she is probably the kind of Card Captor Sakura viewer that made fanfic or fancomics of Touya being a womanizer and “just friends” with Yukito… yes this fics exist, and an acquaintance just complained about their existance today and that is why is the first example it comes to my mind.
It’s like when I hear people use proper Arab pronunciations instead of the typical English modifications. I appreciate the effort but it’s like the uncanny valley of language
But then there’s things such as professionally dubbed anime series with its names pronounced in a completely wrong way. In everyday life and as long as people understand you, use whatever pronunciation you know or came up with, but if a company making a living out of dubbing an anime does that, they should seriously reconsider their profession.
(Happened over here like a decade ago with “Naruto”, I tried to watch it in TV as a young teen but couldn’t, because while it was censored as hell – don’t ask me why, but they thought it a gread idea to simply erase all the blood and sometimes even weapons – they also couldn’t say some of the main characters names correctly, as in Sasuke saying “Sa-sU-ke” instead of “Saske” or Itachi as “ItaSHi” instead of using an ch sound as in China).
You want horrible? Look up One Piece by 4Kids. They replaced all guns with super sucker guns or whatever (the ones that fire suction bolts). Removed all blood, cigarettes and alcohol. Removed an ENTIRE arc and generally did horrible, horrible things to poor One Piece.
Ah, I know that too, I kinda would want to laugh about it, if it weren’t so sad. It is exactly as bad as Naruto being censored.
I mean, what goes on in their heads? Either the children know that characters are getting hurt, even without the blood etc. OR if they are too young to understand that, the worst that could happen is that (in case just the blood is eradicated and not the weapons) a knife wound isn’t that bad because it doesn’t bleed, so let’s go stab the next person (of course I’m exaggerating).
I know, right? And probably the worst (fridge logic way) thing they did was that they erased Death. Like, characters don’t die, they just disappear, get kidnapped or something. This is what happened with Bellemere, adoptive mother of one of the characters. The villain didn’t kill her, he just locked her away somewhere. And now you have this horror scenario, did she die of starvation/dehydration. Is she still locked up there after all these years and no one knows where because she is not present during the after-victory party. WHAT HAPPENED TO THAT POOR WOMAN!?
See, and here I am watching “The Ancient Magus Bride” and enjoying the hell out of the Japanese actor’s mispronunciation of the English names. “Elias Ainsworth” just sounds so much cooler somehow when it’s being pronounced “ELLIE-as AYN-seh-WORT-uh”, or with “Ruth” being pronounced “ROOT-seh”, heh.
On the other hand, the Japanese name “Chise” is pronounced anywhere from “CHEE-say” to “Seh”, depending on which actor is saying it, which confuses the heck out of me, ha ha (I go with “Seh” in my head simply because I like that actor’s voice the best, lol). You’d think that one they’d be consistent on, but nope. Weird.
Oh yeah, I’m waiting for it to finish until I watch it 🙂
Idk why, but in Japanese shows etc. I don’t care so much about mispronunciation in an original production, it kinda gives it a charm, and I’m used to English terms being adapted (e.g. Christmas being “kurisumasu” with only slight u-sounds). But I’m mostly angry because in all the anime they showed before Naruto they never mispronounced names, at least not that I know of. It sounded weird at first, but much more authentic than adapting an own variant of saying a name.
Oh, I’m just talking about the dubbing of certain shows, there are some really good dubs of anime and other animated shows out there.
Though, I have to agree, there were really bad ones back then too. But as a child, I was much more prone to overlook many things that are probably unwatchable to the me I am now.
This is one of the aspects of how the first Finnish dub of Digimon was hilariously painful.
They couldn’t seem to decide whether to call Agumon ‘Agmon’ or ‘Agemon’.
The spelled Kabuterimon as ‘Gabteri-Mon’ and pronounced it in a way that to some sounded like ‘Kopterimon’. Note that ‘kopteri’ is the Finnish word for a copter (as in, helicopter).
And then there is the whole Saksi/Kuwagamon/Beetlemon business.
Well, valet is pronounced va-lay in English, so you’d be right. Probably because it got absorbed into English back when the English nobility still spoke French.
Other words aren’t necessarily pronounced the same as in the languages they originated from. Depends partly on how recent the theft of the word was and how much of the population is familiar with the other language.
The English upper class pronounce “valet” as VAL-et, because they have been using the word since before Norman French silenced its final consonants and they don’t consider it to be a French word. Attempting to pronounce “valet” as though it were French is a thing that started in America in the 20th Century or perhaps late 19th. That is, the etymology of “valet” in British upper-class use is from the Norman pronunciation of mediaeval French vaslet, and not from modern French valet, and in that dialect it is now no more a French word than “marriage” is.
Wait what kind of ass backwards way do you americans pronounce Anime? Is it REALLY that hard to pronounce shit PROPERLY that you have to mock people who do?
Oh god look at what you’ve made me do! I’M DEFENDING MARY FFS!
I’m not even sure where you’d get “aw Ni may” from.
letting my weeb out to play, you’d get something approaching Ah Ni Meh with stress on each capital.
Back in the Eighties it was just called “Japanese animation,” which then got shortened to “Japanimation,” and thence to “anime”, so I’ve always thought (and heard) it pronounced the same as the beginning of the English word “animation,” since it’s an abbreviation of it.
Nope! Anime is what they call it in Japan. Or rather, anime is what they call animation in Japan, and therefore what we in the West call Japanese animation.
Of course, you’re still right that it’s derived from “animation”, and I don’t know how it’s pronounced in Japan, but I generally hear people saying anni-me.
(Wikipedia says it’s pronounced ˈænəˌmeɪ/, but I don’t actually know what that means.)
What Khryss said, it is just the japanesification of an English word, that then circled back into English vocabulary. It happens all the time with English words in Japan.
Not quite. America got into the Anime craze way later than the rest of the world, ya? Specifically, Latin America got into it way earlier, and in fact most early American dubs translated from Mexican dubs.
If your talking about Mary, probably not since she knows the plural of Pokemon is Pokemon.
If your talking about Malaya, most definitely, but she isn’t a wannaweeb, since a weeb is a type of nerd.
I meant Mary. But everyone and their mother knows that the plural of Pokemon is Pokemon. Yet I see anime pluralized as animes all the goddamn time, even in anime enthusiast communities. It’s astoundingly and annoyingly common.
Aargh mispronunciation of words is no one’s “style”. It’s just stupid, and a stupid, stupid excuse for doing it. Like fanfic writers who claim “artistic license” when they get something wrong that’s as basic as knee-length skirts in the Victorian period. ><
The way you lay lines down on the page is your "style". Your preferred clothing combinations and/or hairstyle is your "style". But you can't claim a speshul way of pronouncing a word (or a speshul definition of a word, a la "No, when I use this common word I mean it in a completely different way!”) is your style. YOU ARE JUST WRONG.
Oh my God. I was mostly just annoyed by Mary before this, but now that I know she pronounces it “Ani-mee” I suddenly think she’s way worse than Malaya… or at least a little worse
The way the last syllable seems stressed, I’d wager she’s very incorrect. Japanese always has equal stress on all syllables. Unless the font stress is meant to signify that the last syllable’s where Mary and Malaya are differing, then I might be overthinking it.
Yeah, but out feels kinda…dumb to take a word with an accepted English pronunciation and applying another pronunciation just so you sound more ,-*’AUTHENTIC,-*’
It’s like taking karaoke and pronouncing it kara-okeh instead of carry-okey. Or a Japanese person going out of their way to say all the phonemes in ENGLISH instead of just saying igirisu, a generally accepted term for the English language.
Even when you speak the language a loanword is from, you usually pronounce it the way the language you’re currently speaking pronounces it. E.g., I speak Spanish but don’t pronounce “burrito” with a rolled r in English.
true, although it is honestly hard not to slip into the source language’s accent sometimes.
I don’t even really speak french, but I learnt the word ‘croissant’ from a french tape when I was, like, four, and to this day I still pronounce it the way I learnt there, not the “cross-ant” that everyone around me says.
As an former English teacher in Japan, katakana English was the worst thing, actually. For a country that spends so much time studying the language the Japanese are pretty horrendous at it and one big factor is the laziness of only memorizing katakana English. Imagine hearing someone speak American-accented Japanese (I.e. “wuh TASH [rhymes with cash] ee wuh toshowcan knee ickytye deSue knee”) all day. Now imagine everyone and their mom doing it. It’s like needles on a chalkboard, slightly disrespectful and super lazy. Furthermore, they KNOW katakana English sounds like crap which is why they have no confidence in themselves. The government is just too stuck in it’s old ways that other countries demolish Japan when it comes to fluency.
Because of the quotes, I’m pretty sure Malaya is showing how Mary pronounces it. I’m assuming that means she’s trying way too hard to sound Japanese with it.
Actually looking at it again, she doesn’t have the quotes around the pronunciation part. Guess we just can’t really be sure without Willis saying something.
This throws me because I’ve been pronouncing it ah-ni-may all this time as I thought that’s how it was supposed to be pronounced. I can get how ah-ni-me would be a bit annoying but I don’t see the issue with how mary says it (apart from the aw instead of ah but that’s pretty minor)
I said this above but back in the Eighties it was just called “Japanese animation,” which then got shortened to “Japanimation,” and thence to “anime,” so I’ve always operated on the assumption that while the phrase/words themselves were abbreviated, the pronunciation stayed the same. So “anime” would just sound like “animation” but with the “shun” part at the end dropped off.
Still, none of them is worse than when I heard the first time my sister said it. I still can’t figure out how she decided a viable pronunciation was “uh-NIGH-mee”.
(For the unaware, she has like five years on me.)
Being a weeb and a bigot don’t really mesh well. I mean, what, even GATE was more about fucking monster girls than about Muh Army and Exporting Democracy TM. If anything, the bigoted anime fans tend to be tumblerinas. And they are probably into anime only for the gay porn.
An-ee-may is usually how americans pronounce it, from what I remember “aw-ni-meh” is the japanese. Americans say “an-ee-may” because we also say “animation” and its (kinda) close.
Not sure it really matters as whichever way you pronounce it will be understood in general.
Standard English pluralization is always acceptable when using loan words in English.
The plural from the source language is also acceptable, but often not ideal. Japanese is pretty safe, obviously, but naive attempts at languages with complex grammars lead to abominations like virii, and understandable mistakes like viri*.
* Virus is not the declension that has the -us to -i pluralization. There is no attested plural for it (it’s a mass noun in Latin), but similar words tell us the plural would be… virus. ‘Virii’ would be the plural of ‘virius’. ‘Viri’ would be correct if it were the proper declension, though.
