# Why is 'karaoke' pronounced 'ka-ree-oh-kee'? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [June 16, 2002, 10:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-karaoke-pronounced-ka-ree-oh-kee/114410 "2002-06-16T22:14:28Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 6\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Monty](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/monty/32/47_2.png) [@Monty](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Monty)\ **Post date:** [June 21, 2002, 12:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-karaoke-pronounced-ka-ree-oh-kee/114410/21 "2002-06-21T00:12:24Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by Tsubaki \* > A-HA! I was waiting for someone to say this! Next time, how about heading it off then instead of being like a two-year old with a prize? > [@](#): > > I would say that its more a question of tone than accent. Except for the minor little bit that Japanese isn’t a tonal language. > [@](#): > > Its not that they are saying one syllable more strongly than the other, but that one syllable has a higher pitch than the other. See above. > [@](#): > > That’s what I’ve always been taught in my 11 years of Japanese study, anyway 🙂 What you’ve been taught and what you’ve learned aren’t always the same thing. In any event, my Japanese teachers said it was a difference in accent, as in emphasis, just like the accent in English is a difference in emphasis. ---
**Author:** ![Monty](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/monty/32/47_2.png) [@Monty](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Monty)\ **Post date:** [June 21, 2002, 1:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-karaoke-pronounced-ka-ree-oh-kee/114410/22 "2002-06-21T01:23:54Z")
Speaking of heading things off… The bit above about the two-year old with a prize is just a figure of speech I had hoped would be seen as describing the joy that the other poster would display when someone “took the bait,” so to speak. Of course, I couldn’t think of an appropriate emoticon for it either, drat! ---
**Author:** ![CalMeacham](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/calmeacham/32/35_2.png) [@CalMeacham](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CalMeacham)\ **Post date:** [June 21, 2002, 3:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-karaoke-pronounced-ka-ree-oh-kee/114410/23 "2002-06-21T03:47:54Z")
> [@](#): > > 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. It’s not your reading – it’s your age. Back during WWII, the had a thing called the “Good Neighbor Policy” that encouraged friendship between the US and South America, largely in an effort to keep them away from he Axis powers. Carmen Miranda (from Brazil) became a big star up here, and Disney made cartoons with South American motifs, like **Three Amigos**. As a result, South American tuff got a lot of play up here. The _carioca_ among these. IIRC, one of the cartoon characters in Three Amigos is _Jose Carioca_, a parrot. Also IIRC, a lot of people in the US pronounced is “carry-okee”. This interest in things Latin continued into the Fifties and petered out in the Sixties, when I was growing up i the cultural fallout of WWII. I recall hearing about carioca a lot, and so, I’ll bet, did most Boomers. Get a tape of Three Amigos. Or watch “I Love Lucy” reruns. Or something. Folks m age, I’ll wager, were familiar with “carry-okee”, and shoehorned “Karaoke” into that pronunciation. The first time I heard about “Karaoke singing” I thought someone had revived the Latin music (recal that I heard it – I didn’t see “Karaoke” written for quite a while after that). I have seen similar distortions with other words. I think someone above mentioned “Hari-kari”, which is the way I first heard that term. It wasn’t until later that I read Japanese history and learned that the correct term was “hara kiri” = “belly slit”, the vulger slang for _seppuku_. (I prized this little gem, until **Shogun** came along and blabbed it to the world.) It’s still not clear to me if this is a transformation to a rhyming form, so much more common in English (“hurly burly”, helter skelter", etc.), or was based on anuncer Harry Carey. ---
**Author:** ![Gozu\_Tashoya](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/7993a0/32.png) [@Gozu\_Tashoya](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Gozu_Tashoya)\ **Post date:** [June 21, 2002, 7:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-karaoke-pronounced-ka-ree-oh-kee/114410/24 "2002-06-21T19:12:12Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by pugluvr \* > \*\*Next guy I hear pronouncing “sashimi” as “shushimi” gets a plug of wasabi stuffed up his nose. \*\* I suppose “shushi” is out of the question too, then? 😉 Thanks **CalMeacham** , that explaination makes a lot more sense to me. (Plus it was educational!) ---
**Author:** ![BalmainBoy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/6a8cbe/32.png) [@BalmainBoy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BalmainBoy)\ **Post date:** [June 23, 2002, 11:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-karaoke-pronounced-ka-ree-oh-kee/114410/25 "2002-06-23T23:21:54Z")
**Monty** , if English isn’t a tonal language, how come my English teachers were always talking about the tone of a passage or a word? …and lay off my mate Tsubaki. If she’s lived in Japan and married a native AND learned the local dialect so as to make the locals slack-jawed with amazement, her opinion is as valid as your teacher’s. ---
**Author:** ![BalmainBoy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/6a8cbe/32.png) [@BalmainBoy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BalmainBoy)\ **Post date:** [June 23, 2002, 11:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-karaoke-pronounced-ka-ree-oh-kee/114410/26 "2002-06-23T23:22:43Z")
**Monty** , if English isn’t a tonal language, how come my English teachers were always talking about the tone of a passage or a word? So it must be valid talking of the tone of a japanese word? …and lay off my mate Tsubaki. If she’s lived in Japan and married a native AND learned the local dialect so as to make the locals slack-jawed with amazement, her opinion is as valid as your teacher’s. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-karaoke-pronounced-ka-ree-oh-kee/114410.md?page=1)