I’m not asking why people don’t pronounce the word the “correct” (or at least Japanese) way, but I’m very confused as to why it’s “ka-ree-oh-kee” instead of, say, “ka-ra-oak.”
Off the top of my head, I can’t think of another word in the English language that pronounces the letter A as a long E, so why is karaoke pronounced the way it is?
I’m not sure it’s actually the spelling so much as ‘it sounds better’.
Hara-Kiri (Harry Carry), and Kamikaze (Kama Kazee) get the same treatment - I’m sure there are examples from languages other than Japanese, but I can’t think of them at the moment.
I think the English speakers are trying to get as close as they can to the Japanese pronunciation.
Which isn’t very close, but at least it’s a start.
It’s a Japanese word, and every vowel gets its own syllable. Also, in Japanese, every syllable ends with a vowel or an “n.” There’s no such thing as a “silent e” in English transliterations of Japansese. Hence in “karaoke” we have four syllables, “ka,” “ra,” “o,” and “ke.” The “ra” syllable is unaccented and followed by the syllable with the primary accent (“o”). English speakers naturally make it into a half-long “E” sound because it rolls off the tongue most easily that way.
How natural is this conversion of ‘a’ to ‘e’? The only other polysyllabic “ao” word that comes to mind is Maori, and AFAIK, that doesn’t get the ‘e’ treatment. Neither do the monosyllabic ‘ao’ words - tao, Mao (the general with the chicken, IIRC) - that I can think of.
I will admit that it does roll off the tongue (marginally) better than a more correct pronunciation would, but the fact that, AFAIK, it is a pronunciation that is wholly unsupported by English phonetics, it still confuses the heck out of me. Even if it is easier to say, what genius looked at the word and decided to pronounce it that way?
Maybe it wasn’t the fact that someone LOOKED at the word and decided to pronounce it as ka-ree-oh-kee, but rather they HEARD the word and their brain interpreted the sounds that way.
I’ve seen this phenomenon a lot over here. Can’t think of any examples off the top of my head, though 
“Judaism.”
I’ve heard that, as karate means empty hand, karaoke means empty orchestra. Is it true?
AskNott:
From the Merriam-Webster online dictionary (bolding mine):
Perhaps you’re thinking too hard about this?
In tao and Mao, the syllable with the “a” is accented, which makes all the difference in the world. No comparison.
Try saying “ka-ra-O-ke” really fast while maintaining a very clear stress on the “O.” If you let the “ra” deteriorate into “ri” (pronounced as a half-long English E like the y in hungry, not a full long E like in agree), I think it rolls off the tongue a lot easier. This sloppiness in pronunciation is a natural human trait-- unaccented syllables get dropped or modified to facilitate smoothness in speaking quickly.
Okay, but you really prove nothing by telling a Japanese kid to pronounce the word the Japanese way. 
Gary T, not to call your credentials into question (since you didn’t offer any), but a friend of mine from Tokyo once decided to teach me to pronounce karaoke the correct way, and his instructions included stess on the “ra” syllable, the very one you said was unaccented. I’ll grant you that we were both pretty well under the influence of alcohol at the time, but can you, by any chance, provide a pronunciation cite?
Technically, there are no accents in Japanese; every syllable should have the same amount of stress (although the tone may change).
Maybe that’s why “foreigners” (ie non-Japanese) have trouble pronouncing some words…because we want to stress some syllables over others. Just a WAG.
Tsubaki: Technically there are accented syllable in Japanese, just not all that many. Compare the different meanings for “hashi” as an example.
I haven’t been discussing how it is pronounced in Japanese. It wouldn’t surpise me if it’s different from English renditions. I mentioned some features of Japanese relative to syllables–for example “-oke” is two syllables, and not to be pronounced like the English “poke.”
For how karaoke is pronounced in English, any up-to-date dictionary should do, such as the one Monty cited.
My main point is, given that the English pronunciation (at least in the U.S.) has primary stress on the “o” syllable and no stress on the preceding “ra” syllable, that preceding syllable gets overshadowed and is vulnerable to being altered somehow–in this case the vowel quality mutating to one that makes the transition to the “o” more fluidly.
I’m surprised that nobody has mentioned this before – It seems clear to me that our pronunciation of Karaoke has been influenced (polluted?) by our knowledge of the word Carioka =
Car·i·o·ca Pronunciation Key (kr-k)
n.
A native or inhabitant of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.
carioca
A dance similar to the samba.
The music for this dance.
(from this source: http://www.dictionary.com/search?q=carioca )
It’s not unusual for foreign words to be transformed by association with other words already in the language (even when they’re foreign words themselves!)
I might be showing my narrow range of literary readings here, but I’ve never seen that word in my life. Then again, I pronounce karaoke the “proper” way, so maybe you are on to something. 
Anyway, to recap, we have Americans pronouncing a word in a way that is totally unsupported by any rules of pronunciation and phonetics because, apparently, American mouths are lazy.
And this is from the country that creates words like antidisestablishmentarianism? 
A-HA! I was waiting for someone to say this!
I would say that its more a question of tone than accent. Its not that they are saying one syllable more strongly than the other, but that one syllable has a higher pitch than the other.
That’s what I’ve always been taught in my 11 years of Japanese study, anyway
Next guy I hear pronouncing “sashimi” as “shushimi” gets a plug of wasabi stuffed up his nose.