Ooh! Ooh! I know this one! Pick me! *waves hand in air*
So there is this fantastic podcast called “The History of English” that looks at English right from proto-Indo-European, and it’s full of fascinating insights (like that the English word “who” and the French word “qui” are actually from the same IE word, but when the Germanic bunch got hold of it, they switched the “K” sound to a “H” sound–as they commonly did– and that’s why the word with the same common root and the same meaning has two different pronunciations in the two languages; ends up “canis” and “hound” did the same thing; again, you can see the K switching to an H), and they say that the reason that some words (like ox, and man, woman, child) are pluralized -en (oxen, men, women, children) and some are pluralized -es (foxes, boxes), is that the -es plural is a much later, post Anglo-Saxon pluralization, that was applied to new words coming into the language, but not existing root words that already had a pluralization in the language.
So words that are pluralized with -en are much older ones in English, going back past Anglo-Saxon directly to proto-Indo-European; whereas ones pluralized -es (or -s) are later loanwords borrowed directly from other languages (which is why we say “viruses”; because we’re borrowing the word from the Latin and then applying the current English pluralization to it).
Neat, eh? 😀 It really is fascinating; if any of you guys are interested in history, or language, or etymology, you should definitely check it out; it’s really great. <3
May it’s because I live on the west coast, but I have never heard the “i” in “anime” pronounced as a long “e”. I have only ever heard it pronounced as a short “i” like cutting the “t” off of “it”. Mary pronouncing the “a” as “aw” is also something I have never heard.
Also, nobody has ever said “an-ee-mation” ever, so that explanation was… odd.
(I’ve also never heard that, and I’ve lived on the east coast. So we’ve got both coasts covered.)
To be honest, English’s a pretty messed up language with more exceptions to rules than the rules themselves, so most of the time I ignore the sort of oddness that comes with this and roll with it.
“Americans say “an-ee-may” because we also say “animation” and its (kinda) close.”
It’s more than kind of close. The word anime is literally a Japanese shortening of the English word “animation”. It’s a loanword that they borrowed from English while they were also borrowing their art style from Disney.
After we finish beating the dead horse that is the pronunciation of the word ‘anime’, then we can move on to the correct way to pronounce ‘karaoke’ (and it ISN’T care-ee-OH-kee, with four syllables).
The mispronunciation of General Tso’s chicken is worse. It’s suppose to rhyme with sew (except with a Z instead of a S), but instead people pronounce it general sow.
‘Karaoke’ translates to “empty orchestra” and is a similar word to ‘karate’, which means “empty hand”. And you don’t pronounce ‘karate’ as care-ee-AH-tee, do you? So the combined ‘ao’ in ‘karaoke’ is pronounced ‘ow’ as in ‘how now, brown cow?’, which gives us kah-ROW-kee … three syllables.
I will also accept kah-RO-kee, with a simple long ‘O’ like in ‘go’ or ‘throw’.
Bicycle Bill you have legitimately confused me. I have never heard Karaoke pronounced that way in my life – from English speakers or Japanese. In Japanese it’s a four letter word. Ka-ra-o-ke. Karate is 3 – Ka-ra-Te. I simply do not understand where you got the extra ‘Ee’ in karate to justify merging Ra and o letters in Karaoke. And pretty much every English speaker I’ve heard has always pronounced it care-ree-oh-kee. Still four syllables. Do you maybe have an accent? I am perplexed.
It *is* used in dictionaries, at least the ones I have around. Sadly, it *isn’t* taught in any non-specific school I know of.
It would be particularly useful to English-speaking people, who pronounce vowels exactly like the rest of the world doesn’t.
Me, I can’t understand the phonetic alphabet to save my life, but I’m the lucky speaker of a language where words are pronounced as they’re written.
Oh I forgot that my American Japanese textbook had the vowel in cot (ɒ) as the closest thing to Japanese “a” (rather than ɑː like in palm.) So yeah, I guess cot/caught merger is in play here.
Mary has so far tried:
– Condescending
– Patronizing
– Excluding
And now she has fallen back to defensive.
She is not a very good alpha bongo… but Malaya CRUSHES her. Round two will be interesting – because that’s when Carla and Ruth gets involved (and Sal most likely gets roped in).
And the “some reason” would be that last strip Mary did the following:
*Outright lied to Malaya about who failed to reckognise who in the hallway, to try and make Malaya some sort of “villain” for not reckognising people she has classes with.
* Immediately dismissed the lie when called out on it and changed the subject to avoid having to apologise for it.
* Humblebragged and started negging Malaya as a “novice” to try and make it clear who was (in Mary’s opinion) the better artist; despite (or perhaps because of) the teacher giving Malaya more praise just a few seconds ago.
To be fair, Malaya’s more praise was in the form of how much she’s improved. That’s a very different kind of praise and doesn’t tell us which one the professor thinks is the better artist.
She’s just making problems for herself being this rude. It’s not something we’re supposed to be super supportive of, but it is satisfying to watch Mary squirm. Obviously Malaya is making terrible choices at the moment, but they’re very fun to watch.
To quote Malaya from her meeting with Mary in the dorm: “Cool, I like fighting my way out of those.”
I’m not sure what problems she’s making here. There’s no way she was ever going to accept being Mary’s flunky and that’s the only alternative. She’s already joined an alliance with Carla against Mary.
Sure, she’s being rude, but not being rude wasn’t going to help and she doesn’t care anyway. Besides, being friends with Mary would make even more problems for her.
Sure, when they actually had points to make. After a while, it turned into constant deflection, to the point I started wondering if they were even responding to each other. I also got bored with ban evasion.
Off topic post guys, but I just got an offer to my dream school for graduate study. America, I will be in you soon! Provided you still exist then and don’t screw me over on the visa.
I went to a Taco Bell in Milwaukee a long time ago. I ordered a Fries Supreme, and the guy just looked at me like I’d just spoken in Swahili. I had to repeat my order several times, before my friend nudged me on the shoulder and pointed to the menu board, which showed no french fry options of any sort, and instead various nacho options.
I get not being aware of the fact that Taco Bell in Canada has fries, but french fries DO exist within the USA. It is a thing that the typical American citizen is aware of the existence of. If you don’t have fries on the menu and someone orders fries, I would at least expect to be told “We don’t sell fries.”
Seriously though, don’t buy into the media hype that will try to convince you you’re moving into some kind of deathtrap. You’ll be fine. I have dual citizenship and my family over in Europe often seems to think we live in Somalia over here, it’s infuriating as hell.
I have to give Mary the morality prize in this strip, at least taken by itself. Maybe she’s got a condescending tone and picked up a weird pronunciation of anime, but she’s right about the diversity, and Malaya’s just being aggressive and offensive.
Hell, she wasn’t that bad last strip, though she was leaking signs of not paying attention to people.
Her condescension alone would about justify Malaya’s attitude, imo. Especially since she didn’t just not pay attention. Not recognizing Malaya from her class when she moved onto the floor would be “just not paying attention”. She went a step further and accused Malaya of not recognizing her, when in fact she did, but Mary was too busy being even more condescending to notice.
I’d probably react to it the same way as Malaya, even knowing nothing else about her.
Technically it could have been true that Malaya didn’t recognize Mary from the class, because Mary had just introduced herself in the strip before the one you.
Technically, yes, but even if Malaya’s indifference to Mary were proof she didn’t recognize her, Mary didn’t recognize Malaya then, Mary’s being an ass about it.
And in both occasions, Mary was being super condescending, and acting as if Malaya CLEARLY needed someone to take her under their wing. Because Mary’s immediate assumption was that Malaya NEEDED her guidance. That’s why she gets so defensive when Malaya corrects her.
“Hell, she wasn’t that bad last strip, though she was leaking signs of not paying attention to people.”
Last strip Mary did the following:
*Outright lied to Malaya about who failed to reckognise who in the hallway.
* Immediately dismissed the lie when called out on it and changed the subject to avoid having to apologise for it.
* Humblebragged and started negging Malaya as a “novice” to try and make it clear who was (in Mary’s opinion) the better artist; despite (or perhaps because of) the teacher giving Malaya more praise just a few seconds ago.
That’s quite a bit more than just “signs of not paying attention to people”.
lmao I can hear Malaya’s voice saying this in my head for some reason. Idk what her voice sounds like specifically – maybe an Aubrey Plaza type voice – but I can hear it^^
Is that current usage? An hour ago I thought that “anime” meant “animation produced in Japan”, but then I checked Wiktionary (to investigate the pronunciation issues that this strip seems to be about). Apparently usage has moved on: Wiktionary offers “An artistic style originating in, and associated with, Japanese animation, and that has also been adopted by a comparatively low number of animated works from other countries” as the predominant meaning.
The important phrase in that definition is “animated works”. While there are differing ideas on what constitutes “anime”, the one consensus is that it is an animated work. Inside Japan itself, “manga” is the term used for both comics and cartooning. So, from a Western perspective like yours or mine, Mary could be correct in her usage if her goal with her art degree where to get into animation. From a Japanese perspective, Mary is using the wrong term to describe how she is drawing, as she is using a manga style. (Fun facts, “manga” was first used in 1798 to refer to a picture book and the two kanji that make up “manga” in Japanese directly translate to “whimsical” and “pictures”.)
…I only know this because I’m a pretty big history and language nerd. You need to dig deep to find some of this stuff out ordinarily.
In japan…it’s just called a drawing? Unless you are making a comic. Then manga. Otherwise, it’s…just a drawing. Only differentiate when you’re copying another artist style, then you specify the style by artist name or country of origin (ex. American comics style or Amecomi).
Some people may comment on a western artist as having a Japanese style, or asking if that person likes anime but otherwise…just 絵.
I know that English makes other distinctions though. Learning a lot in the comments about borrowed word useage today.
Yeah…to be honest, with language I often look back on what I’ve previously looked up to make sure I haven’t confused myself. And sometimes that makes it even worse for me *insert nervous laugh*
It’s cool! I didn’t mean any disrespect! Language is complicated, and in the case of a loan word of loan words…confusing? But getting new info on words is always interesting!
Aahh!! I didn’t think you meant any disrespect or anything, I was just trying to be a little funny but text is a hard medium of communication. I’m sorry.
I mean, in English you can have a cartoony style, even if you’re drawing single pictures. No distinction made between styles inspired by manga (broad as that is) and more “fine art” styles?
You are totally right, but if you put side by side the anime version and the manga version of many characters you would see what “anime style” means. In general a troughly simplification of the textures, gradients, and reduced line value. This is not an iron rule, but in the past many anime studios went down this way to save time and money. In return, some manga were produced that mimic the simplified “anime style”. The styles bounce from one end to the other along the years.
