# Tom Lehrer's "The Elements" in Japanese ... if you please! **URL:** \ **Category:** Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share\ **Created:** [May 25, 2013, 7:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tom-lehrers-the-elements-in-japanese-if-you-please/659335 "2013-05-25T19:34:17Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 11\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![astro](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/9dc877/32.png) [@astro](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/astro)\ **Post date:** [May 25, 2013, 7:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tom-lehrers-the-elements-in-japanese-if-you-please/659335/1 "2013-05-25T19:34:17Z")
[元素 (The Elements song in Japanese) - YouTube](https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=ljsUVDOcYB0#)! ---
**Author:** ![BMalion](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/e274bd/32.png) [@BMalion](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BMalion)\ **Post date:** [May 25, 2013, 11:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tom-lehrers-the-elements-in-japanese-if-you-please/659335/2 "2013-05-25T23:40:34Z")
Wow. ---
**Author:** ![Dervorin](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/eb8c5e/32.png) [@Dervorin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dervorin)\ **Post date:** [May 26, 2013, 8:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tom-lehrers-the-elements-in-japanese-if-you-please/659335/3 "2013-05-26T20:27:20Z")
I… wow… Um. That’s simultaneously amazing and weird, in equal quantities. I tried to sing along (singing The Elements being one of my party tricks) but the rhythm is all wrong. Also, why is the girl above doing most of the singing? Feels like the lower girl is just a head-shaking filler with a half a dozen elements to sing. Slacker. ---
**Author:** ![ducati](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/cc9497/32.png) [@ducati](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ducati)\ **Post date:** [May 28, 2013, 3:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tom-lehrers-the-elements-in-japanese-if-you-please/659335/4 "2013-05-28T15:29:03Z")
Wow is right. I have a stoopid question now. Not being as cunning a linguist as I thought, why are the names/pronunciations different in Japanese? Obviously different languages have different words for most things, but often when they encounter a “foreign” word, they just use that word to keep or convey its meaning. I can just remember watching Japanese news, and hearing "blah, blah, blah, George Bush, blah blah, or yada, yada Boeing 767 yada yada. It seems that names or unique words are special, and the convention is to leave them in their natural state, as it were. Why, then have different pronunciations - names, even - for elements. I realize they’re not OUR elements, but 1) the scientific community uses English as a standard language (i thought), and 2) Cadmium is Cadmium. Californium is Californium. I did catch a couple of recognizable terms; thorium, for example, was familiar, although with an obvious Japanese accent. Come fight my ignorance with some Nipponese language conventions. Domo Arrigto! ---
**Author:** ![kopek](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kopek/32/337_2.png) [@kopek](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kopek)\ **Post date:** [May 28, 2013, 6:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tom-lehrers-the-elements-in-japanese-if-you-please/659335/5 "2013-05-28T18:03:22Z")
OK - now THAT beats “Bonanza” in Japanese by leaps and bounds. ---
**Author:** ![Dervorin](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/eb8c5e/32.png) [@Dervorin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dervorin)\ **Post date:** [May 29, 2013, 10:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tom-lehrers-the-elements-in-japanese-if-you-please/659335/6 "2013-05-29T10:43:23Z")
> [@ducati](#): > > Wow is right. > > I have a stoopid question now. > > Not being as cunning a linguist as I thought, why are the names/pronunciations different in Japanese? Obviously different languages have different words for most things, but often when they encounter a “foreign” word, they just use that word to keep or convey its meaning. I can just remember watching Japanese news, and hearing "blah, blah, blah, George Bush, blah blah, or yada, yada Boeing 767 yada yada. > > It seems that names or unique words are special, and the convention is to leave them in their natural state, as it were. > > Why, then have different pronunciations - names, even - for elements. I realize they’re not OUR elements, but 1) the scientific community uses English as a standard language (i thought), and 2) Cadmium is Cadmium. Californium is Californium. > > I did catch a couple of recognizable terms; thorium, for example, was familiar, although with an obvious Japanese accent. > > Come fight my ignorance with some Nipponese language conventions. > > Domo Arrigto! It’s not just Japanese. Many elements have been known from antiquity, and have names in a lot of languages - iron, copper, tin, sulphur, gold, silver. Do you want to replace all those in all languages with the English name? Even the Periodic Table acknowledges a lot of these in the symbols of the elements - Ag for gold, Sn for tin, W for tungsten. I think a bit of linguistic diversity does no one any harm, especially in a social or casual context. And note that all modern elements have the English name in all languages - I don’t think Californium is called anything else in any language anywhere. ---
