Sorry guys, I meant Lexus wasn't recognized as a brand in Japan until 2005. Not North America. And for those of you getting butthurt over this "correct" pronunciation video, let me remind you that I did not create this video to force anyone to pronounce brands the Japanese way. Do I force Japanese people to pronounce Ford, GM, and Chrysler the way we do in the states? Hell no. This video is for entertainment and educational purposes only. Every region pronounces words differently and that's the beauty of the diverse world we live in. I plan on filming another episode on "how to pronounce Japanese car models" and motorcycle brand names. if you have a car like Hakosuka or Hachiroku that you are curious how it's pronounced, comment away in the comment section below :)
I imagine that the author will have received many dislikes and negative comments from people in the U.S. and Europe. I would like to thank him for a quick lesson about his language, using a totally different system of writing, than any of we "westerners" are used to. I wish that more authors would teach such lessons, and I hope that more non-native speakers will take notice and appreciate them.
You wouldn't use it all the time, and if you weren't into fast fours and rotaries (a popular car magazine in the 80/90's) you may not use it at all. Average Australians will generally add an O to the name of something/someone, at least they used to. My name is Scott and i would, and have, been called Scotto by many people i know, like Johnno, Stevo, Damo, Robbo and Mick (it doesnt happen for everybody). Datto was a very common term for Datsun across the country.
@@gregdubya1993 dunno, Mick's used to be the Irish many years ago. Mate can be used for a friend "he's my mate", someone you don't know "old mate over there" or someone you don't like "fuck you mate!"
Fun Fact The same people getting butthurt over the pronunciation are the same people that will correct you over the slightest mistake one make when speaking or writting
I amJapanese living in New Zealand and I hear this radio ad for Hitachi(日立）but this lady pronunces "Hitashi" . she had only one job and still managed to stuff it up ! seriously
@@codedesigns8291 Well. If you read in romaji, yes. There's no C words except for example, 'Chya, chyu, chyo and chi. Jisho.org this website can explain to you.
@@codedesigns8291 Some examples using CHI - Numbers: 1, 7 and 8 (ichi, shichi (nana) and hachi ), Good morning (konnichiwa). Japanese kana: A-I-U-E-O / SA-SHI-SU-SE-SO / TA-CHI-TSU-TE-TO - so, for the brand Mitsubishi, SA sequence, for Hitachi: TA sequence. ;-)
Either his camera or recording setup has a compressor built in to control dynamics - these things just listen to the audio, and reduce the volume when things get too loud. It's common in cameras; features like that put to rest the old curse of getting home with the family vacation reel only to find that excessive wind buffeting or loud dialog had reduced all the audio to harsh digital crackling. If it's in the camera, there might be a setting to disable it. If it's an outboard compressor/limiter, the settings are all wrong. The 'attack' (speed it reacts to loud audio) and 'release' (speed at which the volume should return to normal) is are slow. With those settings, his voice seems to fade away slowly as it triggers the compressor, until it reaches some far-off plateau set by the 'threshold' and 'compression ratio'. If he sets the thing to fast attacks and releases, then the volume will only duck down when the threshold is crossed by plosive noises, and then recover.
Great video! How fun to learn that Subaru is the Japanese term for the Pleiades, and that Mazda really is partly based on the Zoroastrian deity Ahura Mazda! I'd always thought that was just an odd coincidence. In German the letter "z" is pronounced like "ts", so we say "Matsda", which sounds much closer to the Japanese.
I asked my grandmother to teach me Japanese and how things are pronounced. She told me no, that we live in America and should speak English lol. Well she said engrish if I’m honest.
I think an issue here is that the Japanese pronounce certain words in a somewhat unusual fashion. For example, the name _Fukushima_ is actually pronounced "fook-shima" if you are native Japanese.
We pronounce the Japanese cars in Spanish the same way that the Japanese does because our vowels are pronounced the same way in both languages... In English vowels are pronounced sometimes one way and sometimes another way depending on the last letter of the word.
It's the same over here in Finland. Japanese names are easy to pronounce correctly. Though I wouldn't have known the ones the Japanese say differently from how they are written, although I could have probably guessed something along those lines if I had been forced to at gunpoint, considering I know a little about the language.