The impossibly Mickey-like large eyes, in particular.
Modern (post-’40s) manga -and anime by consequence- are, more generally, fascinated by Western ‘features’, as they try to depict “interesting” characters by dis-japanizing (sorry). So: big round eyes, big boobs, slender/superfat bodies, thin long noses, light eye and hair colors and so on.
While a lot of manga and anime are based on Japanese history, the ‘special’ people are often Western-looking to an embarrassing degree (German-like blond, blue-eyed prince -Europe has kings and stuff, right?- dressed as a French XVI century noble, with muscles of a Russian bodybuilder, teeth of a North-American lumberjack, Italian smooth talk and so on. Sometimes it’s painfully obvious the mangaka is NOT trying to be funny).
I’m in the second group, but with the caveat that I am enjoying Mary getting some verbal smackdown. I’ll probably hate her as soon as this is over, though.
I’m a ‘2’. Although I have a sneaking suspicion that, somewhere along the line, Willis has planned enormous reveals about past torments about both young ladies that will make me feel an utter crud for ever harbouring negative thoughts about them.
I mean it wouldn’t change the fact that they treat all of the people around them like dirt. Trauma isn’t an excuse to hurt people you’re still an asshole if you take your pain out on other people who’ve done nothing to deserve it.
No, but it is a reason.
And it can arouse sympathy. Which is not much in evidence for either Mary or Malaya. It can also point the way to healing and improving the behavior.
I guess I am somewhat surprised/impressed that Mary’s understanding of anime is more nuanced than”foreign heathen trash full of blasphemy and tentacles” or somesuch. I would not have given her that much credit until now.
A lot depends on what she’s watched, and what her religious history is like. Perhaps she got into it before she was born again, and isn’t willing to give up her passion for it just because she’s found Jesus.
…hmm. Most Christianity in anime is very Catholic looking and generally involves priests and nuns secretly being demon fighters, so that is an interesting theory.
^ this. Anime definitely depicts christianity in a deceivingly interesting and adventurous way. Hell, I’d be lured into becoming a catholic nutjob if I didn’t already know better .-D
I refuse to believe that Mary doesn’t know the right pronunciation. She’s just one of those personalities who insists on pronouncing it wrong because no-one tells her what to do and they certainly don’t tell her when she is wrong. In that revelation, we probably know everything we need to know about Mary.
No she’s using the “technically correct” pronunciation that no one uses in America to be pedantic and annoying, still tells you all you need to know though
Too late . . . AFAIK “gif” is short for “graphic information format”. Since the “g” in “graphic” is hard, it seems reasonable that the “g” in “gif” should be.
In contrast, the “G” in “Giga” is soft. Which the professor in the original (first) episode of “Back to the Future” got right. Though he was alone in this.
Pedantry can be lonely. But I don’t ask for sympathy. I just want everybody to SMARTEN UP!
True story: when I first saw “Back to the Future”, there is a scene near the beginning where the professor is explaining to Marty about the nuclear reactor he has installed in the DeLorean. He says (I may be misremembering the number) that it produces “two point four Gigawatts”. This is a colossal amount of power. I let out a startled “What?!!”, greatly embarrassing my date (she did, however, eventually marry me). Later in the movie, when the younger professor is watching the videotape on a black-and-white 50s TV, and hears his older self say that, he lets out a startled “What?!!”. I felt vindicated.
The more I learn about western anime fans and their perceptions of each other (and of the perceptions about them), the less inclined I am to interact with anyone ever again.
We’re not all that bad, honestly.
Just some can be…more elitist and thus stupid than others (just like in every field in which specific expertise is considered to be equal with high status and everyone only slightly interested in something is considered to be ‘fake’ *rolls eyes*)
I am on the sub side of the debate. Most dubs make me want to put my fist through the tv or monitor screen. I have found a very small number that I can tolerate.
Ugh, this (including yesterdays comic) somehow reminds me of my yesterday workout-session during which a guy at least twice my age tried to explain to me that I used the rowing ergometer in a wrong way, because he knew how to do it correctly, because his daughter who rows for the national team taught him how to do it.
I might’ve listened to him if it wouldn’t have been for
1) one of the trainers in the gym I’ve worked with those past years taught me an effective motion that’s not exactly the real-life-rowing motion, but less straining on my knees and back, but still effective and not wrong, so I wasn’t hurting myself rowing, but doing it in a way that was good for me.
2) He interrupted me listening to music during training (which I hate, unless it’s important) and started his lecture off with “Sorry, but would you be interested in doing this the RIGHT way?”, which immediately put me in a negative mood. I’m open for people correcting my posture, if I unintentionally slump or lose tension or whatever during an exercise, but don’t start off like that.
3) He explained his way of doing it (which wasn’t that different from mine, just putting much more strain on the lower back by not rowing to an upright back, but slightly leant back eh… back, stretched legs and stretchedarms, which my way of doing the exercise did everything to avoid) and I simply told him why I couldn’t do that, while I should’ve just said “cool” and continue to do my own thing.
I’ve seen a bunch of people using the rowing ergometers in strange ways and I’ve never seen ANYONE go to them and correct their posture, even from next to them.
It’s such a simple issue, but I’m still kinda angry about it – usually because most of the time I can avoid such things by simply listening to my music.
On another thought, he might’ve just meant well (I didn’t know him, it could be that he specifically always explained to people next to him how to row correctly and he couldn’t look into my head and know my own expertise), but on the other hand he continued to explain a bit even after I told him that I use this specific motion because of the trainer, so… (ah, I’m sorry, I’m still a bit hung up on that. Just ignore my ranting!)
I get where he was coming from, I have stepped in the help people use exercise equipment properly when I see them using it strangely, but I ask first if they are doing it that way on purpose. That being said, he should have understood when you told him you were doing it that way for a reason.
Most probably it’s a combination of being overtly proud of his daughter, being a victim of the Dunning–Kruger effect, and age showing in his ability to understand new information and his desire to act as if every young person is their child. I mean, I’m assuming from your story that he did eventually stop pestering you because he understood and accepted your reason for doing the training your way.
tl;dr: don’t be too angry at older people, they just don’t know better.
Wow, never heard of that effect, but now I’ve learnt something new, thanks!
It could very well be that too, and you’re right, he did eventually stop (though he didn’t have that much choice because I continued listening to my music). My anger thankfully vanished (would be quite a thing to still be angry over something relatively small) – I had a somewhat bad day that day and so that kinda tipped me off. I don’t get angry that easily, which is probably why it was so strange to me. Thanks for your words 🙂
ugh, what an ass.
I’m so glad my gym doesn’t seem to have that BS. I’ve only had unsolicited advice once, from a trainer, about something he thought could cause injury. (which is about the only sort of *good* unsolicited advice. and unlike joe, he waited until I finished my set.)
…hmm, and maybe I’ll be well enough to try the gym tomorrow 🙂 yay
Mine normally doesn’t as well….well, I’ve had some people explain things to me unasked (like about four or five times in a span of about 6 years of on-off training), so it’s not that bad. I do appreciate advice if it actually can help me avoid mistakes or even accidents, just no “You’re doing it wrong and I’m here to tell you how to do it right” from a non-trainer person who has never talked to me before that.
Maybe it’s just the age I’ve gotten to, but I find I don’t give much of a crap about how people pronounce vowels anymore. Maybe because English pronounces vowels different than most other languages using the same alphabet. Or because most of the time I’ve seen nitpicking about dialects there’s some elitism and/or racism involved. Probably because I occasionally find out there’s some word I’ve been mispronouncing my whole life.
If you’re speaking Japanese, learn the Japanese pronunciation.
If you’re speaking English and using loan words from some other language, English is likely to have its own pronunciation. Probably multiple dialect versions, if it’s not a recent import.
English is a dumpster fire of a language riddled with inconsistent rules, confusing homonyms/homophones and loanwords as long as you’re able to effectively communicate your meaning (aka the purpose of language) it really shouldn’t matter if you’re 100% in keeping with the rules. Worrying about the semantics of grammar and pronunciation only really matters to linguists and pedants.
And that’s only to linguists interested in prescriptive grammar and pronunciation (Most of us are interested in descriptive grammar and how or where a specific variant came to be).
Though a certain standard of rules is necessary for understanding each other… nitpicking on someone saying a word wrong in a second, third or even fourth language, if the meaning is still understood and the context is a social one (e.g. talking with friends), is being pedantic.
Absolutely, thought it’s kind of amazing how loose that standard can be without significantly sacrificing clarity. The human brain (or at least one fluent in the language in question) is surprisingly good at glossing over even egregious linguistic errors to parse the logical meaning.
On my original point of English being terrible the word “egregious” having two meanings that are literally the opposite of each other is a good example.
I feel like someone should clarify that the way it matters to linguists is very different from the way it matters to pedants.
Also, you forgot the homographs. Nobody remembers the homographs.
I’m American with English as my only language, and I say it like “ANN-ih-may.” That’s probably not technically the right way to say it. The Japanese pronunciation is likely more like what Mary says. That’s probably why Malaya is bothered by it: it sounds like Mary is trying too hard by pronouncing it that way.
Heh, I love playing the straight man. I also wish I could claim the “wobbler” as a humor attempt, but alas auto correct gets the credit for that, I did type “warbler”.
Over the years I’ve just started translating stuff people say and not worry about it. If somebody said aniME or animAY or Coke or pop or soda as long as I can figure out what they are talking about. Mostly because I don’t care and just want other aspects of the conversation to move forward.
But I totally relate to the face punching problem. For me it’s Paul Ryan and Joel Osteen. That would make conversation difficult.
It really bothers me that the professor praised Mary’s work when she’s drawing anime style in a life drawing class. That’s not how life drawing classes work! What kind of professor are you!
Maybe the body is fine and she just went anime on the eyes? Depending on what they’re focusing on in the moment, that could have less of an effect on the professor’s feedback.
Where’s the line for you? Or do you pronounce every Japanese loanword as if you were speaking Japanese? Emoji, tsunami, sake, typhoon, origami, karaoke, etc?
I do a mixture of both. Ann-neh-meh is okay but mang(rhymes with hang)guh sounds just … Wrong to me. Sahkee, Sayanara and Herosheema also feel foreign in my mouth but care-ree-oh-kee is fine. Emoji is another partial loan word so I dont feel bad using ‘ee’ and origami isn’t wildly different enough for me to care. I dont think typhoon is Japanese?
I like how in panel 3 Malaya’s expression indicates that she feels kind of bad about wanting to punch Mary in the face, but she’s not going to change her mind.