**Author:** ![TokyoBayer](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tokyobayer/32/13989_2.png) [@TokyoBayer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TokyoBayer)\ **Post date:** [May 29, 2013, 3:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tom-lehrers-the-elements-in-japanese-if-you-please/659335/7 "2013-05-29T15:40:50Z")
The girls are half Japanese, as can see seen in their features and also as evidenced by their Western names, Angelina and Jennifer. In the comments, they are identified as daughters of a European musician and his Japanese wife. The comments in Japanese are pretty brutal. Jennifer’s lack of participation is noticed on that side of the Pond as well. ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [May 29, 2013, 3:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tom-lehrers-the-elements-in-japanese-if-you-please/659335/8 "2013-05-29T15:53:37Z")
I expect that several of the names would be difficult for a Japanese-speaker to pronounce, too. Japanese words generally don’t have any consonants adjacent to each other, nor end words with consonants (other than n). Doing so is probably similarly difficult to a Japanese speaker as, say, words starting with an M and another consonant are for English speakers. ---
**Author:** ![N9IWP](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/n9iwp/32/3154_2.png) [@N9IWP](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/N9IWP)\ **Post date:** [May 29, 2013, 4:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tom-lehrers-the-elements-in-japanese-if-you-please/659335/9 "2013-05-29T16:56:06Z")
And here is the moons of the solar system to the same tune: > **[Friday fun: Every moon in the solar system in an homage to Tom Lehrer](https://www.planetary.org/articles/05240651-every-moon-hope-johnson)** > > A girl named Hope Johnson performing an homage to Tom Lehrer's Brian ---
**Author:** ![Sleel](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/73ab20/32.png) [@Sleel](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sleel)\ **Post date:** [June 1, 2013, 3:41am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tom-lehrers-the-elements-in-japanese-if-you-please/659335/10 "2013-06-01T03:41:57Z")
> [@Dervorin](#): > > It’s not just Japanese. Many elements have been known from antiquity, and have names in a lot of languages - iron, copper, tin, sulphur, gold, silver. Do you want to replace all those in all languages with the English name? Even the Periodic Table acknowledges a lot of these in the symbols of the elements - Ag for gold, Sn for tin, W for tungsten. I think a bit of linguistic diversity does no one any harm, especially in a social or casual context. And note that all modern elements have the English name in all languages - I don’t think Californium is called anything else in any language anywhere. Ag is silver, “_argentum_.” You’re thinking of gold, Au from “_aurum_.” Japanese had native terms for most of the same elements Europeans had known from antiquity. They have a few original terms for alloys not widely used in Europe, if they were even known at all in the past. _Shakudô_ and _shibuichi_ are the names for a gold-copper alloy and a silver-copper alloy, respectively, which were used in decorative metal fittings, especially for swords. For scientific purposes, during the massive importation of knowledge from the outside world in the Meiji era, they adopted the Latinate name even for ones they had a name for already. Kalium, for example is the medieval Latin name for a substance refined from pot-ash, which was later back-Latinized into “potassium” in English; Japanese uses the original Latin name which corresponds to the periodic table symbol. Even in English the element names are a mixed bag, as you can see from that example. ---
**Author:** ![Dervorin](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/eb8c5e/32.png) [@Dervorin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dervorin)\ **Post date:** [June 13, 2013, 10:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tom-lehrers-the-elements-in-japanese-if-you-please/659335/11 "2013-06-13T22:36:05Z")
> [@Sleel](#): > > Ag is silver, “_argentum_.” You’re thinking of gold, Au from “_aurum_.” :smack: I knew that. Thanks for catching the mistake. Just wasn’t thinking very clearly when posting, obviously!