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Hi, my name is Hachiban and this is my podcast Ramen, gyoza and half chaos
Today, I will talk about how it's kind of interesting to write Marilyn Manson in Japanese
You know Marilyn Manson the
artist
Probably rock and metal music
That's his type of music. I guess sorry. I'm terrible
Pronouncing his name because I'm a Japanese and I'm terrible at pronouncing L and R and
His name especially Marilyn. It's got both R and L
So I'm terrible
anyway
So this
Topic is writing his name in Japanese
Before I get into that I need to explain there are three types of characters in Japanese writing
namely hiragana
katakana and kanji
Hiragana and katakana are both phonetic and
Kanji represents or kanji shows meaning of words and not phonetic
So in one sentence or one paragraph often you will see
all these three types of characters
Kanji is more like
words in English
Anyway
To be able to read, for example, Japanese
news articles
Properly you may need about 2,000
But you may need to understand
2,000 different kanjis and
Japanese people
Normally start learning hiragana
The phonetic one and then katakana
When
Probably before they start
Probably before they start primary school most kids are
They they can read and write
those phonetic hiragana and katakana by the time they
start
the primary school I guess and
Once they start school each year they learn some kanji
So at the beginning in the year one, they might just learn
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20-30 kanjis, but then as the as they get older they have to learn more and more kanjis each year
I think by the time you all people are in
high school
They might have to learn a few hundred kanjis each year
So eventually they will end up with this I believe at least 2,000 kanjis
By the time they finish the school
kanji was
Imported from China
They mean they literally mean Chinese characters
so
Japanese people originally didn't really have their own characters
They first started using kanji
then
They also used kanji to show phonetic
Sound at the beginning, but then it was too annoying to write kanji
so they developed shorter versions and
They are hiragana and katakana just showing the sound rather than meanings
Katakana characters are mainly used for
writing
foreign words
Including foreign names. I mean foreigners names
or
non-japanese people's names
therefore
when we write the name
Marilyn Manson
We will be using katakana. However
Japanese
Language doesn't have
Same sounds as
English so
We will be writing in
Japanese accent
so
You'll be written as Marilyn Manson
And
the interesting bit is
that
or in
Marilyn Manson, we have the sound ma, ri, n, so
and out of these ri, so and n
are very similar
so
When we write Marilyn Manson, I will write in the short notes
It can be
Like it can look like ma, ri, ri, ri, ma, ri, ri, ri, or
ma, so, so, so, ma, so, so, so, or ma, n, n, n, ma, n, n, n
and I found it kind of interesting but
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Then it's kind of hard to explain
That to non-japanese speaker and I thought hmm I might try to explain in
This case in this podcast and see whether people can understand it
Anyway, I will put all these
Marilyn Manson
In katakana
In the short notes, so hopefully you can visually see
What I'm trying to say. I mentioned it on my Twitter then someone else
Responded saying
Similar to this case the name Ogawa is kind of interesting
so
Ogawa is a typical Japanese family name
Literally meaning small river
So whoever started calling themselves must have lived close to a small river
Anyway, o part and gawa part
they both
written with
three lines
I'll put that in the short notes too
so
When we try to write it
Sometimes it just looks like six lines
just next to each other and
It looks a bit weird
After
Knowing this case. I thought ah, there's also another case
similar to this and
There's another name another name. Anyway, there's a name called Hifumi
Meaning one two three, it can be family name or first name
But
all these characters showing one two three they consist of
Lines again, so if we just
write it in a bad way, it looks like just six lines and
Six horizontal lines in case of Hifumi, but with Ogawa it would be like vertical
lines six vertical lines
Anyway, I'll put them in the short note. So if you wanna have a look
Do that, please
So
Yeah
Sometimes writing in Japanese can be a bit weird
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for especially for
non Japanese speakers
Hmm, maybe that's it for this episode. Thanks for listening
See ya