I agree. Those things are theoretically easy to guess due to the structure of the Japanese language. But it's not like I'd automatically assume they are unable to pronounce things not conforming to their selection of syllables. I don't actually speak Japanese, so I ought to be careful with what I believe.
Jose Meda I'm not sure why you are asking me that question, but I can make a guess. However, it's nothing but a guess. That's not limited to the Japanese or the USA. There are lots and lots of immigrants in a multitude of countries who decided not to teach their children their original language. They believed that would make the children better citizens of the new country. The children themselves might also feel it's a bother to speak a language other than what their friends and schoolmates are talking. The larger a country, the less need average people have for extra language knowledge. In conjunction with that, back during the WW2, a portion of the Japanese immigrants in the USA faced systematic hardships (internment), which might have made them want to be more "American" to prove themselves.
What many of us Westerners might not get from the start, is that Japanese naming and number of character strokes is a thing over there (cultural thing, like the blood type booklets I guess). There are even books on how to name your kids properly according to the number of strokes and that.
I am so glad you didn't do it in the same sarcastic way the German and French guy did it. This was waaay more entertaining and very educational. Thanks a lot dude!
Thats because the pronaunciation of letters is mostly the same in japan and Eu countrys Im from germany and its the same here The german z dosend sound like "see" Its sunds like "ts" or a relly relly sharpe s And thats not the only letter english langurige mess with
When I visited Super Autobacs while in Odaiba last year, I met a cool dude from Tokyo who was cool enough to talk to me about some of the badass aftermarket cars that they keep on the lot. Some of which we sadly do not get here in the US market.This video nailed how he pronounced almost all of the brands you highlighted. I would like to clarify that most car guys who are JDM fan's here in the US understand the pronunciation is different than the country of origin so those of you in the comments section kindly stop lumping all of "those Americans" into the ignorant category. On balance the majority of us have respect and admiration for car companies from all over the world. Thanks for the cool video. p.s.Was your car(that Datsun you showed) on JDM Legends by chance?
Thanks for including Subaru! I work in a planetarium and whenever I talk about the Pleiades, I also talk about the Japanese name of the star cluster and the connection to the automobile company. 😃👍 #KeepLookingUp
I love it, I appreciate you taking the time to explain the different pronunciation as well as a quick history lesson on how they came about. Thank you!
I think it would be weird to say Matsuda instead of Mazda, normal people wouldn't understand (unless you live in Japan) interesting to me it's that apparently people in the States pronounce Mazda different from other countries like Canada for example (see Straight Pipes).
Wrong. No irony here. It's due to the second "T" in Toyota occuring between two vowels. Whenever a voiceless "t" exists between vowels (which are always voiced) it will sound like a "d" because the voicing of the vowels carries through. If you want to pronounce that "T" like it should be then you would have to slow down your speech and actually work a little harder to do it.
Tbh the English -t/-d sound sounds like the -r sound (Spanish -r, not English -r, like in "pero") when spoken fast enough. So for many non-native English speakers it sounds like "Toyora", not "Toyoda". Probably for Japanese too, but I'm not sure.
VicioustC I was going to say the same thing about TEIN (really unsure how to pronounce it), but I did read that 5zigen is pronounced as "Go zeegan". "5" in Japanese is pronounced "go".
Totally appreciate that you're not a sarcastic prick. It's nice to hear the stories behind the names of such iconic companies. Definitely nicer to hear how to pronounce the names correctly. Thank you for the video and the positive energy you brought to the topic.
Old Games Reviews Pretty sure they don't make the Mustang or the Camaro with a V6 anymore. Both turbo I4. Which you should be a fan of if you're advocating for Japan.
Suzuki made looms to create cotton cloth. They made bikes before cars. Yamaha started with musical instruments. Kawasaki started with ships and today they make almost all of the NYC subway cars you see on TV and in movies. I've fixed the phone lines in the Kawasaki plant when one of the workers thought I worked there because of my Kawasaki dirt bike hat I was wearing. facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=2539232638522&id=1184839135&set=a.1591437304231&source=43&refid=56
My recollection from the mid-1970s is that, here in the UK, Nissan cars were branded Datsun, and for a while they carried both names until the re-branding as Nissan was complete. I distinctly remember seeing a 'Nissan' badge on one side of the boot lid of a Cherry (Bluebird?) and a 'Datsun' badge on the other.
