This is hilarious! I had never heard this before but knew when you said “if she’s under 25 she won’t understand” that it was something from a long time ago. Looked it up and found it on wikipedia. Heh. Love it, I’ll try it sometime on my friends.
As a few suggestions, use standard romaji when putting the text over the top. Even complete beginners can follow. The text you use is “text that english speakers can kinda get the right pronunciation from” but the Japanese government already decided on a system that’s not too bad, and since you are actually speaking when it’s showing up, it’s not confusion at all that “de” would be “で”. (ie. you don’t have to use “deh”) and “shi” is fine for “し” rather than “shee”.
And second, watch your pronunciation when you break it down. For example, when you pronounce いん from 全員. Also, the pronunciation of a word like 全員 is kinda difficult so taking us through it slowly is helpful. I had a story when I first came to Japan where I tried to say 千円分 at a gas station and the guy looked at me weird cause my ん sound was a strong “n”.
(I’m an English teacher so trust me, I know how easy it is to change it when you’re breaking a word into sounds.)
But it’s funny stuff. Just though maybe you might be interested in the educational part too. I didn’t post this on Youtube comments cause it’s more for you, not the watchers. また作ってくれ!
[…] Rant of Lesson 2 […]
Pingback by Most Useless Japanese in a Minute » blog: Is she over 25 years old? — May 8, 2007 @ 10:04 am
This is hilarious! I had never heard this before but knew when you said “if she’s under 25 she won’t understand” that it was something from a long time ago. Looked it up and found it on wikipedia. Heh. Love it, I’ll try it sometime on my friends.
As a few suggestions, use standard romaji when putting the text over the top. Even complete beginners can follow. The text you use is “text that english speakers can kinda get the right pronunciation from” but the Japanese government already decided on a system that’s not too bad, and since you are actually speaking when it’s showing up, it’s not confusion at all that “de” would be “で”. (ie. you don’t have to use “deh”) and “shi” is fine for “し” rather than “shee”.
And second, watch your pronunciation when you break it down. For example, when you pronounce いん from 全員. Also, the pronunciation of a word like 全員 is kinda difficult so taking us through it slowly is helpful. I had a story when I first came to Japan where I tried to say 千円分 at a gas station and the guy looked at me weird cause my ん sound was a strong “n”.
(I’m an English teacher so trust me, I know how easy it is to change it when you’re breaking a word into sounds.)
But it’s funny stuff. Just though maybe you might be interested in the educational part too. I didn’t post this on Youtube comments cause it’s more for you, not the watchers. また作ってくれ!
Comment by Jared — May 21, 2007 @ 9:15 pm