Hi Yuta I tried to subscribe to your lessons earlier today. Its been an hour and haven't received anything yet. Are there some issues or how long does it usually take?
@@amb4367 Thanks for this! I just assumed at least you get a confirmation email or something but still haven't received anything. But good to know, I'll wait a little longer.
Japanese proper nouns are witchcraft, I can usually figure them out but sometimes I get stumped and have to look them up. The best example would be 渡橋泰水 from 涼宮ハルヒ, I spent a couple minutes trying to figure out her name before I looked it up, then I turned to the next page and found the characters arguing about how to read it which made me feel a little bit better about my bad Japanese.
In Japanese you're theorically allowed to make any kanji sound as you want, and manga characters' names tend to have inexpected pronounciation so don't judge you're skills based on how accurate you got a name
@@nmo3882 I wish we could do that in English. I wanted to name our daughter Sarah but have it spelled Henry or something, but my partner wouldn't let me.
It would have been interesting to see what radicals/parts/kanji of the name they were talking about (maybe via highlighting or arrows) when they said stuff like "Oh, I see the kanji for crimson" or "oh I see the radical". Or maybe have some furigana or romaji on top so that non japanese speakers can follow along
Well I can help you a little with that even though it's in hindsight. At 3:12, when the girl was mentioning the radical in "ryoushou", the kanji she is referring to is 承 . It looks a little similar to the kanji in that name. The kanji for "crimson" that they are referring to is 紅 . It's pronounced "kurenai" so that's where they're getting the "ku" from. Also, I think one girl was thinking the name could be "erisu" because the right radical of 紅 looks like エ, which is katakana "e". ~:~
It would probably be a little too much work to do I guess, but basically the idea here is that kanji have smaller parts (commonly refered to as radicals even though that's not really the proper term) that repeat and combine to form other kanji. This comprises most kanji (if you're curious search up keisei moji, they comprise like 80% of kanji) and these "radicals" work in two ways: 1. to indicate the meaning of the kanji i.e. the (⺡) radical indicates to you that the kanji has to do with water 泡 (bubble) or 汁 (soup) or 池 (pond) and so on. 2. to indicate what one of the readings of the kanji is, taking an example from the video a bunch of them assumed 火憐 was pronunced ka-RIN because literally every other kanji that has that complex part you can see on the right/left, i.e. 隣, 鄰, 燐, 鱗, 麟 can all be read as "rin" EXCEPT FOR 憐 which is read as REN istead, making the reading of the name be KA-REN. This honestly just goes to show NisioIsin's (the author of the series) insane handle on the Japanese language lol.
@@standinginmist Don't give up on kanji! It's actually extremely useful and interesting. Sometimes with kanji you can tell the meaning of a word even if you don't know how it's pronounced (and the pronunciation is often similar for kanji with similar radicals anyway). Plus even though it's hard at first, once you get used to it you'll find you can't live without it. Alsobecauseifyoudidnthavekanjiallthesentenceswouldlooklikethisandtherewouldalsobenodistinctionbetweenhomophones. 😂😊 Oh and katakana is important too. 😂 Most katakana words sound like English anyway. 頑張って！(がんばって！) ~:~
People's names and place names are so difficult for us foreigners so its a bit comforting to know that even Japanese sometimes struggle with them. I started an Anki deck a while back for names and its grown quite large. It's helped quite a bit but I still often encounter names I can't read.
When it comes to fictional characters, there are usually two ways to figure it out - one is they use the IRL kanji for names, and if not, you need to see through the wordplay involved, and it varies thematically from anime to anime. Nino's example was quite obvious if you were aware that all the siblings were named after numbers from 1-5 (一二三四五）
This is why Tanigo-san, the CEO of Cover Corp got his nickname of Yagoo because one of his talents misread* his name during an introduction lol. (*Misread the first two syllables)
I spell my name (Kurisu) as 久里須 in Kanji. But I didn't choose the characters. The owner at the hanko shop in Akihabara I bought it from did. But I did end up using that hanko... registered it with my bank account and everything when I lived in Osaka to teach English... But in reality, I mostly used it when I received packages from Amazon, haha. When I wrote my name down for students, I just did it in Katakana.
My hanko is my first name in katakana, I have never met a foreigner with a kanji one! I even thought it wasn't allowed? (Or am I imagining that last part...)
Was not expecting to see Matsuoka Yoshitsugu's name in there but it was really such a nice surprise! The thing is, I don't recognise his first name by itself, but if I see his full name, I can totally tell. This is one of the seiyuu names I struggle to memorise, but now I know why, even Japanese struggle to read it by itself! hahaha the "matsu" and "oka" kanji appear often in other names so I can totally read them but yeah the "yoshitsugu" part is very difficult to memorise somehow haha
As someone who's been learning for a while, it seems like there are common readings that can quite safely be assumed, most of the time, but there are often several other readings for other names. 天、太、郎、次、乃、and 野 are all fairly common and seem to keep the same reading, and 田 seems to almost always be either ta or da, but the on-hover reading plug-in that I use often shows 10 different readings for names using other kanji
@@loqvrr9086 Hahahaha Nisio be like that huh. It's Sorakara Kuu. The main character from the Densetsu series. Haven't read that one yet but i've heard good things about it. Not one book has been translated yet tho. As far as i know
Ooh, wonderful examples: I wonder if Mr. Yuta would do a video on Japanese names? They seem "creative"! I like that ability to create an unusual name with some sort of reference meaning in it too. Think it's important people have such names.