Actually, in Japanese is "Toyotá" (with the stress in the last syllable), "Súba-rú" (without stressing "ba"), and "Mitsú biSHi", with SH like in "shame".
Laudys Martínez I've heard Spanish pronounce some of these names. I would not call them spot-on. Toyota is close, but Subaru is off with the emphasis on the wrong syllable and a very different sound for the letter R. Everybody's pronunciation of Honda is spot-on.
Very interesting video, thanks for posting. In Australia we're a bit lazy with our dialect, but we may be actually pronouncing a couple of names as they were intended. For example Toyota is usually pronounced Toyoda here. When referring to some names in a friendly manner, we often cut the end off the word and add an "O" or a "Y" to the end on the end. eg, someone named Christopher would be referred to as Chrisso, or Brendan becomes Brenno, etc. Hence a lot of people affectionately refer to their Datsun as a Datto. Cheers from Oz.
Filipus Adendum ha, 1st, Australia is a nation. It has been an independent nation since 1901. 2nd, if you don't like the English language, why write in it? The only thing moronic here is you.
I need to make a quick guide about Greek car brand name pronunciation... Horse= Alogo, donkey=gaidaros, mule=moulari, ostrich=strouthokamilos etc. Let me know if you're interested ;)
I wouldn't go as far to say that the Americanized pronunciations of Japanese car brands are "wrong", they're what you'd call localized pronunciations, and most of them were actually decided by the car companies themselves. Pronouncing MATSUDA as MAZDA was completely a marketing decision on part of Mazda, and they've even gone so far as to pronounce it that way in all of their commercials in the US. It's kind of like expecting Japanese people in Japan to say "McDonalds", "Facebook" and "Google" instead of MAKUDONARUDO, FEISUBUKKU, GUUGURU, those aren't the "original" pronunciations, but they're how the companies chose to market themselves to the Japanese market. As words and language cross international borders, of course there's going to be some morphological and lexcial changes in their pronunciation, and it's not wrong by any means, it just the way in which those words have taken new life in a different cultural context.
there's a difference between adapting foreign words because you can't, or it's quite difficult to, pronounce them the way original speakers do, and applying your own pronunciation rules to the foreign words just because you have no clue foreign words have their own pronunciation rules while you easily can pronounce them like original speakers it's hard for japanese to pronounce "McDonalds" in the original way, that's why it's "makudonaruddo"; there's no problem for americans to pronounce Audi "OW-dee" like Germans instead of "AW-dee", it's just ignorance
vsm1 No, it's just differences in languages. In my country we are perfectly capable of pronouncing Facebook, Smartphone or McDonald's like Americans do, but we just do it in a polonized way because it flows better with the rest of the language, nothing more or less. It just feels weird to suddenly have a word with completely different pronunciation thrown in the middle of the sentence, I'm bilingual on daily basis and I always catch myself saying a Polish word with English accent or saying English word with Polish accent just accidentally... And we pronounce Audi "Awdee" as well, even though we live right next to Germany, for the same reason - it fits our language better. And I guarantee to you that Japanese can learn how to pronounce English words correctly, so it's not that impossible for them to say McDonald's, they just change it for exactly the same reason my peoples do and English speakers do with names foreign for them. It's literally all the same.
we're talking about the same thing. maybe my wording wasn't the best; this is exactly what I mean: "It just feels weird to suddenly have a word with completely different pronunciation thrown in the middle of the sentence". not impossible, but very unusual or unnatural. that's why "McDonalds" becomes "makudonaruddo" in Japan but, there's nothing unnatural in pronouncing "OW-dee" for an english speaker since there are tons of words with "ow" sound in English. they just 1) do not know how some foreign words are pronounced, 2) refuse to accept they do not know it and continue to butcher the pronunciation the funny thing, it's not like they pronounce all foreign words using english rules (at least that would make sense, and I believe there are languages out there where it is the general rule). there are lots of words they pronounce the way original speakers do (mostly spanish, french or latin) contrary to how english rules would require. so, it's exactly the factor of being ignorant of pronunciation of some names/words and holding onto their ignorance. I've seen many people criticizing a youtuber over his "Huracan" pronunciation with a silent "H", they insisted this word should have a hard "H". there wasn't a trace of thought in their mind that this might not be an english word
I didn’t know about the strokes in Toyota, interesting! You missed Suzuki and Isuzu ;-) I‘m a German living in the US and it‘s weird hearing the american pronunciation of german words (and also for japanese words - I speak some Japanese). I always have to focus hard when saying it myself so people understand what I’m talking about lol
Suzuki is Su tsu ki so I guess something like "suits oo ki" or maybe "suit ski" LOL ??? 🤔 From 50 years of Japanese martial arts I should know but I'm guessing.