Hm. Mary strikes me as the kind of person who would hate anime for a plethora of religious/ideological reasons. It’s kind of surprising to me that she’s using the style in her artwork at all. Still, if she likes anime, she can’t be ALL bad, right? 😛
Fucking hell. I thought Mary couldnt get worse. Then she turns out to be one of those people who insists on pronouncing shit wrong because they think it makes them sound smart
How rude! You’re not giving Mary’s personality the credit it deserves for making you want to punch her in the face. You should apologize to her personality at once.
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are we witnessing the art
school beating the anime out of Mary
dang it word wrap
I totally forgot that Mary’s an anime fangirl. Guessing she’s not too into CLAMP or Revolutionary Girl Utena.
she is probably the kind of Card Captor Sakura viewer that made fanfic or fancomics of Touya being a womanizer and “just friends” with Yukito… yes this fics exist, and an acquaintance just complained about their existance today and that is why is the first example it comes to my mind.
Tomoyo was robbed.
“aw-nih-MAY”
Would cringe IRL
I actually DID cringe IRL. Yikes.
https://youtu.be/WznegGPXnb0
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z-pI5PgNvIw
heh
To be fair I get it but ehh
It’s like when I hear people use proper Arab pronunciations instead of the typical English modifications. I appreciate the effort but it’s like the uncanny valley of language
But then there’s things such as professionally dubbed anime series with its names pronounced in a completely wrong way. In everyday life and as long as people understand you, use whatever pronunciation you know or came up with, but if a company making a living out of dubbing an anime does that, they should seriously reconsider their profession.
(Happened over here like a decade ago with “Naruto”, I tried to watch it in TV as a young teen but couldn’t, because while it was censored as hell – don’t ask me why, but they thought it a gread idea to simply erase all the blood and sometimes even weapons – they also couldn’t say some of the main characters names correctly, as in Sasuke saying “Sa-sU-ke” instead of “Saske” or Itachi as “ItaSHi” instead of using an ch sound as in China).
I know of stuff where they screw up character names *without* even the excuse of a translation :(. For example, the Last Airbender.
You want horrible? Look up One Piece by 4Kids. They replaced all guns with super sucker guns or whatever (the ones that fire suction bolts). Removed all blood, cigarettes and alcohol. Removed an ENTIRE arc and generally did horrible, horrible things to poor One Piece.
Ah, I know that too, I kinda would want to laugh about it, if it weren’t so sad. It is exactly as bad as Naruto being censored.
I mean, what goes on in their heads? Either the children know that characters are getting hurt, even without the blood etc. OR if they are too young to understand that, the worst that could happen is that (in case just the blood is eradicated and not the weapons) a knife wound isn’t that bad because it doesn’t bleed, so let’s go stab the next person (of course I’m exaggerating).
I know, right? And probably the worst (fridge logic way) thing they did was that they erased Death. Like, characters don’t die, they just disappear, get kidnapped or something. This is what happened with Bellemere, adoptive mother of one of the characters. The villain didn’t kill her, he just locked her away somewhere. And now you have this horror scenario, did she die of starvation/dehydration. Is she still locked up there after all these years and no one knows where because she is not present during the after-victory party. WHAT HAPPENED TO THAT POOR WOMAN!?
I wouldn’t mind if they erased the Foxy Arc(s). Sadly, they are canon.
Yeah, but what they erased was the entire Little Garden arc. Giants, Elbaf, everything that happened there ceased to exist in 4Kids continuity.
HERESY! Boxing Afro Luffy is Best Luffy.
See, and here I am watching “The Ancient Magus Bride” and enjoying the hell out of the Japanese actor’s mispronunciation of the English names. “Elias Ainsworth” just sounds so much cooler somehow when it’s being pronounced “ELLIE-as AYN-seh-WORT-uh”, or with “Ruth” being pronounced “ROOT-seh”, heh.
On the other hand, the Japanese name “Chise” is pronounced anywhere from “CHEE-say” to “Seh”, depending on which actor is saying it, which confuses the heck out of me, ha ha (I go with “Seh” in my head simply because I like that actor’s voice the best, lol). You’d think that one they’d be consistent on, but nope. Weird.
(Still a great show, though! <3 )
Oh yeah, I’m waiting for it to finish until I watch it 🙂
Idk why, but in Japanese shows etc. I don’t care so much about mispronunciation in an original production, it kinda gives it a charm, and I’m used to English terms being adapted (e.g. Christmas being “kurisumasu” with only slight u-sounds). But I’m mostly angry because in all the anime they showed before Naruto they never mispronounced names, at least not that I know of. It sounded weird at first, but much more authentic than adapting an own variant of saying a name.
You sweet summer child. If you think dubbing is bad now you would lose your mind at the 80’s-90’s dubs
Oh, I’m just talking about the dubbing of certain shows, there are some really good dubs of anime and other animated shows out there.
Though, I have to agree, there were really bad ones back then too. But as a child, I was much more prone to overlook many things that are probably unwatchable to the me I am now.
Goku isn’t pronounced the way you think. Once you realize THAT, you sort of stop caring about dub pronunciations.
Yeah, it’s really pronounced as “wukong”.
You don’t pronounce it “go-KOO”?
This is one of the aspects of how the first Finnish dub of Digimon was hilariously painful.
They couldn’t seem to decide whether to call Agumon ‘Agmon’ or ‘Agemon’.
The spelled Kabuterimon as ‘Gabteri-Mon’ and pronounced it in a way that to some sounded like ‘Kopterimon’. Note that ‘kopteri’ is the Finnish word for a copter (as in, helicopter).
And then there is the whole Saksi/Kuwagamon/Beetlemon business.
as an arab, THIS! Seriously it takes me off gaurd even when my wife does it! Specially my name!
One of my professors once told me my (arabic) last name was spelled wrong, to which I responded that I also pronounce it wrong, so it all works out.
Unless it’s too hard to pronounce the proper way, I try to say it properly or at the very least, say it in a way that sounds good.
For example, I will pronounce valet as va-lay not as val-let as valet was a French word orginally.
Well, valet is pronounced va-lay in English, so you’d be right. Probably because it got absorbed into English back when the English nobility still spoke French.
Other words aren’t necessarily pronounced the same as in the languages they originated from. Depends partly on how recent the theft of the word was and how much of the population is familiar with the other language.
The English upper class pronounce “valet” as VAL-et, because they have been using the word since before Norman French silenced its final consonants and they don’t consider it to be a French word. Attempting to pronounce “valet” as though it were French is a thing that started in America in the 20th Century or perhaps late 19th. That is, the etymology of “valet” in British upper-class use is from the Norman pronunciation of mediaeval French vaslet, and not from modern French valet, and in that dialect it is now no more a French word than “marriage” is.
Interesting. Did not know.
Wait what kind of ass backwards way do you americans pronounce Anime? Is it REALLY that hard to pronounce shit PROPERLY that you have to mock people who do?
Oh god look at what you’ve made me do! I’M DEFENDING MARY FFS!
I’m not even sure where you’d get “aw Ni may” from.
letting my weeb out to play, you’d get something approaching Ah Ni Meh with stress on each capital.
Back in the Eighties it was just called “Japanese animation,” which then got shortened to “Japanimation,” and thence to “anime”, so I’ve always thought (and heard) it pronounced the same as the beginning of the English word “animation,” since it’s an abbreviation of it.
Nope! Anime is what they call it in Japan. Or rather, anime is what they call animation in Japan, and therefore what we in the West call Japanese animation.
Of course, you’re still right that it’s derived from “animation”, and I don’t know how it’s pronounced in Japan, but I generally hear people saying anni-me.
(Wikipedia says it’s pronounced ˈænəˌmeɪ/, but I don’t actually know what that means.)
What Khryss said, it is just the japanesification of an English word, that then circled back into English vocabulary. It happens all the time with English words in Japan.
It’s rarer that it makes it back to English though.
Not quite. America got into the Anime craze way later than the rest of the world, ya? Specifically, Latin America got into it way earlier, and in fact most early American dubs translated from Mexican dubs.
When trying to pronounce Japanese words, give each syllable an even stress, and you won’t go too far wrong.
Impressive archive dig, Ana.
it’s actually about ethics in cartoon faces mary
😀
…i just realized that mary has seen marcie naked, and i feel like this is gonna come up at some point
Ugh, I bet she pluralizes it as “animes”, too. Friggin’ wannaweeb
If your talking about Mary, probably not since she knows the plural of Pokemon is Pokemon.
If your talking about Malaya, most definitely, but she isn’t a wannaweeb, since a weeb is a type of nerd.
I meant Mary. But everyone and their mother knows that the plural of Pokemon is Pokemon. Yet I see anime pluralized as animes all the goddamn time, even in anime enthusiast communities. It’s astoundingly and annoyingly common.
I always thought that was people being deliberately ironic. Like “animus,” or referring to the internet as a series of tubes.
…when it really is a bundle of pipes.
Well, Mary thinks that what she’s doing is anime, so yeah…
I know, that was the biggest cringe for me, using anime instead of manga. That and “it’s my style”.
Aargh mispronunciation of words is no one’s “style”. It’s just stupid, and a stupid, stupid excuse for doing it. Like fanfic writers who claim “artistic license” when they get something wrong that’s as basic as knee-length skirts in the Victorian period. ><
The way you lay lines down on the page is your "style". Your preferred clothing combinations and/or hairstyle is your "style". But you can't claim a speshul way of pronouncing a word (or a speshul definition of a word, a la "No, when I use this common word I mean it in a completely different way!”) is your style. YOU ARE JUST WRONG.
–Yes, it touched a nerve. Apologies. ><
I find this comment to be really linear.
Seeing “anime” used instead of “manga” that made my inner weeboo twitch as well. I assumed Willis was doing it on purpose.
You seem to believe that there is a manga style of drawing that is distinct from an anime style. This puzzles me. Please explain.
Manga – drawing, anime – animation, ie cartoons.
So “anime” is animation rendered in a manga style?
Backwards. You can draw Manga in the style of amime, but if you just say anime, people are going to interpret that as cartoon, not drawing.
Nothing wrong with being a wannabee
Do you wannabe a wannabe!?
I wanna really,
really,
_really_
wanna zigazig-ah.
The world needs wannabes
So hey hey do that brand new thing!
I love that a whole bouquet of Daisies went together to comment my post.
True, but being a wannaweeb is very bad.
Today Malaya is all of us
As opposed to most days, when she’s just me and/or a handful of other people, tops.
Oh my God. I was mostly just annoyed by Mary before this, but now that I know she pronounces it “Ani-mee” I suddenly think she’s way worse than Malaya… or at least a little worse
I think the implication is that she’s pronouncing it *too* correctly. And it makes her seem like the unbelievable douche we all know she is.