Not sure about bakura and tsukumo but all of the other ones are words/names that most people in japan should be able to read :) eg kujaku is just the word/kanji for peacock
@@Diyasterous for Japanese, some of them are existing but rare Japanese name, but for foreigner who study Japanese can't really read these, especially Tsukumo and Izayoi, for me I'd just read it as Kyujukyu and Jurokuya...lol
Now I want an anime where there are like three people with different names, but they use the same kanji... Would probably make translators cry, though.
this reminds me of that part in death note when misa amane read light's name as "tsuki" instead of "light", which actually made me think why 月 = ライト haha
Should've done that one, but then again it's probably an obvious one. the reason 月 is raito is because that's the pronunciation the parents chose (it's a kira kira name). Also if you look at the kanji meaning it roughly translates as the Lunar Night God or something like that... so lunar light? Not sure but in Japanese you can make up unconventional readings for names.
If it takes 10 years to read Japanese newspaper, it takes 1000 years to never get Japanese names right, because it's a free-for-all, and it's forever changing. You can write whatever you like and say it's pronounced however you like. For example, you say "Hawkless" but you write "Little birds play".
So wait people can make up names with whichever kanji they like and pronounce it the way they want?? I thought by learning all the radicals figuring out names would be easier 😭
@@cassiadsouza709 for most names you pick between the few preexisting readings for each kanji and read it that way, but there does exist special poetic names where the reading doesn't match the writing at all (it is still related though) like the name 小鳥遊 if read as-is would be along the lines of Kotoriasobi or somehing (literally small birds play). However it has a poetic reading of Takanashi (literally no eagle/hawk) because little birds can play when there's no predators.
@@DragN_H3art Now you've made me think of Ina from Hololive EN lol. Update: Your reply to someone else made me think of Kiara, also from Hololive EN. Coincidence? I think not. XD
@@DragN_H3artDoes that mean chinese Hanzi are easier to read? Since from my experience, the different characters actually keep key components of the original characters pronounciation.
The Quintessential Quintuplets must be popular over there. It seems like everyone watched that anime lol. Right when Kurisu was the answer I knew it had to be from Stein's Gate. Kinda surprised that no one got the anime.
One of my favorite actors is 福崎那由他 (Fukusaki Nayuta). His given name 那由他 translates as a massive number, 10 to the 60th power (10^60). Why a kanji exists for 10^60, I don't know because there is almost no practical use for that number. There are estimated to be 'only' 10^24 stars in the observable universe and 10^82 atoms, so the practical application for Nayuta's name is theoretical. Although, in my humble opinion, 福崎那由他 does rank 1.4 Nayutas on the Galactic Hot Man Scale. So there is that.
Not sure about Japanese specifically, but a lot of languages use comically large numbers to convey something beyond comprehension. An example in English would be 'gazillion'. The kanji for 10^60 could be a Japanese version of that.
I was surprised that none of them knew Kurisu from Steins Gate. The anime was huge here in Japan and any otaku could read it. But it was 10 years ago and they seem pretty young, so that may be why...
I once worked with a guy whose surname was 東海林. There's no way you're guessing the reading of that unless you already know it. And then there's the time a guy whose (given) name was something like 精志 transferred in, and the whole office was speculating on how it was pronounced and my dirty mind could only think of... (It was, in fact, pronounced that way.)
@@frafraplanner9277 東海林 is しょうじ (Shouji), 精志 is せいし (Seishi). The story behind 東海林 is that a guy, Toukairin, was the majordomo (荘司, しょうじ) of an estate, but with the Japanese calling people by their titles in lieu of their names, his name, Toukairin, ended up being pronounced as his title, Shouji.
Someday someone will do a "are Italians able to conjugate their verbs?" and... From first hand experience, I can already tell will be much more difficult; I wonder why there are so frequently pockets of difficulty or uncertainty in natural languages...
@@ChaosSwissroIl nope x) for French, Google lists 16 different tenses, but we only really use 12 of those when speaking (of which 6 are just the composite version of the other 6 btw). so if you ask a French person on the street to use any of the others, there's a good chance they won't know how (or won't even know what tense you're talking about lol)
Holy...I actually got Kurisu XD I knew how to read the Ri and Su (I thought it was Su, wasn't certain), and the first name with Risu in the second part of their name that I thought of was Kurisu. Then my mind got swayed by Arisu, and thought of Alice in SAO
it just gotta suck to have 3 written languages to keep up with. even the nationals have a hard time understanding their own language. also kudos to everyone recognising and knowing the shows characters and even voice actors. damn.
