski” sound in Japanese.
There’s a Korean song that’s been driving me crazy for almost two years now. Even though I know they’re singing “bul” (fire), like bulgogi, and I’ve had the lyrics professionally translated to English, I still hear "pul’ (grass) in certain parts of the chorus. Which doesn’t make sense in the context of the song and isn’t part of the lyrics. I know that in Korean “B” has a “BP” sound, Busan/Pusan, but I hear “bul” clearly sometimes and “pul” clearly at other times in the chorus!