The way the last syllable seems stressed, I’d wager she’s very incorrect. Japanese always has equal stress on all syllables. Unless the font stress is meant to signify that the last syllable’s where Mary and Malaya are differing, then I might be overthinking it.
I think that’s Malaya emphasizing Mary’s pronunciation
Mary does it first, though.
Oh good point
I think the fact that the pronunciation starts with “aw” instead of just “an” says a lot, too.
aw-nee-may would be the right pronunciation, because the japanese characters that make up the word anime are aa-ni-may
Yeah, but out feels kinda…dumb to take a word with an accepted English pronunciation and applying another pronunciation just so you sound more ,-*’AUTHENTIC,-*’
It’s like taking karaoke and pronouncing it kara-okeh instead of carry-okey. Or a Japanese person going out of their way to say all the phonemes in ENGLISH instead of just saying igirisu, a generally accepted term for the English language.
Maybe for her. Not everyone has only one native language.
Even when you speak the language a loanword is from, you usually pronounce it the way the language you’re currently speaking pronounces it. E.g., I speak Spanish but don’t pronounce “burrito” with a rolled r in English.
true, although it is honestly hard not to slip into the source language’s accent sometimes.
I don’t even really speak french, but I learnt the word ‘croissant’ from a french tape when I was, like, four, and to this day I still pronounce it the way I learnt there, not the “cross-ant” that everyone around me says.
Had French in high school. To this day I say French words in the French manner, whatever the messed up English is.
croh-saunt here :v
As an former English teacher in Japan, katakana English was the worst thing, actually. For a country that spends so much time studying the language the Japanese are pretty horrendous at it and one big factor is the laziness of only memorizing katakana English. Imagine hearing someone speak American-accented Japanese (I.e. “wuh TASH [rhymes with cash] ee wuh toshowcan knee ickytye deSue knee”) all day. Now imagine everyone and their mom doing it. It’s like needles on a chalkboard, slightly disrespectful and super lazy. Furthermore, they KNOW katakana English sounds like crap which is why they have no confidence in themselves. The government is just too stuck in it’s old ways that other countries demolish Japan when it comes to fluency.
reminds me of Hyacinth Bucket. (“it’s pronounced ‘boo-kay’.”)
Note to me: I Really :Should: swallow before reading a comment. This forced me to waste coffee. Cleanup on table 42, stat.
She wad bourgeois though, she knew what she was doing xD
I have no problems with seeing Malaya and Mary punch each other in their faces.
Dude, right?
I’ll set up the mud pool…
That IS where such people go to battle, right?
Yeah this is one those situations where I hope for a double knock-out
brb, gotta overanalyze how I pronounce anime
Operating on the assumption your Gravatar is really you, your hair is friggin’ fantastic. Apropos of nothing, jus’ thought you should know 🙂
“Anna-may” is fine, “anna-mee” isn’t, “aah-nih-mee” just makes you sound pretentious?
Because of course Mary pronounces it with a “me” sound.
Because of the quotes, I’m pretty sure Malaya is showing how Mary pronounces it. I’m assuming that means she’s trying way too hard to sound Japanese with it.
Actually looking at it again, she doesn’t have the quotes around the pronunciation part. Guess we just can’t really be sure without Willis saying something.
This throws me because I’ve been pronouncing it ah-ni-may all this time as I thought that’s how it was supposed to be pronounced. I can get how ah-ni-me would be a bit annoying but I don’t see the issue with how mary says it (apart from the aw instead of ah but that’s pretty minor)
I said this above but back in the Eighties it was just called “Japanese animation,” which then got shortened to “Japanimation,” and thence to “anime,” so I’ve always operated on the assumption that while the phrase/words themselves were abbreviated, the pronunciation stayed the same. So “anime” would just sound like “animation” but with the “shun” part at the end dropped off.
That’s what I was trying to approximate with “anna-may”.
Anime is literally the Japanese word for animation.
Still, none of them is worse than when I heard the first time my sister said it. I still can’t figure out how she decided a viable pronunciation was “uh-NIGH-mee”.
(For the unaware, she has like five years on me.)
Face Punches for everybody then!
Is that why you’re hiding your face right now?
Maybe I don’t have a face. Maybe the bag IS my face @_@
Fight! Fight! Fight!
…but especially Malaya
err
mary, rather
Mary is more weeb than I was at that age, and I was hardcore weeb.
Can’t be that weeb if she calls what she’s doing for “anime”.
Being a weeb and a bigot don’t really mesh well. I mean, what, even GATE was more about fucking monster girls than about Muh Army and Exporting Democracy TM. If anything, the bigoted anime fans tend to be tumblerinas. And they are probably into anime only for the gay porn.
Bigots exist in all shapes and sizes.
Of course they do, and usually at the same percentage as in the general populace. Some groups tend to be outliers tho. Like politicians and the KKK.
Malaya makes a compelling argument. 😛
(aw-ni-may? I always pronounced it an-ee-may.)
ann-eh-may here
what about the ol’ an-nih-mu?
Only if you’re making fun of people like Mary
How about juh-pan-uh-may?
I thought it was juh-pan-uh-min-ay.
I pronounce it “an-a-may”. *shrug*
I’ve literally only heard it pronounced this way or as “an-i-may”.
An-ee-may is usually how americans pronounce it, from what I remember “aw-ni-meh” is the japanese. Americans say “an-ee-may” because we also say “animation” and its (kinda) close.
Not sure it really matters as whichever way you pronounce it will be understood in general.
The most important thing is recognizing that all syllables have equal stress in Japanese. Also, that the plural of anime is anime
That sounds like the words of someone who wants a face-punching.
Standard English pluralization is always acceptable when using loan words in English.
The plural from the source language is also acceptable, but often not ideal. Japanese is pretty safe, obviously, but naive attempts at languages with complex grammars lead to abominations like virii, and understandable mistakes like viri*.
* Virus is not the declension that has the -us to -i pluralization. There is no attested plural for it (it’s a mass noun in Latin), but similar words tell us the plural would be… virus. ‘Virii’ would be the plural of ‘virius’. ‘Viri’ would be correct if it were the proper declension, though.
But the best is taking plural forms from one language (or simply irregular English plurals) and applying them to English words with regular plurals.
“boxen” 🙂
Ooh! Ooh! I know this one! Pick me! *waves hand in air*
So there is this fantastic podcast called “The History of English” that looks at English right from proto-Indo-European, and it’s full of fascinating insights (like that the English word “who” and the French word “qui” are actually from the same IE word, but when the Germanic bunch got hold of it, they switched the “K” sound to a “H” sound–as they commonly did– and that’s why the word with the same common root and the same meaning has two different pronunciations in the two languages; ends up “canis” and “hound” did the same thing; again, you can see the K switching to an H), and they say that the reason that some words (like ox, and man, woman, child) are pluralized -en (oxen, men, women, children) and some are pluralized -es (foxes, boxes), is that the -es plural is a much later, post Anglo-Saxon pluralization, that was applied to new words coming into the language, but not existing root words that already had a pluralization in the language.
So words that are pluralized with -en are much older ones in English, going back past Anglo-Saxon directly to proto-Indo-European; whereas ones pluralized -es (or -s) are later loanwords borrowed directly from other languages (which is why we say “viruses”; because we’re borrowing the word from the Latin and then applying the current English pluralization to it).
Neat, eh? 😀 It really is fascinating; if any of you guys are interested in history, or language, or etymology, you should definitely check it out; it’s really great. <3
I’m particularly fond of “meese.”
Goose->Geese
Moose->Meese
Mouse->Mice
House->Hice
keet –>parakeet
Doctor –>paradox
How about “Cheez-Them”?
MOOSEN! I saw a flock of MOOSEN!
May it’s because I live on the west coast, but I have never heard the “i” in “anime” pronounced as a long “e”. I have only ever heard it pronounced as a short “i” like cutting the “t” off of “it”. Mary pronouncing the “a” as “aw” is also something I have never heard.
Also, nobody has ever said “an-ee-mation” ever, so that explanation was… odd.
(I’ve also never heard that, and I’ve lived on the east coast. So we’ve got both coasts covered.)
To be honest, English’s a pretty messed up language with more exceptions to rules than the rules themselves, so most of the time I ignore the sort of oddness that comes with this and roll with it.
It’s funny because it was borrowed in from English, and now we’ve borrowed it back out again.
There’s lots of words like that, actually.
“Americans say “an-ee-may” because we also say “animation” and its (kinda) close.”
It’s more than kind of close. The word anime is literally a Japanese shortening of the English word “animation”. It’s a loanword that they borrowed from English while they were also borrowing their art style from Disney.
I pronounced it Muh-LAY-ah?
I pronounce it “My Liar”.
Then I’m the only one who pronounces it “ah-ni-meh”?
Provably false. see my comment further up in the chain.
Annie-May
LOL sounds like a name that way. Anne-May, the girl who COULDN’T STAND ANYTHING remotely Anime… 😂
Roind here, it’s not unusual for it to be pronounced “Eva/Gundam/Mecha LAUNCH!!!” 😜
After we finish beating the dead horse that is the pronunciation of the word ‘anime’, then we can move on to the correct way to pronounce ‘karaoke’ (and it ISN’T care-ee-OH-kee, with four syllables).
The mispronunciation of General Tso’s chicken is worse. It’s suppose to rhyme with sew (except with a Z instead of a S), but instead people pronounce it general sow.
Not so. (but without the ‘No’)
General Zo?
excuse me while I flip a table: (╯°□°）╯︵ ┻━┻
ka-ra-o-ke isn’t 4 syllables?
So it’s not carry-o-key?
‘Karaoke’ translates to “empty orchestra” and is a similar word to ‘karate’, which means “empty hand”. And you don’t pronounce ‘karate’ as care-ee-AH-tee, do you? So the combined ‘ao’ in ‘karaoke’ is pronounced ‘ow’ as in ‘how now, brown cow?’, which gives us kah-ROW-kee … three syllables.
I will also accept kah-RO-kee, with a simple long ‘O’ like in ‘go’ or ‘throw’.
Bicycle Bill you have legitimately confused me. I have never heard Karaoke pronounced that way in my life – from English speakers or Japanese. In Japanese it’s a four letter word. Ka-ra-o-ke. Karate is 3 – Ka-ra-Te. I simply do not understand where you got the extra ‘Ee’ in karate to justify merging Ra and o letters in Karaoke. And pretty much every English speaker I’ve heard has always pronounced it care-ree-oh-kee. Still four syllables. Do you maybe have an accent? I am perplexed.
*plays the Rocky theme/”Gonna Fly Now” on the hacked Muzak*
Does anyone else think Malaya should see somebody? She is literally pissy all of the time. That can’t be healthy.