I found out recently that Japanese people didnt know how to pronounce 古見さん correctly. They think it pronounce something like Ko↑Mi↓, and then the correctly one is Ko↓Mi↑. They found out how to pronounce it right after watching the anime
Basically, Japanese people watch anime on TV, and Steins;Gate was aired in Japan 10 years ago at 2:30 a.m. on weekdays. The people interviewed were randomly selected members of the general public, and unless you're a huge otaku, you probably don't remember anime from ten years ago.
The last name is very much made up to work with the plot. Kurisu went to USA to study quantum physics and the MC jokingly calls her Kuristina for Christina, just coz she looked like she'd have an English name.
I think that's because they just previously talked about Nino from Quintessential Quintuplets. So with that train of thought, they just associated him with his character from that anime.
@@masterp443 the camera angle for one of the interviewees shows part of the street. I don't recognise the specific place but it'd easily be either Akiba or Denden Town.
This video made me feel good about learning Japanese. However, I know some people aren’t always familiar with Japanese anime names. I watch anime and I’m not always familiar with their names in different languages.
It isn't in anything other than names though, someone who can read traditional Chinese characters and understand them in Standard Mandarin will have a way easier time in Japan than someone who doesn't; most kanji/hanzi used on signs and in food menus and stuff like this are direct analogs of each other.
@@Hooga89 Well yeah. That's why I said *names* specifically. lol I had no trouble in Japan reading signs...even though the characters are slightly changed.
@@Marc-. Yeah, but naming conventions in Japan aren’t the same as in China and Korea, so people’s surnames and given names always seem so…not like names. 😂
Lol I taught as an ALT and a student asked how 紅葉 is read (it's Kureha, which is what her name is) and I read it as Kouha. Also 道我 is read as Touga, but I misread it as Michiwa 😂
TBF I'm just learning Japanese for like a week now, I can read hiragana quickly but absolutely have no idea what I'm reading. For katakana I'm still practicing but definitely not struggling. But oh boy looking at the kanji overwhelms me. I'm memorizing radicals for the moment and all I can say is Kudos to little Japanese kids learning all of these starting elementary.
She explains it at 3:05 . Kanji (usually) have parts of them that convey something about the sound. She says part of the character looks like one from a different word (I thought of the same word when I I saw it too). For names of places and people it gets more complicated but it still works most of the time. All they are doing is looking for things that look like parts they know, if they don't know for sure.
I'd say it's a mix between which readings they know are most common for those kanji when used for names (not just the nanori, but on and kun readings as well), and choosing which readings render something that sounds like an actual name to them.
I like how it went from 'i have no idea how to read this' to 'oh yeah thats a voice actor' Its probably not quite what happened but its still very silly
Japanese names can be unusual. For example, even the reading of a common surname like 長谷川 doesn't make much sense when looking at the individual characters. Every Japanese person will know how that name is read because it's so common, but if you showed it someone learning Japanese they wouldn't be able to guess it.
how are names said that in english mean something like the girl in super cub is little bear. would a friend say in Japanese hello little bear because that is what koguma means.?
Quick question from a non-speaker to learners: do you think Japanese would work if early on in the language's history, they decided to give each Kanji no more than 1 pronunciation? I'm not sure, because the only reason Kunyomi and Onyomi are different is because of Kanji's Chinese origin. It's very annoying to me, but at the same time I have a hard time imagining that.
Yes, it for sure would have. The vast majority of vocabulary from Chinese is just straight-up copied over words with the pronunciation tweaked to fit Japanese sounds. There are words that are from Japanese that were then written with kanji later, but these could have easily either 1) taken the Chinese reading or 2) been written using a sort of early version of hiragana. This obviously couldn't have happened because words were being taken from different parts of China into different parts of Japan, and there was no central government willing to decide these things, but if we pretend a bit, it would have worked.
@@voxtopass That's interesting. The only justification I could think of to give Kanji different On and Kun readings is to differentiate the meaning and function. I'm guessing because Japanese syllabaries are so limited you have to give extra effort on figuring out the hiragana/katakana.
No it wouldn't, because native Japanese words would still need to be written somehow since japanese wasn't a written language until they encountered Chinese characters. Kanji was used as a way to write native Japanese words first, and over time Chinese loan words were introduced. Take みず - it gained the kanji 水 to write it before hiragana and katakana were invented, but loan words like 水準 すいじゅん had to use the same kanji anyway because how else would you write it?
@@masterp443 ??? You know that Japanese people...spoke Japanese back then, right? There is no rule that says they needed to use the Chinese way of writing any words they already had. I'm not sure if you've never heard of kanji being used just for their sound (this is like, a huge thing in both Chinese and Japanese) but there is nothing that connects 水 with the sounds みず. I don't know why you're pretending like this is some crazy, unanswerable question, when it was already in my first comment before you replied.
@@voxtopass yes, but they didn't have their own writing system thousands of years ago. This whole hypothetical assumption is based on the fact that Japanese people will eventually adopt kanji into their language, so under these circumstances, kanji having multiple pronunciations (a Japanese reading and a Chinese one) would be inevitable.
