Morihei Ueshiba Pronunciation!
 

How do you pronounce the founder's name? Is it:

1) more hi oosheeba ?

2) more ee hi awshiba ?

3) Or something different?


EDITED: Also, how do you pronounce noquet?

:ai: :ki: :do:

Re: Morihei Ueshiba Pronunciation!
 

Japanes pronounciation is mostly quite straight forward, so he is pronounced Morihei Ueshiba, clear?

Well it is a little bit difficult to transcribe it to English as Mark Twain did show us that "fish" is pronounced "ghoti", or was it vice versa?

My best guess is More-ee-hae OO-e-shiba

Same for French, if you mean André Nocquet, i ld say "Nok-ae", English is quite difficult to write it without potential misinterpretation ;)

Dirk

Re: Morihei Ueshiba Pronunciation!
 

Which is why we can have so much comedic fun with it :D

As for the correct way to prononce the founders name easy - O Sensei ;)

regards,
Mark

Re: Morihei Ueshiba Pronunciation!
 

I'm not much good with real phonetics, in Japanese think of the following sounds for pronounciation. If two vowels are together, pronounce the two sounds.

a as in apple not as in hay

i as in eat not as in it or like

u as in lute not as in luck

e as in bet not as in eat

o as in of not as in oat


the characters to pronounce would be

Mo ri hei Ue shi ba

hope that helps

rgds
Bryan

Re: Morihei Ueshiba Pronunciation!
 

Since the original poster is also from the U.K., this is really more for my own edification, as he's more likely to get a good idea of pronunciation from your analogies more than from mine, but I have a question. Is the a in apple like the a in father in the U.K. (generally speaking of course)? Because in American English, the a in apple is generally the same as the a in "mat", and Japanese a is higher and more forward in the mouth. Like father, for example.

I like "ink" as an example, but again, that's based off American pronunciation. (Not that "eat" is a bad one.)

I'm assuming another slight difference in pronunciation here. "of" in American English is a schwa. Japanese "o" would be like in "go" or "no". But, as you say, not oat, as that's a diphthong.

Just some musings...

Josh Reyer

Re: Morihei Ueshiba Pronunciation!
 

http://www.aikiweb.com/language/audio.html

-- Jun

Re: Morihei Ueshiba Pronunciation!
 

Close.

Try "a" as in "father"

and "o" as in "rose"

Re: Morihei Ueshiba Pronunciation!
 

You gotta Love Jun and his site!

Re: Morihei Ueshiba Pronunciation!
 

Jun, you're so sexy when you talk Japanese:)

Re: Morihei Ueshiba Pronunciation!
 

Umm ... I'd never really call Jun sexy, as such, but he is damn cute.

Heya, Jun-ichi! See you in June! Looks like we'll be there the third week of June, for at least a few days. Trying to arrange things so we are in and out of either Boulder or Denver, thence to Glenwood Springs and back. Frank has to go East on about the 23rd, and Em wants to visit some Rolfing colleagues in Boulder, so ...

More info as things develop.

Re: Morihei Ueshiba Pronunciation!
 

Hi Josh,

I've just been sitting discussing this with the wife, I think that this is probably not the easiest conversation to have via a keyboard :).

There's a lot of difference in intonation (is that the right word) between English and American. For me, the "a" in father comes out more like "ar" in are. A good example, my wife's name is Akiko and the "A" is most definately pronounced as in apple, but we have a number of American friends who always pronounce the "A" as in father. To us, that then sounds like "Arkiko", which does cheese her off occasionally because it's plainly wrong. If they say apple they don't say "arpple" :).

I think the main differences between yours and my sounds is just the way we hear it based on our native languages, pretty much as you said. Now, if we all spoke English........ :D ;) :p

regards

Bryan

Re: Morihei Ueshiba Pronunciation!
 

No, it is not. Unfortunately, it's one I end up having with fellow learners of Old English all too often!

I think the term you're looking for is "vowel quality". Intonation is a function of tone, of course. For example, the rise in pitch in the last syllable of a question: "Are you there?"

Stress is another thing altogether, the difference between "desert" and "dessert". Interestingly, English uses stress at the word level and intonation at the sentence level, while Japanese uses intonation at the word level and stress (and intonation) at the sentence level.

Interesting. In teaching other Americans the rudiments of Japanese pronunciation, I'd never tell them to make the /a/ in "apple". It's a vowel sound that doesn't exist in Japanese. I tell them it's the /a/ of father, or better yet, "ah" with a shorter length.

I notice that when Americans butcher "Akiko" they tend to do one of two things. Either they say "ACK-ki-ko" (/a/ of American "apple"), or they say "ah-KEY-ko" (truly wrong intonation).

One thing of note is that /a/ has a short quality in standard Midland American "father", but a long quality in RP. So my using "father" as an example probably wasn't the best idea in the first place.

Re: Morihei Ueshiba Pronunciation!
 

I pronounce it More-ee-ay Oo-ay-she-ba.

ay being like "hay" not like "aye"