In Australia we also say "su zoo ki" スズキ not "su tsu ki" スツキ and "mazda" but assumed it may be like Mazda is "ma tsu da" or "mats da" ? Need *CZeroMedia* to add a new vid for the missing ones. 😀
I enjoyed this! I drive a '90 HONDA- she's in bad shape and I lack the cash to have it worked on. Bad previous owners. GREAT car when she left the factory. A lot of your corrections, seem to hinge around accent, BUT, LOL! ...there's not too many Japanese cars that are trash either, so I have no problem using a fake Japanese accent when pronouncing more in a Japanese way- "Hon-da" LOL. ...Dad's first car, was a "Datto-sun"... 510! LOL!
I speak German, and I love that video of the German guy explaining how to pronounce German car brands. I want to learn 日本組, but all I can do right now is spell things phonetically in Hiragana and guess at the Kanji suggestions on the iOS Japanese keyboard in addition to using a handful of phrases I learned from Anime (most of which I know are far too impolite to use in ordinary conversation). I know how hard it is to go from Japanese to any European language compared to going between European languages in the same family like I did, so I have a ton of respect for anyone who learns the other.
You are mispronouncing Nike. Since the founders of Nike pronounce it "naiki", the proper pronunciation is "naiki" not "nike" as in "Mike". BTW: Nike is an American company so Americans are pronouncing it correctly as "naiki".
you are all mispronouncing the word Nike, company's named is inspired by the Greek goddess of victory, her name pronounces just like the diminutive "Nicky" which it means victory in Greek.
It's not "nike" or "nicky"...it is "naiki". Every American knows how to pronounce Nike because the company has spent millions on television advertising over the past few decades. OR, do you think that Nike would have approved all of those commercials over several decades where the name is pronounced "naiki" if the real pronunciation were different?
So everything is pretty much how it’s pronounced in Japanese. 😂 Thanks for the quick history lesson. You need to work on the variable sound volume though.
As an European, I’m from Romania, and a JDM lover, I got drawings of japanese cars on my walls, on paper of course;))). I found this clip really interesting, how you explained what every brand name means, I love that. Never heard those things before. Thank you. Arigato
Yamaha builds car engines as most of Toyota's engine are co developed and designed by Yamaha esp the 2000GT, Lexus LFA etc. Yamaha also built concepts and prototype sports cars.
7:32 "Diamonds are forever, stars will blow up and die". I don't agree with that, diamonds are thermodynamically unstable and will eventually turn (spontaneously) into graphite over a looong period of time, so nothing is forever.
It was a good bit of both, educational and entertaining. Edutaining. Always wondered how to say these properly in their language of origin. Thanks, dude!
Thanks man! I am studying Japanese language. 日本語! But I wanted to be sure the way I was thinking to pronounce the names was correct. And nice info on the last names! Thanks man! Very cool and interesting
Thanks for your reply, but we do pronounce the month (April) exactly as /Nii saan/ ( s as in soft). Try to play the Arabic sound here for your reference: translate.google.com.au/#ar/en/%D9%86%D9%8A%D8%B3%D8%A7%D9%86 Greetings
So, what's the right way to pronounce "Mazda", when the founders decided to change their own last name? What I also recognized is, that the "u" in Japanese is often pronounced like the German "ü" (a umlaut (funny, that they actually take the German name for it in English)). Fun fact about "Audi" (in case it wasn't mentioned in the video about German brand names): the last name of the founder was "Horch", which means "listen to" and because they wanted it to sound better, they used the Latin translation for it instead: audi(o). The four rings however are the symbol of the four manufacturer, which were fused together. What Americans struggle to pronounce is "Honda" and "Hyundai" - it sounds pretty much the same, when they say it, but while "Honda" is pretty simple also in German, "Hyundai" is a bit more complex (in my opinion... if there are any Koreans out there, correct me if I'm wrong). I would say, that "Hyu-" should be pronounced like a soft sibilant - in German more like "chü" than "hu". Maybe because German sounds "harder", while English tries to soften words. The same goes on with "Mazda": Americans say "Maaaasda", Germans actually "Mazda" - a hard "z" and "d", which seems to match the real name better.