🙏Hello Yuta❤Warm wishes on New Year to all of our wonderful and very special friend and Family❤ 🎆🌸May you have a meaningful and successful year 2022 that brings you many joys and great big smiles! 😊 I love to travel because there is always something new to taste. ❤ The souls I meet along the way leave an imprint on me and my own personal growth. I see things in awe and make memories.
Imagine not being able to read/make sure of every names and words in your own language. I mean Kanji is a god gifted gorgeous characters, but can also be a pain in the ass sometimes.
👀 my friend send me the her kanji name and told me if you copy it into the translation it will F up for sure . Kanji maybe the same but different in meaning
Hey, Yuta. I've been told the 1988 adaptation of Legend of the Galactic Heroes uses a lot of jargon and formal register Japanese. Maybe you could do a video on that.
Learn Japanese with me -> bit.ly/3qs7yOp
For Japanese names, if the reading is out of the ordinary, would people take special care to explain it when they are introducing themselves?
Yuta, again you look Handsome!
You are Flirting with your Audience!
Hi Yuta I tried to subscribe to your lessons earlier today. Its been an hour and haven't received anything yet. Are there some issues or how long does it usually take?
@@mrpenguin2247 Wenn I Subscribed the 1st Leason didn't come on the same day. Also, you can't expect to recive Lessons every day.
@@amb4367 Thanks for this! I just assumed at least you get a confirmation email or something but still haven't received anything. But good to know, I'll wait a little longer.
Japanese proper nouns are witchcraft, I can usually figure them out but sometimes I get stumped and have to look them up. The best example would be 渡橋泰水 from 涼宮ハルヒ, I spent a couple minutes trying to figure out her name before I looked it up, then I turned to the next page and found the characters arguing about how to read it which made me feel a little bit better about my bad Japanese.
In Japanese you're theorically allowed to make any kanji sound as you want, and manga characters' names tend to have inexpected pronounciation so don't judge you're skills based on how accurate you got a name
@@nmo3882 I wish we could do that in English. I wanted to name our daughter Sarah but have it spelled Henry or something, but my partner wouldn't let me.
I'm impressed that they came up with something harder to pronounce than UK placenames.
渡橋泰水 is probably a pun right? Peaceful water over the bridge? Yasumi meaning rest? Something like that, I haven't read/seen Haruhi.
My name is pretty much impossible. I know some one who just used the English pronouciation run for 走
It would have been interesting to see what radicals/parts/kanji of the name they were talking about (maybe via highlighting or arrows) when they said stuff like "Oh, I see the kanji for crimson" or "oh I see the radical". Or maybe have some furigana or romaji on top so that non japanese speakers can follow along
Well I can help you a little with that even though it's in hindsight. At 3:12, when the girl was mentioning the radical in "ryoushou", the kanji she is referring to is 承 . It looks a little similar to the kanji in that name. The kanji for "crimson" that they are referring to is 紅 . It's pronounced "kurenai" so that's where they're getting the "ku" from. Also, I think one girl was thinking the name could be "erisu" because the right radical of 紅 looks like エ, which is katakana "e".
~:~
It would probably be a little too much work to do I guess, but basically the idea here is that kanji have smaller parts (commonly refered to as radicals even though that's not really the proper term) that repeat and combine to form other kanji. This comprises most kanji (if you're curious search up keisei moji, they comprise like 80% of kanji) and these "radicals" work in two ways:
1. to indicate the meaning of the kanji i.e. the (⺡) radical indicates to you that the kanji has to do with water 泡 (bubble) or 汁 (soup) or 池 (pond) and so on.
2. to indicate what one of the readings of the kanji is, taking an example from the video a bunch of them assumed 火憐 was pronunced ka-RIN because literally every other kanji that has that complex part you can see on the right/left, i.e. 隣, 鄰, 燐, 鱗, 麟 can all be read as "rin" EXCEPT FOR 憐 which is read as REN istead, making the reading of the name be KA-REN. This honestly just goes to show NisioIsin's (the author of the series) insane handle on the Japanese language lol.
@@harshmnr dam nvm hiragana is enough for me i guess
@@standinginmist Don't give up on kanji! It's actually extremely useful and interesting. Sometimes with kanji you can tell the meaning of a word even if you don't know how it's pronounced (and the pronunciation is often similar for kanji with similar radicals anyway). Plus even though it's hard at first, once you get used to it you'll find you can't live without it.
Alsobecauseifyoudidnthavekanjiallthesentenceswouldlooklikethisandtherewouldalsobenodistinctionbetweenhomophones. 😂😊
Oh and katakana is important too. 😂 Most katakana words sound like English anyway.
頑張って！(がんばって！)
~:~
@@harshmnr HAGSGGE alrightt I'll try my best thank you bestie😎💪🍭
People's names and place names are so difficult for us foreigners so its a bit comforting to know that even Japanese sometimes struggle with them. I started an Anki deck a while back for names and its grown quite large. It's helped quite a bit but I still often encounter names I can't read.
