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Putting the “hu” in Tofugu

Started by tofugu · 10 months ago

I recently had a discussion with my friend Max about the nuances of Japanese pronunciation (maybe not so recently; it was when I was back home in Hawaii). One of the more interesting things we talked about was the fact that, in Japanese, there’s no “f”%3 ... Continue reading »

18 comments

  • I see the college students four year vacation are rotting their minds.
  • my random experience w/ fu/hu... my friend who has fu in her name doesn’t care if you say fu or hu. my sensei who’s japanese gets mad if you say fu. my american sensei corrects us and says fu. wtf. he doesn’t understand when we said hu. my other japanese sensei had me do an experient to see if non-japanese can say hu correctly. even though i say hu and it sounds like hu it’s not hu like a japanese person’s hu. some weird comp. program illustrated this fact. most words sound like hu to me w/ exceptions like shufu. similarly the l/r thing various depending on word too. o the joys of linguistics.
  • lol.
  • what the huck?
  • huck means their group's name. so it was not incorrect spelling..
  • Japon:

    I know---I really didn't do any research (for once). I wrote the article because the video reminded me of what I was talking about with Max; I thought that pronunciation was a good topic to write about, and that the HUCK things was funny (even if I was mistaken). If I offended you, I apologize, though. Anyone who wants to know the real story can read this.
  • I always wondered about this. Haha. Never asked. :D That line with the "classic American literature" got me. Haha. I was like... "Huck... HUCK!!!" Haha. It was alright...
  • The book I mean.
  • Those sand dunes look so cool! How tall are they? It looks like it'd be fun to climb them.
  • XD That's just too funny! You'd think they'd of planned this out a little better!
  • i always think of f sound between h and f and r sound beween l and r. the h isnt quite as open as we say it
  • There's no l eithr. Who's huck?
  • Ahahaha, that's so awesome.
  • Great story, but a little misleading.

    > I’m willing to bet that these boys meant to write something a little more… rebellious but, sadly, mistook the “f” for an “h”.

    Commenter japon says that's not quite right, since "Huck" is the student group's name. You apparently agree, and add:

    > Anyone who wants to know the real story can read this.

    Well ok, but it's in Japanese.
    http://translate.google.com/translate?u=http%3A...
    There is a mention of the "Nagoya large adventure circle “Huckleberry Finn (the huckleberry fin)”"
    More in English here: http://www.yomiuri.co.jp/dy/national/20070915TD...

    So your post would be just as good and funny and educational, even better, if you corrected your mistake (not everyone reads comments, or Japanese) and gave us the real story behind "HUCK". Otherwise it plays a little too much to foreigners' smug sense that the Japanese are too silly to know the difference.
  • Kai:

    Let me make it clear that it was never my intention to misrepresent the Nagoya students. Now that I think about it, I don't even think I listened to the news story very well--on top of that I did no research, so I'm totally in the wrong here.

    I suppose I'll have to go back and rewrite a bit. Thanks for your feedback!
  • Perfect Erin! And again, thanks for the phonetics lesson.
  • ah who really cares all that much what the real story is! I think it's hilarious!! Face it the Japanese do make simple mistakes like this all the time, so what my Japanese is far from perfect! This was really hilarious!! Keep up the good work!!
  • In that case huck the hucking huckers lol :p

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