OR become Amazigirl’s sidekick or nemesis.
I’ll accept either one.
I am super behind Malaya calling people out on how they pronounce ‘anime’.
It’s good to know that Mary is terrible even when it comes to the small stuff.
wow mary is like, the WORST lol
Does David have the cot/caught merger, or is Mary really pronouncing “anime” with an ɔ?
Not sure why I said David instead of Willis or whatever.
Legit wondering this too. Also thinking, the above discussion about the pronunciation of anime might be a lot easier with this symbol: ə
Though doesn’t that mean she’d otherwise be using the vowel in cot? That doesn’t seem right…
This is why everyone should learn IPA! I’m so confused lol
IPA? How do you learn a beer?
Practice, man, practice. Better get to it.
Indiana Pale Ale?
IPA should be taught in high school English and used in dictionaries.
It *is* used in dictionaries, at least the ones I have around. Sadly, it *isn’t* taught in any non-specific school I know of.
It would be particularly useful to English-speaking people, who pronounce vowels exactly like the rest of the world doesn’t.
Me, I can’t understand the phonetic alphabet to save my life, but I’m the lucky speaker of a language where words are pronounced as they’re written.
Oh I forgot that my American Japanese textbook had the vowel in cot (ɒ) as the closest thing to Japanese “a” (rather than ɑː like in palm.) So yeah, I guess cot/caught merger is in play here.
Mary has so far tried:
– Condescending
– Patronizing
– Excluding
And now she has fallen back to defensive.
She is not a very good alpha bongo… but Malaya CRUSHES her. Round two will be interesting – because that’s when Carla and Ruth gets involved (and Sal most likely gets roped in).
TOP 10 ANIME SHIRT-TALKIN’
oh great, another forced situation that justifies Malaya being astoundingly rude to people for some reason.
Ah yes, that incredibly forced situation of *squints* having a class with someone you hate.
No webcomic in a college/school setting has ever had that situation.
And the “some reason” would be that last strip Mary did the following:
*Outright lied to Malaya about who failed to reckognise who in the hallway, to try and make Malaya some sort of “villain” for not reckognising people she has classes with.
* Immediately dismissed the lie when called out on it and changed the subject to avoid having to apologise for it.
* Humblebragged and started negging Malaya as a “novice” to try and make it clear who was (in Mary’s opinion) the better artist; despite (or perhaps because of) the teacher giving Malaya more praise just a few seconds ago.
To be fair, Malaya’s more praise was in the form of how much she’s improved. That’s a very different kind of praise and doesn’t tell us which one the professor thinks is the better artist.
Well if Mary is drawing anime-style in a life drawing class with a nude model, hers doesn’t seem a high bar to reach.
Whaaaat, there’s ….. life drawing in some Anime…
Sure there is, just depends on which high school slice of life story you are watching.
She’s just making problems for herself being this rude. It’s not something we’re supposed to be super supportive of, but it is satisfying to watch Mary squirm. Obviously Malaya is making terrible choices at the moment, but they’re very fun to watch.
To quote Malaya from her meeting with Mary in the dorm: “Cool, I like fighting my way out of those.”
I’m not sure what problems she’s making here. There’s no way she was ever going to accept being Mary’s flunky and that’s the only alternative. She’s already joined an alliance with Carla against Mary.
Sure, she’s being rude, but not being rude wasn’t going to help and she doesn’t care anyway. Besides, being friends with Mary would make even more problems for her.
And it would require being rude.
WILLIS WILL REMIND ME OF MY WRATH FROM FRESHMAN ART O1
FOUR YEARS AND A BACHELORS LATER I’M STILL ANGERY
In the FAAAAAAAAAACE
Face will never be face anymore. It’ll forever be faaaaaaaaaace.
FAAAAAAAACE!
FAAAAACE….?
We should really get together and standardize how many “a s to use when doing that.
“It’S jUsT mY sTyLe, OkAy?!” Said every puffed-up amateur artist, after the slightest criticism.
Oh, yes. Just look at DeviantArt; for every aspiring artist who’s genuinely good or trying to improve, there are hundreds of Marys.
I had to give up on good ol’ dA. I couldn’t resist the urge to argue with all the dipshits.
Really? that is the best part of dA.
Sure, when they actually had points to make. After a while, it turned into constant deflection, to the point I started wondering if they were even responding to each other. I also got bored with ban evasion.
Off topic post guys, but I just got an offer to my dream school for graduate study. America, I will be in you soon! Provided you still exist then and don’t screw me over on the visa.
Right on, dude. Good luck with your visa. I’d, uh, steer clear of those ICE guys, if you can manage it at all.
Nice! Congrats.
Don’t forget to keep your face in focus when you take your visa picture.
You want to come here? Like, on purpose?
We have Taco Bell!
CANADA has taco bell. And poutine! ;P
And Pea-Meal! Here, take my Poutine, I’m doubling down on Pea-Meal.
Can you put poutine on taco bell food?
After eating American Taco Bell, I strongly suggest you come to Canada, our Taco Bell is better.
Yes, we have fries! 😛
I went to a Taco Bell in Milwaukee a long time ago. I ordered a Fries Supreme, and the guy just looked at me like I’d just spoken in Swahili. I had to repeat my order several times, before my friend nudged me on the shoulder and pointed to the menu board, which showed no french fry options of any sort, and instead various nacho options.
I get not being aware of the fact that Taco Bell in Canada has fries, but french fries DO exist within the USA. It is a thing that the typical American citizen is aware of the existence of. If you don’t have fries on the menu and someone orders fries, I would at least expect to be told “We don’t sell fries.”
We have fries here now too!
Seriously though, don’t buy into the media hype that will try to convince you you’re moving into some kind of deathtrap. You’ll be fine. I have dual citizenship and my family over in Europe often seems to think we live in Somalia over here, it’s infuriating as hell.
Lol I live in India, we have everything depressing the US has multiplied exponentially. Thanks all!
Well, to be honest, there are parts of the US that could give Somalia a run for it’s money. Just stay away from those areas and you will be fine.
I have to give Mary the morality prize in this strip, at least taken by itself. Maybe she’s got a condescending tone and picked up a weird pronunciation of anime, but she’s right about the diversity, and Malaya’s just being aggressive and offensive.
Hell, she wasn’t that bad last strip, though she was leaking signs of not paying attention to people.
Her condescension alone would about justify Malaya’s attitude, imo. Especially since she didn’t just not pay attention. Not recognizing Malaya from her class when she moved onto the floor would be “just not paying attention”. She went a step further and accused Malaya of not recognizing her, when in fact she did, but Mary was too busy being even more condescending to notice.
I’d probably react to it the same way as Malaya, even knowing nothing else about her.
Technically it could have been true that Malaya didn’t recognize Mary from the class, because Mary had just introduced herself in the strip before the one you.
Technically, yes, but even if Malaya’s indifference to Mary were proof she didn’t recognize her, Mary didn’t recognize Malaya then, Mary’s being an ass about it.
And in both occasions, Mary was being super condescending, and acting as if Malaya CLEARLY needed someone to take her under their wing. Because Mary’s immediate assumption was that Malaya NEEDED her guidance. That’s why she gets so defensive when Malaya corrects her.
“Hell, she wasn’t that bad last strip, though she was leaking signs of not paying attention to people.”
Last strip Mary did the following:
*Outright lied to Malaya about who failed to reckognise who in the hallway.
* Immediately dismissed the lie when called out on it and changed the subject to avoid having to apologise for it.
* Humblebragged and started negging Malaya as a “novice” to try and make it clear who was (in Mary’s opinion) the better artist; despite (or perhaps because of) the teacher giving Malaya more praise just a few seconds ago.
That’s quite a bit more than just “signs of not paying attention to people”.
I pretty sure Mary didn’t lie. She just failed to understand what happened because she didn’t recognize Malaya earlier.
I mean, the other point is true and Mary is still an ass. But it is just weird to call her a liar here when it is obviously a misunderstanding.
She’s being correct, but she’s correcting something Malaya didn’t say. So she isn’t any more correct.
(And being correct isn’t really a moral issue. Uh, necessarily.)
lmao I can hear Malaya’s voice saying this in my head for some reason. Idk what her voice sounds like specifically – maybe an Aubrey Plaza type voice – but I can hear it^^
Malaya vs Mary: Evil Shall With Evil Be Expelled
I’d watch that anime.
….you’re making me like Malaya?!?
…and this is why I can’t bring myself to hate Malaya.
Pshhhhh everyone knows it’s pronounced “AY-neem”.
Wait no, anime isn’t a Japanese style of illustration, anime is the japanese word for cartoon! suck it you fake weeb you.
Oh my god they’re so perfect for each other <3 Thank you, Willis.
Mary. When it is drawn outside of the purpose of being put in an animation, it is not “anime”. You are simply using a style used in “manga” currently.
Is that current usage? An hour ago I thought that “anime” meant “animation produced in Japan”, but then I checked Wiktionary (to investigate the pronunciation issues that this strip seems to be about). Apparently usage has moved on: Wiktionary offers “An artistic style originating in, and associated with, Japanese animation, and that has also been adopted by a comparatively low number of animated works from other countries” as the predominant meaning.
The important phrase in that definition is “animated works”. While there are differing ideas on what constitutes “anime”, the one consensus is that it is an animated work. Inside Japan itself, “manga” is the term used for both comics and cartooning. So, from a Western perspective like yours or mine, Mary could be correct in her usage if her goal with her art degree where to get into animation. From a Japanese perspective, Mary is using the wrong term to describe how she is drawing, as she is using a manga style. (Fun facts, “manga” was first used in 1798 to refer to a picture book and the two kanji that make up “manga” in Japanese directly translate to “whimsical” and “pictures”.)
…I only know this because I’m a pretty big history and language nerd. You need to dig deep to find some of this stuff out ordinarily.
In japan…it’s just called a drawing? Unless you are making a comic. Then manga. Otherwise, it’s…just a drawing. Only differentiate when you’re copying another artist style, then you specify the style by artist name or country of origin (ex. American comics style or Amecomi).
Some people may comment on a western artist as having a Japanese style, or asking if that person likes anime but otherwise…just 絵.
I know that English makes other distinctions though. Learning a lot in the comments about borrowed word useage today.
Yeah…to be honest, with language I often look back on what I’ve previously looked up to make sure I haven’t confused myself. And sometimes that makes it even worse for me *insert nervous laugh*
It’s cool! I didn’t mean any disrespect! Language is complicated, and in the case of a loan word of loan words…confusing? But getting new info on words is always interesting!