@@dasheru Look up the Anki shared deck ‘10k Japanese Proper Noun’ has names and places
When it comes to fictional characters, there are usually two ways to figure it out - one is they use the IRL kanji for names, and if not, you need to see through the wordplay involved, and it varies thematically from anime to anime.
Nino's example was quite obvious if you were aware that all the siblings were named after numbers from 1-5 (一二三四五）
I chuckled when the one girl actually stuttered saying Araragi.
shitsurei, kamimashita.
Ararararagi... 😂
The one wearing the backpack? 😄
@@captsorghum yes this one
@@captsorghum A real-life Hachikuji!!
This is why Tanigo-san, the CEO of Cover Corp got his nickname of Yagoo because one of his talents misread* his name during an introduction lol.
(*Misread the first two syllables)
The best girl.
@@tian7743 i think it was subaru
A life changing 草 moment.
And became a star
YAGOO supremacy
What I could learn from this video is that Quessential Quintuplets is way more popular in Japan than steins gate
it has recency bias going for it
They seem pretty young so that may be why.
Steins Gate was much bigger at that time than what the Quintuplets is now.
a damn shame, really
I spell my name (Kurisu) as 久里須 in Kanji. But I didn't choose the characters. The owner at the hanko shop in Akihabara I bought it from did. But I did end up using that hanko... registered it with my bank account and everything when I lived in Osaka to teach English... But in reality, I mostly used it when I received packages from Amazon, haha. When I wrote my name down for students, I just did it in Katakana.
My hanko is my first name in katakana, I have never met a foreigner with a kanji one! I even thought it wasn't allowed? (Or am I imagining that last part...)
It’s allowed for informal Hanko seals for everyday use.
My last name is Kuwahara and there's definitely a kanji way to write it, but my hanko is クワハラ since I'm a gaijin.
Was not expecting to see Matsuoka Yoshitsugu's name in there but it was really such a nice surprise! The thing is, I don't recognise his first name by itself, but if I see his full name, I can totally tell. This is one of the seiyuu names I struggle to memorise, but now I know why, even Japanese struggle to read it by itself! hahaha the "matsu" and "oka" kanji appear often in other names so I can totally read them but yeah the "yoshitsugu" part is very difficult to memorise somehow haha
As someone who's been learning for a while, it seems like there are common readings that can quite safely be assumed, most of the time, but there are often several other readings for other names. 天、太、郎、次、乃、and 野 are all fairly common and seem to keep the same reading, and 田 seems to almost always be either ta or da, but the on-hover reading plug-in that I use often shows 10 different readings for names using other kanji
watched your channel grow sooo well....subscribed to the channel 6 years ago and i feel soo happy for this growth
Nisio Ishin's names are always a good test because they are super idiosyncratic. That's why you get alot of 名乗り in his books
Gotta hate 空々空
@@mistbornlazarus2611 how the hell do u read that ? i’m thinking そらぞらそら くうぐうくう からがらから
@@loqvrr9086 Hahahaha Nisio be like that huh.
It's Sorakara Kuu. The main character from the Densetsu series. Haven't read that one yet but i've heard good things about it. Not one book has been translated yet tho. As far as i know
0:28 these two look amazing together and their style is so ughggvhj i love them.
Yugioh series got a lot of interesting kanji naming for example 貘良(bakura) 孔雀(kujaku) 九十九(tsukumo) 十六夜(izayoi) 榊 (sakaki) 不動(fudo)
Ooh, wonderful examples: I wonder if Mr. Yuta would do a video on Japanese names? They seem "creative"! I like that ability to create an unusual name with some sort of reference meaning in it too. Think it's important people have such names.
Not sure about bakura and tsukumo but all of the other ones are words/names that most people in japan should be able to read :) eg kujaku is just the word/kanji for peacock
@@Diyasterous for Japanese, some of them are existing but rare Japanese name, but for foreigner who study Japanese can't really read these, especially Tsukumo and Izayoi, for me I'd just read it as Kyujukyu and Jurokuya...lol
Now I want an anime where there are like three people with different names, but they use the same kanji...
Would probably make translators cry, though.
other than bakura the rest are pretty common for japanese
Yes!! I wanted to see a video like this! It’s cool seeing how Japanese people don’t really know those names that well.
Can’t fool me Yuta I saw the サンプル テキスト
this reminds me of that part in death note when misa amane read light's name as "tsuki" instead of "light", which actually made me think why 月 = ライト haha
Should've done that one, but then again it's probably an obvious one. the reason 月 is raito is because that's the pronunciation the parents chose (it's a kira kira name). Also if you look at the kanji meaning it roughly translates as the Lunar Night God or something like that... so lunar light? Not sure but in Japanese you can make up unconventional readings for names.
It is “ateji”
My favorite is the character 四月一日
Watanuki from xxxHolic's name is spelt as April 1st.
