March 23, 2007

Quiz Monster strikes again!

This was not what I was going to write about, but the wonderful world of Japanese TV has its way of sidetracking me.

Quiz Monster was on this evening and featured the usual lot of questions (like "fun with pork" back in January) that somehow miss the whole point of reality. Tonight's stumper was "What is the correct pronunciation of 'Kamehameha'?" Note: This "correct" has nothing to do with actual correctness.

By most native Japanese speakers, Kamehameha is pronounced exactly as it's spelled: Ka-may-ha-may-ha. The same accent is placed on each syllable because, in Japanese, the same accent is placed on each syllable of most words.

This was a multiple choice question, by the way. The choices offered did not include the correct pronunciation of Kamehameha. Instead, the choices were all the exact same Japanese pronunciation of Kamehameha, only with a slight pause at different points: (1) Ka May-ha-may-ha, (2) Ka-may Ha-may-ha, (3) Ka-may-ha May-ha, (4) Ka-may-ha-may Ha.

I'm pretty good at quiz shows. I'm pretty good at Japanese quiz shows. (I am a dork.) I usually get the answer right off, especially when I already know the correct answer. In this case, knowing the correct pronunciation of Kamehameha was not a help. My first guess was option (3). Oz said, "I can't even say it after hearing all that!" None of the Japanese contestants got it either, even after three guesses. The "correct" answer? (1).

Yeah. I can see that Oz and I will have to start defining a new kind of correctness, "Japanese correct," to go with our two kinds of weird: weird and "Japanese weird," which is a whole other kind of weird. Not necessarily weirder, but seriously other.

286 words | March 23, 2007 10:09 PM | Lost in translation
Comments

Given those choices, (1) is the correct answer; linguistically "mehameha" is a single compound (no, I don't remember what the linguistic term is for a doubled morphemic syllable with narrative overtones.). In practical terms, though, there really isn't a pause; there's a stress which kind of hits in between the Japanese syllables (it's a sign of how far I've come from our linguistics roots that I've now twice typed "syllabus" instead of "syllable" [oops, that's three]): "eha" is the strongest part of the word.

Posted by: Jonathan Dresner at March 25, 2007 09:15 PM
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