> Back to tsunami. Whenever I hear the word mispronounced by those who ought to know better it just grates badly, the mangled mispronunciation distracts my attention from what's actually being said. So often one hears TV newsreaders including those on the BBC slur the word as 'sooonami' when clearly its English spelling indicates the correct pronunciation. Tsu, つ, sounds like a hissing snake—say it to yourself. Is that not obvious?
It's because English has no (or very few - I can't think of any) words that begin with the same phoneme.
That's just what happens with loan words. Japanese loaned "Arbeit" (アルバイト) from German and they also pronounce it "wrong".
"It's because English has no (or very few - I can't think of any) words that begin with the same phoneme."
True, but I reckon it's more than that—read my reply to numpad0.
"Japanese loaned "Arbeit" (アルバイト) from German and they also pronounce it "wrong"."
Question: is that because of structural diffences between the languages (as I mentioned above) that make some foreign phonemes difficult to pronounce? If so, that's different to English speakers who can pronounce Tsu.
>It's because English has no (or very few - I can't think of any) words that begin with the same phoneme.
Loan words, but: Tsar (zar or sar), Tswana (50/50), and Tsetse fly (usually /ts/) from the Tswana language. I don't think /ts/ ever refers to something specific in native English, it's usually plurals like it-s or from suffixes like bet-sy, gats-by, wat-son.
It's because English has no (or very few - I can't think of any) words that begin with the same phoneme.
That's just what happens with loan words. Japanese loaned "Arbeit" (アルバイト) from German and they also pronounce it "wrong".