I absolutely love these kind of videos
If it takes 10 years to read Japanese newspaper, it takes 1000 years to never get Japanese names right, because it's a free-for-all, and it's forever changing. You can write whatever you like and say it's pronounced however you like. For example, you say "Hawkless" but you write "Little birds play".
another one is you say "in front of two" (ninomae) and write "one" (一)
So wait people can make up names with whichever kanji they like and pronounce it the way they want?? I thought by learning all the radicals figuring out names would be easier 😭
@@cassiadsouza709 for most names you pick between the few preexisting readings for each kanji and read it that way, but there does exist special poetic names where the reading doesn't match the writing at all (it is still related though)
like the name 小鳥遊 if read as-is would be along the lines of Kotoriasobi or somehing (literally small birds play). However it has a poetic reading of Takanashi (literally no eagle/hawk) because little birds can play when there's no predators.
@@DragN_H3art Now you've made me think of Ina from Hololive EN lol.
Update: Your reply to someone else made me think of Kiara, also from Hololive EN. Coincidence? I think not. XD
@@DragN_H3artDoes that mean chinese Hanzi are easier to read? Since from my experience, the different characters actually keep key components of the original characters pronounciation.
The Quintessential Quintuplets must be popular over there. It seems like everyone watched that anime lol. Right when Kurisu was the answer I knew it had to be from Stein's Gate. Kinda surprised that no one got the anime.
One of my favorite actors is 福崎那由他 (Fukusaki Nayuta). His given name 那由他 translates as a massive number, 10 to the 60th power (10^60). Why a kanji exists for 10^60, I don't know because there is almost no practical use for that number. There are estimated to be 'only' 10^24 stars in the observable universe and 10^82 atoms, so the practical application for Nayuta's name is theoretical. Although, in my humble opinion, 福崎那由他 does rank 1.4 Nayutas on the Galactic Hot Man Scale. So there is that.
Not sure about Japanese specifically, but a lot of languages use comically large numbers to convey something beyond comprehension. An example in English would be 'gazillion'. The kanji for 10^60 could be a Japanese version of that.
I think it's from Sanskrit
I was surprised that none of them knew Kurisu from Steins Gate.
The anime was huge here in Japan and any otaku could read it.
But it was 10 years ago and they seem pretty young, so that may be why...
I once worked with a guy whose surname was 東海林. There's no way you're guessing the reading of that unless you already know it. And then there's the time a guy whose (given) name was something like 精志 transferred in, and the whole office was speculating on how it was pronounced and my dirty mind could only think of... (It was, in fact, pronounced that way.)
How were they pronounced?
@@frafraplanner9277 東海林 is しょうじ (Shouji), 精志 is せいし (Seishi). The story behind 東海林 is that a guy, Toukairin, was the majordomo (荘司, しょうじ) of an estate, but with the Japanese calling people by their titles in lieu of their names, his name, Toukairin, ended up being pronounced as his title, Shouji.
@@usageunit good god ,I read it as Toukarin,I would have never have guessed that
What horrible parents named their son like that? 😨 I feel sorry for that man in his school days.
@@usageunit lol it does seem abit nsfw without any context
Someday someone will do a "are Italians able to conjugate their verbs?" and... From first hand experience, I can already tell will be much more difficult; I wonder why there are so frequently pockets of difficulty or uncertainty in natural languages...
as a polish person, i sometimes need to check how to properly conjugate some verbs, it doesn't happen often tho
@@ChaosSwissroIl nope x)
for French, Google lists 16 different tenses, but we only really use 12 of those when speaking (of which 6 are just the composite version of the other 6 btw). so if you ask a French person on the street to use any of the others, there's a good chance they won't know how (or won't even know what tense you're talking about lol)
How to pronounce words with "ough".
@@raywa5821 Rel
@@ChaosSwissroIl Yep
Imagine misreading "Tanigo" as "Yagoo". Couldn't be me..
matsuoka san is incredible, i love his role in re:zero
Holy...I actually got Kurisu XD I knew how to read the Ri and Su (I thought it was Su, wasn't certain), and the first name with Risu in the second part of their name that I thought of was Kurisu. Then my mind got swayed by Arisu, and thought of Alice in SAO
it just gotta suck to have 3 written languages to keep up with. even the nationals have a hard time understanding their own language. also kudos to everyone recognising and knowing the shows characters and even voice actors. damn.
Nah, they understand their language just fine. Names just have a lot of weird irregularities.
love that sweater it looks really good on you
I found out recently that Japanese people didnt know how to pronounce 古見さん correctly. They think it pronounce something like Ko↑Mi↓, and then the correctly one is Ko↓Mi↑. They found out how to pronounce it right after watching the anime
Shikona for rikishi can be very difficult to read as well. That would be an interesting video, see if people can read shikona
ゆうたさんの新しい顔にやっているんですね!ひげもかっこいいな～!
にあっている*（似合っている)
I like this! I love to guess Japanese name as I am learning kanji. 😆
Any time I feel frustrated with my boomer Japanese boss, I watch Yuta and I am healed.
*_the beard/mustache style suits you man, almost makes me wanna grow mine again_*
I'm surprised they didn't know steins gate, I guess it's more of a classic in the west than it is in Japan?
out of all the anime mentioned, Steins Gate was the only one i've heard of!