Thanks for the Japanese lesson! What about Yamaha? I know they don't make cars, but they make motorcycles and there are people pronouncing it in so many different ways and I'd like to know what's the correct one. :)
Yamaha were commissioned to make the inline 6 in the early Nissans. Nissan rejected Yamaha's engine, opting to build their own for their Z car, and so Yamaha took their design to Toyota. The GT2000 uses that Yamaha engine. You could make a strong argument that the most famous tuner engine on the planet, the 2JZ, is not really a Toyota either; the headwork and coolant flow is all Yamaha designed, and beyond that, what have you got? ... a closed-decked block of iron?... Yamaha are brilliant engine makers. FWIW, the Aussies tuned that Volvo V8 to something like 650 BHP, and put it to good use in their Supercar series. watch?v=hAFRS5r2g8E
You first say "ya" like the ya of pirates yaargh and the "ma" of brittish ma'am and then the sarcastic "ha" of haha but you need to say each of these syllables very fast and cutting then at the and without stressing... Hope this made sense
So forgive my ignorance, but I have a question on the "su" pronunciation. The general rule white people learn from anime is that Japanese people pronounce "su" as "s", but that doesn't appear to always be the case. Is there a way to tell when "su" is pronounced "s" and when it isn't? Why is it sometimes pronounced one way and sometimes not? Thank you!
I thought it was MissusBitchi in Australia?...... Isn't it Neeeesarn, and Marzda, and Dartsan for the Seppo's with their Fucked Up Lingo.....The In Zid Su baaaaaru thing is probably Sheep related.
Back at a car show about 1970 in NYC, my father asked a Subaru representative to tell him the correct way to pronounce the brand's name, and the representative essentially said "SU-ba-RU" (and not "su-BAR-u"). As they say, the only stupid question is the one you should have asked but didn't.
I remember here in the US Datsun changes its name to Nissan . A friend of mine drove a Datsun pickup truck in the 70s. He drove it for decades, that truck lasted forever. Then when he got ready to buy a new one it was Nissan.
Sorry, but being hard of hearing I couldn't make out the third word (The letter X) in LEXUS - Luxury, Export,?, United States. A little help, please. Thanks in advance, and I enjoyed the history lessons as well.
@MICHAEL KING your loss. I've had one new noth American brand small pick up truck, it was a LUV Chevy. Was ok for what I pursued it for but alas it was made in Japan and that's why I purchased. I'm a diehard Honda everything fan and that's just my personal choice.
Awesome vid. Loved the histories and all the kanji on screen. I could enjoy listening to you speak Japanese even if I didn't have all the vocabulary to understand you.
This doesn't make sense to me if the US only first started seeing Lexus from 2005... we've had Lexus here from the early 90's if not late 80's. By here I mean somewhere other than America
Excellent video! I was stationed in Iwakuni Japan in the late 1960’s so I learned the “correct” pronunciation of Japanese automobile names early on. You did give me a great history lesson on the names. That was extremely interesting to me. What is your Engineering discipline? Mine is Aeronautical with a minor in Architectural.
A great informative video. I enjoy hearing names and words spoken by native born people. I'm a confirmed Honda fan, and have been since my first one, a new 1989 Civic Si hatchback. It seems like one of the consistent arguments I see is how to pronounce Nikon. Here in the U.S. it's always been advertised as a long "i", as in NYE-kon. Many say it as Nick-on, but I've heard that the Japanese say NEE-kon. And then there is the really stupid feud about aluminum versus aluminium, as if it matters. Oh, and by the way, I love that cool perimeter lighting in your room.
I'm afraid that you forgot to mention about the vowel omissions of Japanese language. If we pronounce at our normal speed, Lexus would be "leksas"rather than lekusasu Mitsubishi → "mitsbish" but not mitsubishi Mazda → "matsda" not matsuda. If we pronounce them carefully, they are going be lekusasu, mitsubishi and matsuda but we don't do that in our daily conversation.
So should I write "u need that" when teaching japanese kids english? And tell then to say like「う」? I don't think so even though Americans pronounce and write "u" the correct way to write is "you" and the kids should learn as「ゆ」
