Still trying to get Japanese right

In conjunction with I am Officially DONE with Draft2 Digital!, I’m going back through “Derivation”, the first book, again altering some details of Japanese pronunciation. I’m not at all sure I’m getting it right because I’m encountering different Internet resources which explain but don’t offer any audio clips of what’s being explained, so can’t be sure whether I’m misinterpreting something.

But next, what triggered this change was the second original “Karate Kid” movie, the one where Daniel and Miyagi travel to Okinawa. The audio description has Miyagi’s love interest, Yukie pronounced like “Yoo-kee-eh”, or maybe even “Yoo-kee-ay”, though most resources have the “e” vowel pronounced like the vowel sound in “bet”.

This got me to thinking about the other common vowel pairs in lots of Japanese terms; “ei” and “ai” are particularly frequent, leading me to wonder if I really had the pronunciations of all those terms correct.

Take, for example, “Sensei”, whichJohnny in the first movie pronounces as something which sounds more like “Sehn-say” rather than “Sehn-seh-ee”. So, which is it? According to an allegedly “correct” resource: Japanese Vowels Guide (opens in new tab or window) it sounds to me as if the latter would be more correct. But, unfortunately, the creator of said resource did not take it upon themselves to provide any helpful audio files demonstrating the explanation, so who knows?

However, “Sensei” isn’t the only issue here. “Shanghai” is yet another bothersome example, as I have more often encountered it being pronounced “Shayng-hy” or “Shayng-hi” rather than the potential “Shayng-hah-ee”. Which is correct, and who knows? Who’s “right”?

I confess I don’t know. I don’t have time to set aside to learn Japanese, yet I want the pronunciations correct, however they’re supposed to be done. Further, there seems to be an exception with “ou” being pronounced as a longer “oooo” sound. The fictional Japanese restaurant in the Waconga Lakes Prairie Crown Mall is “Housaku”, but why is the “ou” pair some exception to the other seeming rule? I don’t know, nor do I know what resources to trust versus which ones to question without having to get into learning the entire Japanese language.

No doubt, some readers would say, “we don’t care”. Well, I get that, but what I’m trying to avoid is my books getting turned into audio by people who don’t give a damn enough to get pronunciations correct. Idiots who keep saying “Aware” rather than A-wear” as I explain in the Author’s Notes, Notes, How do you pronounce A-Ware. Pronunciations are there for the reason that I expect and want readers perceiving correct pronunciation, versus some reader murdering them over and over again, or changing them randomly all over the place. This matters to me, whether it matters to any readers or not. That’s why I’m making such a fuss over it. Either be consistent in relating the author’s vision, or forget it altogether, but don’t “just not give enough of a damn to care”.

I suppose if I ever discover which way is “right”, then I’ll go back through every book and fix it yet again. I’m at a loss as to what is right or what to do, given how this matters to me as the author of this story.

Next, as a blind author, dependent on a screen reader reading what I’m writing, the next issue is getting different speech engines to pronounce things closely enough. This is a maddening, potentially neverending issue since getting enough different speech engines to consistently pronounce certain words similarly enough is a bit of a futile effort. You can get some words to come out just right in perhaps one or two different speech engines, only to have another one or two speech engines murder pronunciation, which is beyond irritating! yet another case of one speec engine considering itself “right” while all others are somehow “wrong”. Who’s right? Ask three people and you’ll get three different answers!

But, since I’m having to switch aggregators anyway, I’m fixing this in the first two books for now. Again, if things change, I suppose I’ll be going back through every book yet again to fix it yet again. However, at some point I’m just going to say “to hell with it”, pick a standard and stick with it. Anyone who doesn’t like it can produce some free language resource with some damned correct audio pronunciations to demonstrate technique versus simply trying to explain it without any helpful audio samples. Is “Yoo-kee-eh” even correct, or was that just what someone told the audio describer was correct, or was it simply the describer’s choice? Who knows? I certainly don’t. Just trying to do the best I can without knowing what’s truly “right”.

UPDATE: Okay, I’m officially saying “to hell with it” and reverting all novels back to the original interpretation on all Japanese vowels. In other words, “Sensei” is “Sehn-sey” versus “Sehn-seh-ee”, as just one example. If I’m correct, great; if not, oh well; I’m NOT fixing it yet again, all because no one out there in the greater world could produce a free Japanese language learning resource with helpful audio so one could hear the language in “correct” use. If such a resource exists, it was very difficult to stumble across, much less know whether it was “correct” versus just some so-called expert’s perception of “correct”.