Basically, Japanese people watch anime on TV, and Steins;Gate was aired in Japan 10 years ago at 2:30 a.m. on weekdays. The people interviewed were randomly selected members of the general public, and unless you're a huge otaku, you probably don't remember anime from ten years ago.
@@silpheedTandy you haven’t heard of Sword Art Online?
The last name is very much made up to work with the plot. Kurisu went to USA to study quantum physics and the MC jokingly calls her Kuristina for Christina, just coz she looked like she'd have an English name.
Funny how most of them (except the SAO dude) recognised Matsuoka from Fuutarou, not from Inosuke
I think that's because they just previously talked about Nino from Quintessential Quintuplets. So with that train of thought, they just associated him with his character from that anime.
Their reactions were adorable 😭
I thought this was weird but then realized I speak english and our language is the combination of several languages and it's absolute anarchy.
I would take a wild guess you were filming this in Akihabara? All of them went ahhh... when it was revealed that the surname is Araragi...
Is araragi name common?
@@Kramer_. Not sure, but that is something that comes immediately to mind when you also mention the Monogatari series in the same sentence.
This is definitely not Akihabara
Their accents sound like they're from Osaka
Probably denden town in Osaka, kind of their version of Akiba
@@masterp443 the camera angle for one of the interviewees shows part of the street. I don't recognise the specific place but it'd easily be either Akiba or Denden Town.
This video made me feel good about learning Japanese. However, I know some people aren’t always familiar with Japanese anime names. I watch anime and I’m not always familiar with their names in different languages.
Well, i'm glad I was able to guess and read Kurisu, even though I had never seen her name written in kanji before :D
You should've included Masayoshi (正義) from Assassination Classroom and see if they read it as "Justice" XDDD
Or the villain from Persona 5.
This was a good one!
Sometimes I wish someone could ask me any anime related questions in street. This looks kinda fun 🙂❤️
And this is why I am so thankful for the furigana on my attendance sheets
My favourite hard to read name will forever be 合田一人. If you didn't watch 攻殻機動隊 S.A.C. you'll probably guess wrong on how 一人 is read.
As an American who learned Chinese. Every time I see Japanese kanji names, I feel like it's just anarchy.
It isn't in anything other than names though, someone who can read traditional Chinese characters and understand them in Standard Mandarin will have a way easier time in Japan than someone who doesn't; most kanji/hanzi used on signs and in food menus and stuff like this are direct analogs of each other.
@@Hooga89 Well yeah. That's why I said *names* specifically. lol I had no trouble in Japan reading signs...even though the characters are slightly changed.
Well it does carry the same meaning thou, I bet that character with 红in her name would 100% have a red hair in the anime
@@Marc-. Yeah, but naming conventions in Japan aren’t the same as in China and Korea, so people’s surnames and given names always seem so…not like names. 😂
Lol I taught as an ALT and a student asked how 紅葉 is read (it's Kureha, which is what her name is) and I read it as Kouha. Also 道我 is read as Touga, but I misread it as Michiwa 😂
Smoothest advertising I've seen on youtube. 12/10
TBF I'm just learning Japanese for like a week now, I can read hiragana quickly but absolutely have no idea what I'm reading. For katakana I'm still practicing but definitely not struggling. But oh boy looking at the kanji overwhelms me. I'm memorizing radicals for the moment and all I can say is Kudos to little Japanese kids learning all of these starting elementary.
Best 9 seconds long intro so far
What do Japanese people look for when determining what sound each kanji in the name makes?
She explains it at 3:05 . Kanji (usually) have parts of them that convey something about the sound. She says part of the character looks like one from a different word (I thought of the same word when I I saw it too). For names of places and people it gets more complicated but it still works most of the time.
All they are doing is looking for things that look like parts they know, if they don't know for sure.
I'd say it's a mix between which readings they know are most common for those kanji when used for names (not just the nanori, but on and kun readings as well), and choosing which readings render something that sounds like an actual name to them.
1:30
shitsure, Kamimashita
Damn so many cultured people in this video.
That Japanese Man Yuta: Japanese girls don't go "ara ara"
Japanese girl: 1:32
I like how it went from 'i have no idea how to read this' to 'oh yeah thats a voice actor'
Its probably not quite what happened but its still very silly
I havent watched a video for a little bit, but have you always had this many subs?
all hail our harem lord tsugu tsugu is mentioned 😂🤣😂🤣
Many hsd difficulty reading Tsugu Tsugu's first name in Kanji. Which means his name was based on old Japanese, like a samurai? 😅
Japanese names can be unusual. For example, even the reading of a common surname like 長谷川 doesn't make much sense when looking at the individual characters.
Every Japanese person will know how that name is read because it's so common, but if you showed it someone learning Japanese they wouldn't be able to guess it.
I recognize the NO in Minori because of NOgizaka.
It seems that the kanji is fitted in afterwards, the names don't even need kanji to be expressed, nor can it be read just with kanji.