Aahh!! I didn’t think you meant any disrespect or anything, I was just trying to be a little funny but text is a hard medium of communication. I’m sorry.
Is it really “just a drawing” in Japan?
I mean, in English you can have a cartoony style, even if you’re drawing single pictures. No distinction made between styles inspired by manga (broad as that is) and more “fine art” styles?
You are totally right, but if you put side by side the anime version and the manga version of many characters you would see what “anime style” means. In general a troughly simplification of the textures, gradients, and reduced line value. This is not an iron rule, but in the past many anime studios went down this way to save time and money. In return, some manga were produced that mimic the simplified “anime style”. The styles bounce from one end to the other along the years.
Is Pingu in the City anime
It’s only fitting that the “um, actually” Marysplaining should be at least partly wrong!
Hah! Marysplaining, I like that.
“I’ve had all I can stand, I can’t stands no more.”
Osamu Tezuka.
The primary influence on Japanese manga and anime. Who was strongly influenced by Disney.
The impossibly Mickey-like large eyes, in particular.
Modern (post-’40s) manga -and anime by consequence- are, more generally, fascinated by Western ‘features’, as they try to depict “interesting” characters by dis-japanizing (sorry). So: big round eyes, big boobs, slender/superfat bodies, thin long noses, light eye and hair colors and so on.
While a lot of manga and anime are based on Japanese history, the ‘special’ people are often Western-looking to an embarrassing degree (German-like blond, blue-eyed prince -Europe has kings and stuff, right?- dressed as a French XVI century noble, with muscles of a Russian bodybuilder, teeth of a North-American lumberjack, Italian smooth talk and so on. Sometimes it’s painfully obvious the mangaka is NOT trying to be funny).
Okay so the fandom can essentially be divided up into three groups
1. I hate Mary so I like Malaya now.
2. I hate them both, Just because I don’t like Mary doesn’t make Malaya a good person.
3. I hate Malaya so I like Mary now (this group is fairly small but should still be mentioned)
I’m in the second group, but with the caveat that I am enjoying Mary getting some verbal smackdown. I’ll probably hate her as soon as this is over, though.
her = Malaya
I don’t hate Malaya. Don’t really hate Mary either, even though she’s a pretty nasty piece of work.
You’re forgetting:
4. I already liked Malaya and hated Mary and so this is delicious
This is me as well. I’ve liked Malaya since Shortpacked.
Yes, but you two are weird and peculiar and not to be trusted.
Me too. I’ve liked Malaya since her first appearance.
I’m definitely in this category. Liked her in Shortpacked, even!
5. ain’t nobody got time for hate.
I mean, I don’t *like* either of them, but hate? hate is a strong word.
I hate Mary and have never hated Malaya.
#2 sounds like the 2016 election
Except no one had a clever enough opponent for any verbal smack down
It sounds like every election.
I’m a ‘2’. Although I have a sneaking suspicion that, somewhere along the line, Willis has planned enormous reveals about past torments about both young ladies that will make me feel an utter crud for ever harbouring negative thoughts about them.
I mean it wouldn’t change the fact that they treat all of the people around them like dirt. Trauma isn’t an excuse to hurt people you’re still an asshole if you take your pain out on other people who’ve done nothing to deserve it.
No, but it is a reason.
And it can arouse sympathy. Which is not much in evidence for either Mary or Malaya. It can also point the way to healing and improving the behavior.
“Seriously, don’t sweat your face. I don’t want to get sweat on my knuckles.”
I just realized that Mary is drawing in anime style in a LIFE DRAWING CLASS with a LIVE MODEL and I am now a hundred times angrier than I was before.
Word.
This is the correct response
Does that mean that the model’s penis is just a bright white light?
Nah,it has a small black bar over it that completely fails to hide the fact that it is a penis.
I guess I am somewhat surprised/impressed that Mary’s understanding of anime is more nuanced than”foreign heathen trash full of blasphemy and tentacles” or somesuch. I would not have given her that much credit until now.
A lot depends on what she’s watched, and what her religious history is like. Perhaps she got into it before she was born again, and isn’t willing to give up her passion for it just because she’s found Jesus.
Anime lied to her about Christianity and now she’s in too deep.
…hmm. Most Christianity in anime is very Catholic looking and generally involves priests and nuns secretly being demon fighters, so that is an interesting theory.
^ this. Anime definitely depicts christianity in a deceivingly interesting and adventurous way. Hell, I’d be lured into becoming a catholic nutjob if I didn’t already know better .-D
If she’s without knowledge of that stuff, I hope Amber introduces her to guro.
Willis commented yesterday about “Christian Otaku”. It’s a thing.
I liked that her understanding of anime is wrong.
“Someday they will make an anime about Faz. It will be the most popular show ever.”
…. so Faz will be the irritating sidekick that always gets literally dragged everywhere by a rope.
I refuse to believe that Mary doesn’t know the right pronunciation. She’s just one of those personalities who insists on pronouncing it wrong because no-one tells her what to do and they certainly don’t tell her when she is wrong. In that revelation, we probably know everything we need to know about Mary.
No she’s using the “technically correct” pronunciation that no one uses in America to be pedantic and annoying, still tells you all you need to know though
Hey! It’s very, very important to know how to properly pronounce things!: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=secvOwxuc_k
Like people who pronounce it “jif” instead of “gif” with the hard “G”.
Come at me, bros. 😀
no, i agree with you. it’s a hard g.
OMG, don’t open that can of worms.
Too late . . . AFAIK “gif” is short for “graphic information format”. Since the “g” in “graphic” is hard, it seems reasonable that the “g” in “gif” should be.
In contrast, the “G” in “Giga” is soft. Which the professor in the original (first) episode of “Back to the Future” got right. Though he was alone in this.
Pedantry can be lonely. But I don’t ask for sympathy. I just want everybody to SMARTEN UP!
Can’t quite go along there. The “g” in “gigawatt” is from the Greek γιγαϛ, and Greek gammas are a hard “g”.
I did not know that. I’ll have to check it out.
Wikipedia disagrees with you.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giga-
Also, they reference “Back to the Future”
P.S. I’ve been assuming that both of the “g”s in your handle are hard .
??
True story: when I first saw “Back to the Future”, there is a scene near the beginning where the professor is explaining to Marty about the nuclear reactor he has installed in the DeLorean. He says (I may be misremembering the number) that it produces “two point four Gigawatts”. This is a colossal amount of power. I let out a startled “What?!!”, greatly embarrassing my date (she did, however, eventually marry me). Later in the movie, when the younger professor is watching the videotape on a black-and-white 50s TV, and hears his older self say that, he lets out a startled “What?!!”. I felt vindicated.
P.S. Interrobang completely justified. IMO.
“Three point twenty-one gigawatts!”
<3 Malaya
I had no idea Mary actually had one good quality
Is this really a thing..?
The more I learn about western anime fans and their perceptions of each other (and of the perceptions about them), the less inclined I am to interact with anyone ever again.
We’re not all that bad, honestly.
Just some can be…more elitist and thus stupid than others (just like in every field in which specific expertise is considered to be equal with high status and everyone only slightly interested in something is considered to be ‘fake’ *rolls eyes*)
GOD, yes. If I had a dollar every time the term “TRUE FAN” was bandied out…
No….no….
Much. Much better.
“Aw-ni-may”? For pete’s sake, Mary, it’s like she’s trying to say “Awning May”.
Ah yes, English speakers trying to pronounce Japanese stuff [shudders as his ears try to close themselves in anticipation of the horror]
Yes, because nobody has enough talent to practice the correct pronunciation of another language, right?
Meh, I don’t really mind if other people mispronounce it. Just please, stop recommending English dubs of anime to me. Please, they make my ears bleed.
Yay, lets start the sub-dub wars again.
Not really my problem since English isn’t my first language so I have no patriotic need to watch dubbed anime XD
English is my first but I learned early on to avoid dubs like The Fucking Plague.
Gunsmith Cats, my poor soul, ow…
I am on the sub side of the debate. Most dubs make me want to put my fist through the tv or monitor screen. I have found a very small number that I can tolerate.
Subbed if nothing else is available (or Bryce Papenbrook is in the dub), dubbed if it’s available and/or a .hack// veteran is in it.
Ugh, this (including yesterdays comic) somehow reminds me of my yesterday workout-session during which a guy at least twice my age tried to explain to me that I used the rowing ergometer in a wrong way, because he knew how to do it correctly, because his daughter who rows for the national team taught him how to do it.
I might’ve listened to him if it wouldn’t have been for
1) one of the trainers in the gym I’ve worked with those past years taught me an effective motion that’s not exactly the real-life-rowing motion, but less straining on my knees and back, but still effective and not wrong, so I wasn’t hurting myself rowing, but doing it in a way that was good for me.
2) He interrupted me listening to music during training (which I hate, unless it’s important) and started his lecture off with “Sorry, but would you be interested in doing this the RIGHT way?”, which immediately put me in a negative mood. I’m open for people correcting my posture, if I unintentionally slump or lose tension or whatever during an exercise, but don’t start off like that.
3) He explained his way of doing it (which wasn’t that different from mine, just putting much more strain on the lower back by not rowing to an upright back, but slightly leant back eh… back, stretched legs and stretchedarms, which my way of doing the exercise did everything to avoid) and I simply told him why I couldn’t do that, while I should’ve just said “cool” and continue to do my own thing.
I’ve seen a bunch of people using the rowing ergometers in strange ways and I’ve never seen ANYONE go to them and correct their posture, even from next to them.
It’s such a simple issue, but I’m still kinda angry about it – usually because most of the time I can avoid such things by simply listening to my music.
Sorry for the off-topic rant…
On another thought, he might’ve just meant well (I didn’t know him, it could be that he specifically always explained to people next to him how to row correctly and he couldn’t look into my head and know my own expertise), but on the other hand he continued to explain a bit even after I told him that I use this specific motion because of the trainer, so… (ah, I’m sorry, I’m still a bit hung up on that. Just ignore my ranting!)
I get where he was coming from, I have stepped in the help people use exercise equipment properly when I see them using it strangely, but I ask first if they are doing it that way on purpose. That being said, he should have understood when you told him you were doing it that way for a reason.
Most probably it’s a combination of being overtly proud of his daughter, being a victim of the Dunning–Kruger effect, and age showing in his ability to understand new information and his desire to act as if every young person is their child. I mean, I’m assuming from your story that he did eventually stop pestering you because he understood and accepted your reason for doing the training your way.
tl;dr: don’t be too angry at older people, they just don’t know better.
Wow, never heard of that effect, but now I’ve learnt something new, thanks!
