This is a snip from the “Hawaii Five-O” episode “FOB Honolulu,” in which McGarrett was previously wondering the meaning of a cryptic fragment of a mostly destroyed audiotape containing the single word “Zilma.”
So. . . is the writing in the pic any of the Japanese syllabaries, and if so, is it any approximation of the name of the ship?
Yes (the first four characters) and yes. Bu-ra-ja-lu Maru.
Says “Brazil Maru”, same as the English. Maru (丸) is very common as an ending for ship names. Think “Kobayashimaru” (小林丸) for another well known example.
Well, thanks. Three minutes!
Bu-ra-ji-ru Maru is more like it. The sound at the beginning of the 2nd and 4th syllables is the same, and the third syllable is ji (to mimic as closely as possible the zi from Brazil).
Note: to my ears (and pronouncing mouth) the same Japanese consonant that is used to transliterate both “r” and “l” sounds is somewhere around halfway between those two sounds as they appear in American English.
Well now that that’s been answered.
A Wo Fat episode. I remember that one, at least somewhat, after 55 years.
It’s funny: Sabrina Scharf has 29 acting credits, including three H5-0s and Easy Rider, but they use Miramanee for her thumbnail image. And they don’t use Harry Mudd for Roger Carmel’s. Go figure.
“they”? Which “they”?
Almost certainly IMDB.
100% certainly.
Good catch.
The only thing that would appear to be “incorrect” is that they are using Hiragana for what would normally be written in Katakana (ブラジル), as all foreign words (and country names) generally are. But it could be a stylistic choice by whoever put it there.
//i\\
Which would have been the Osaka Shosen KK line, her first operator, since she was a real ship and that’s an accurate picture of her hull name.
The wiki article includes a picture of her in 1955 with exactly the same hiragana name on her bow.
Yeah, it’s a stylistic choice and this is a typical situation where hiragana is being used instead of katakana.
One reason is that this is being used as the name of a ship instead of talking about the country. They could have chosen katakana for the name, but went with hiragana instead. For referring to the country, you never see hiragana used, outside of children’s books.
Another factor may be that the original Burajiru Maru was completed in the late 1930s and there was a movement to reduce katakana words as many loan words from English were being discouraged.
The Japanese wiki has the original Burajiru Maru as an Argentina class (as designated by the Japanese shipbuilder) and Argentina is also written in hiragana.
Now do the first ten seconds of this!
You were probably joking, with how bad the sound quality is. All I can get from that is “houmen ni mukatte” at the end “heading towards …”. This reddit thread claims it is from a Godzilla toy.
I was genuinely curious — and, thanks!
Nitpick: Japanese merchantmen to be specific. AFAIK is is all of them but I don’t know for sure. The word means circle, and it’s hope for a round trip.