Woooah I love the new haircut 💯🔥👍
1:32 so she is hachikuji in real life i see
Before watching: I thought you pronounced your name carefully when offering a business card due to the difficulty in reading names...
how are names said that in english mean something like the girl in super cub is little bear.
would a friend say in Japanese hello little bear because that is what koguma means.?
I miss the サンプル テキスト
We love サンプル テキスト
😄
Quick question from a non-speaker to learners: do you think Japanese would work if early on in the language's history, they decided to give each Kanji no more than 1 pronunciation? I'm not sure, because the only reason Kunyomi and Onyomi are different is because of Kanji's Chinese origin. It's very annoying to me, but at the same time I have a hard time imagining that.
Yes, it for sure would have. The vast majority of vocabulary from Chinese is just straight-up copied over words with the pronunciation tweaked to fit Japanese sounds. There are words that are from Japanese that were then written with kanji later, but these could have easily either 1) taken the Chinese reading or 2) been written using a sort of early version of hiragana.
This obviously couldn't have happened because words were being taken from different parts of China into different parts of Japan, and there was no central government willing to decide these things, but if we pretend a bit, it would have worked.
@@voxtopass That's interesting. The only justification I could think of to give Kanji different On and Kun readings is to differentiate the meaning and function. I'm guessing because Japanese syllabaries are so limited you have to give extra effort on figuring out the hiragana/katakana.
No it wouldn't, because native Japanese words would still need to be written somehow since japanese wasn't a written language until they encountered Chinese characters. Kanji was used as a way to write native Japanese words first, and over time Chinese loan words were introduced. Take みず - it gained the kanji 水 to write it before hiragana and katakana were invented, but loan words like 水準 すいじゅん had to use the same kanji anyway because how else would you write it?
@@masterp443 ??? You know that Japanese people...spoke Japanese back then, right? There is no rule that says they needed to use the Chinese way of writing any words they already had. I'm not sure if you've never heard of kanji being used just for their sound (this is like, a huge thing in both Chinese and Japanese) but there is nothing that connects 水 with the sounds みず. I don't know why you're pretending like this is some crazy, unanswerable question, when it was already in my first comment before you replied.
@@voxtopass yes, but they didn't have their own writing system thousands of years ago. This whole hypothetical assumption is based on the fact that Japanese people will eventually adopt kanji into their language, so under these circumstances, kanji having multiple pronunciations (a Japanese reading and a Chinese one) would be inevitable.
yuta got that drip tho lol :) looking good bud
I was surprised they haven't seen steins;gate but they've seen monogatari
Japanese names are THE ultimate challenge. Take mount Azuma: 吾妻. But there si also town Azuma 東町, in Ibaraki ... and there is more
Steins;gate is one of the best anime ever! I hope they will seriously consider watching it 🤩
This is very comforting because I mispronounce Japanese names everytime 😂
1:33 that was un unexpected "ara ara"
櫛枝実乃梨、阿良々木火憐、中野二乃、松岡禎丞、牧瀬紅莉栖
All too many people gets caught up in the image of 火(fire) and misread 憐(ren, = pity) as 燐(rin, = phosphorus).
Did anyone else think that the guy with the yellowish sweater and white mask had such an anime-like voice?
This’s sudden by tho, Were u in Akihabara today? Cuz I saw a guy
speaking English and holding a camera.
They are just acting as if they are recalling the name of famous paintings in an art museum
In English translated anime/manga, how are the names translated to have an "L" somewhere in the name and how do they know it is that and not just "R"?
These ppl are super stylish
wait, if they're no sure, how the hell am I supposed to figure it out?
I was a simple man i saw name Nino and Subscribed this channel
🙏Hello Yuta❤Warm wishes on New Year to all of our wonderful and very special friend and Family❤ 🎆🌸May you have a meaningful and successful year 2022 that brings you many joys and great big smiles! 😊
I love to travel because there is always something new to taste. ❤
The souls I meet along the way leave an imprint on me and my own personal growth. I see things in awe and make memories.
Imagine not being able to read/make sure of every names and words in your own language. I mean Kanji is a god gifted gorgeous characters, but can also be a pain in the ass sometimes.
From Minori to Karin there is a lot of difference.
At this point, I think Yuta is obsessed with the Monogatari Series
Is there something wrong with that?!
1:31 失礼、噛みました！
わざとじゃない？？
違う、わざとだ。
Anata wa watashi ga doko ni itta ka shitte irudeshou
Koshii
The red-haired guy’s voice sounds so familiar?
Should done Yagami Raito 夜神月
Yuta in his bohemian/beatnik phase. You dig, daddy-o?....
2:53; Oh My God, that's actually my name!
0:52 lol good man
2:10 and this guy flexing his anime knowledge haha
👀 my friend send me the her kanji name and told me if you copy it into the translation it will F up for sure . Kanji maybe the same but different in meaning
Hey, Yuta. I've been told the 1988 adaptation of Legend of the Galactic Heroes uses a lot of jargon and formal register Japanese. Maybe you could do a video on that.
Some names do get pretty ridiculous. But at least they're decently consistent
I tried to read the first Kanji from "Kurisu" as "beni"))