It could very well be that too, and you’re right, he did eventually stop (though he didn’t have that much choice because I continued listening to my music). My anger thankfully vanished (would be quite a thing to still be angry over something relatively small) – I had a somewhat bad day that day and so that kinda tipped me off. I don’t get angry that easily, which is probably why it was so strange to me. Thanks for your words 🙂
ugh, what an ass.
I’m so glad my gym doesn’t seem to have that BS. I’ve only had unsolicited advice once, from a trainer, about something he thought could cause injury. (which is about the only sort of *good* unsolicited advice. and unlike joe, he waited until I finished my set.)
…hmm, and maybe I’ll be well enough to try the gym tomorrow 🙂 yay
Mine normally doesn’t as well….well, I’ve had some people explain things to me unasked (like about four or five times in a span of about 6 years of on-off training), so it’s not that bad. I do appreciate advice if it actually can help me avoid mistakes or even accidents, just no “You’re doing it wrong and I’m here to tell you how to do it right” from a non-trainer person who has never talked to me before that.
That’s great! 😀
But diversity is the devil!
Well, you get partial points for at least getting the end of the pronunciation correct, Mary. 😛
But loose points for getting the explanation wrong.
I get the feeling this is going to end in the mother of all fights between them…
There are so many perfectly good reasons to want to punch Mary in the face and yet Malaya has still managed to find stupid and petty ones.
AWNIMAY? WHAT. That sounds so wrong. I just… I…. can’t
“Er, what is an aw-ni-may?” – Dowager Countess Violet
I thought the art style was “manga” and the animations were “anime”?
Many people (especially those who don’t know any better) use ‘animé’ as the generic term for all Japanese cartoon-style illustration.
Maybe it’s just the age I’ve gotten to, but I find I don’t give much of a crap about how people pronounce vowels anymore. Maybe because English pronounces vowels different than most other languages using the same alphabet. Or because most of the time I’ve seen nitpicking about dialects there’s some elitism and/or racism involved. Probably because I occasionally find out there’s some word I’ve been mispronouncing my whole life.
If you’re speaking Japanese, learn the Japanese pronunciation.
If you’re speaking English and using loan words from some other language, English is likely to have its own pronunciation. Probably multiple dialect versions, if it’s not a recent import.
English is a dumpster fire of a language riddled with inconsistent rules, confusing homonyms/homophones and loanwords as long as you’re able to effectively communicate your meaning (aka the purpose of language) it really shouldn’t matter if you’re 100% in keeping with the rules. Worrying about the semantics of grammar and pronunciation only really matters to linguists and pedants.
And that’s only to linguists interested in prescriptive grammar and pronunciation (Most of us are interested in descriptive grammar and how or where a specific variant came to be).
Though a certain standard of rules is necessary for understanding each other… nitpicking on someone saying a word wrong in a second, third or even fourth language, if the meaning is still understood and the context is a social one (e.g. talking with friends), is being pedantic.
Absolutely, thought it’s kind of amazing how loose that standard can be without significantly sacrificing clarity. The human brain (or at least one fluent in the language in question) is surprisingly good at glossing over even egregious linguistic errors to parse the logical meaning.
On my original point of English being terrible the word “egregious” having two meanings that are literally the opposite of each other is a good example.
I feel like someone should clarify that the way it matters to linguists is very different from the way it matters to pedants.
Also, you forgot the homographs. Nobody remembers the homographs.
To be fair, nobody remembers the heterographs either.
Well, they’re the majority. They are taken for granted.
I have no idea how you english people pronounces “anime” and now I’m too worried to ask.
I thought I knew but now I’m confused.
I’m American with English as my only language, and I say it like “ANN-ih-may.” That’s probably not technically the right way to say it. The Japanese pronunciation is likely more like what Mary says. That’s probably why Malaya is bothered by it: it sounds like Mary is trying too hard by pronouncing it that way.
We pronounce it throat-wobbler mangrove.
No. No. No. We spell it throat warbler mangrove. We pronounce it “luxury yacht”.
Heh, I love playing the straight man. I also wish I could claim the “wobbler” as a humor attempt, but alas auto correct gets the credit for that, I did type “warbler”.
I do believe I’m starting to warm up to Malaya 😀
This is what it was like watching Mike go at Faz in SP! — she’s still awful, but if she can point the awful better, she’ll be okay.
Just like David “Better-Targeted Asshole Nowadays” Willis now I think about it
“It’s just my style”
Ah, the rallying cry of shit artists everywhere
Over the years I’ve just started translating stuff people say and not worry about it. If somebody said aniME or animAY or Coke or pop or soda as long as I can figure out what they are talking about. Mostly because I don’t care and just want other aspects of the conversation to move forward.
But I totally relate to the face punching problem. For me it’s Paul Ryan and Joel Osteen. That would make conversation difficult.
Whoa, when did Malaya become my favorite character?
Omg my gravatar whyyy
Change the caps in your email! That’s how you play Grav roulette.
It really bothers me that the professor praised Mary’s work when she’s drawing anime style in a life drawing class. That’s not how life drawing classes work! What kind of professor are you!
Considering that their eyes are the size of their ears… a good one for that universe?
Anime eyes are much, MUCH larger than their ears.
Willis’ eye/ear ratio may be a bit off, but it’s a LOT closer to reality.
Have you ever heard of “Detective Conan”?
They have gigantic ears over there
At least she’s not making up anatomy.
Well, we haven’t seen the picture yet. She may have drawn the model’s penis as a bar of white light.
He tells her it’s good work, but then immediately tells the entire class to remember to break out of their habits and styles. Mary is just oblivious.
Maybe the body is fine and she just went anime on the eyes? Depending on what they’re focusing on in the moment, that could have less of an effect on the professor’s feedback.
I always feel the ghost of my Japanese teacher on my shoulder when I mispronounce Japanese based words, even ones that English has taken.
Thus, I feel obligated to say “mahn-gah” and “ah-nee-may”.
Also, that doesn’t make you elitist to pronounce it that unless you bring attention specifically to the fact that you said it that way.
Though I suppose it’d be “ah-nee-meh” if we’re actually sticking to correct pronunciation.
Where’s the line for you? Or do you pronounce every Japanese loanword as if you were speaking Japanese? Emoji, tsunami, sake, typhoon, origami, karaoke, etc?
I do a mixture of both. Ann-neh-meh is okay but mang(rhymes with hang)guh sounds just … Wrong to me. Sahkee, Sayanara and Herosheema also feel foreign in my mouth but care-ree-oh-kee is fine. Emoji is another partial loan word so I dont feel bad using ‘ee’ and origami isn’t wildly different enough for me to care. I dont think typhoon is Japanese?
Tsunami and origami are already natural Japanese words.
I pronounce it sah-keh all the time. Karaoke depends on how I feel at the time but I usually use the anglicized version.
Typhoon isn’t spelled like a loan word so I don’t use that, if it even is a loan word.
And I was unaware emoji was a loan word. I always thought it was an American created word. Either way I use anglicized.
I am remembering the Saturday Night Live bits where they riffed on that.
Obviously, it’s pronounced “A naim”.
Yeah, Mary. You’re not going to win on this one. She seems dead set on hating you.
Mary isn’t looking for friends; she’s looking for allies and followers.
But the only thing she will find in Malaya is a Punch-in-a-box
I like how in panel 3 Malaya’s expression indicates that she feels kind of bad about wanting to punch Mary in the face, but she’s not going to change her mind.
i must have misheard somebody pronounce it before because in my mind i hear it as “an ni mY”
Is there a language on Earth where “e” makes that sound?
Hm. Mary strikes me as the kind of person who would hate anime for a plethora of religious/ideological reasons. It’s kind of surprising to me that she’s using the style in her artwork at all. Still, if she likes anime, she can’t be ALL bad, right? 😛
Maybe she watched/read Hellsing and identifies with the philosophy of Iscariot Organization? Even if they are filthy catholics.
That makes….FAR more sense than it should.
And now I’m imagining Mary as Enrico Maxwell. And not the canon one- the abridged version.
We really need an Anderson to have a wee chat with her…
They can team up with each other, even if they loath each other, as long as they shit on someone else. Been my experience.
…oh shit. You’re right.
There is a sub genre of Christian anime, it is . . . disturbing.
I am equal parts interested and mortified… please tell me more…
Run while you can…
Please no, don’t make me, I am still in therapy from the last time I was exposed to it.
Damn you are really triggering my “Curiosity traumatized the cat” desire…
Oh my God. Mary is the croissant girl.
Darn. I was so close to making the link work. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=789s_Vs-q-o
OH MY GOD SHE IS
I always appreciate Marco’s line about “croissant girl” too because it like, builds on the happy of “princess Marco.”
>.<
…
there's still a corner of my brain ranting about how she is also pronouncing "croissant" wrong.
Ha ha! Me too.
Mary don’t fucking ruin Anime for me you shit.
Also, Malaya. Point.
The big question I have, with Mary’s kinda rigid and judgemental lifestyle….. which anime titles is she interested int?
(It would be hilarious if she was into Hentai).
I’m gonna guess a Sailor Moon and Card Captors fan, and I do specifically mean the dubs that took out all the homosexual subtext
Trust me. That’s a cognitive disconnect bridge they can handle.
Smooti is right, but an Ex of mine was super into Haruhi (melancholy of) and was fundie. Or boardline.
They even did the dance number at the end of the show.
…
Highschool was weird.
I sincerely hope that this comes up at some point.
agreed
I’m gonna go on a limb and say Willis won’t get into details because it might end up dating the strip.
That or he probably doesn’t know what anime a millennial teenage girl who hates homosexuality would be into.
Excellent points on both parts.
But Irony points if it was “Yuri on Ice.”
THEY’re JUST BROS.
“I’m going to punch your face! …IN THE FACE.”
Nooooooooooooooooooooooooooo………!
She is into Christian Sonic porn.
This was supposed to be a response to Goki.
Fucking hell. I thought Mary couldnt get worse. Then she turns out to be one of those people who insists on pronouncing shit wrong because they think it makes them sound smart
Mary likes anime? Does that make Mary better or anime worse?
I’ve been wondering the same thing all day. I choose to believe it means Mary has good taste in art, which only makes her somewhat better than Hitler.
(Seriously, look up the dude’s paintings. No sense of perspective at all, no wonder he flunked out.)
And now for some good news!
LOL!
You do realise that that idea is likely to make conspiracy nuts so terrified they may consider suicide.
OHHH!!
How rude! You’re not giving Mary’s personality the credit it deserves for making you want to punch her in the face. You should apologize to her personality at once.
And then punch it in the face.
Mary just has a really punchable face.
She’s just pronouncing it the French way, and Willis is too lazy to put in the accent: animé.