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ANNCast - Revenge of the 80s: It's All In The Reflexes

I used to get all bent out of shape over pronunciation until I understood that since most of us encounter these made-up words in text form BEFORE we hear them, we can't help but lock in our own pronunciation bias. Especially with words that can have multiple spellings.

The reason "Char" (with a hard R sound) turns me into Punchmaster is because it isn't heard that way in the show. They say "Sha," so I learned to pronounce it "Sha." The R version showed up in Engrish pretty early after MSG, and we all know how reliable early 80s Engrish was. Some of it will never be untangled.

Panzer World Galliant sounds rather interesting, even to somebody like me who doesn’t much are for giant robots.

I was afraid that it might be patronizing..

Also, don't get too hung up on what things look like when written. Written language is not the same as spoken language, but an abstracted representation of it.

The reason "Char" (with a hard R sound) turns me into Punchmaster is because it isn't heard that way in the show. They say "Sha," so I learned to pronounce it "Sha." The R version showed up in Engrish pretty early after MSG, and we all know how reliable early 80s Engrish was. Some of it will never be untangled.

To all you young'uns out there the episode title is a reference (I'm guessing) to a band you'd probably never heard of called Duran Duran.

Quote:

Cockpit was '89

It's listed as '93 on ANN Encyclopedia...

Also, I'm in the minority on disliking the second Patlabor movie. Total 180 in tone from the rest of the series that it comes off as a disappointment.

It just seemed like a long-winded Miyazaki-styled Oshii rant which had the Patlabor name slapped on it, rather than an actual continuation of Patlabor. And sorry, but Shinobu's not one of the greatest characters in the series. That would have to be Clancy. And while I do like Goto, he doesn't really have anything to do with the story.

In this modern age of Internet civility, I can no longer post that "OMG! IT'S SON GOKOU NOT SON GOKU..." picture, much as I'd want to. But for what it's worth, I intentionally pronounce "Macross" the "Mack Ross" way that they'd say it in Robotech and the dub for Macross Plus. It's how I hear it spoken in the Japanese, save for the theme song where they enunciate each syllable. Even the people involved in that ADV dub pronounce it the way I do when talking about the series, so without checking my interview recordings I want to say that particular pronunciation was something the Japanese insisted upon. There was one guy in the 90s I met back when I was a teenager who'd say it that way instead, and it's telling that I don't actually remember his name or much of what he looks like. Just that he'd pronounce Macross "muh-CROSS," and it did kind of bother me.

Perhaps the modern era equivalent of this phenomenon is people who pronounce Naruto "nuh-ROO-to" despite the fact that it's never said that way in either the Japanese or English editions or advertisements. I suppose that's how the word might look on the printed page? But whatever, my Japanese pronunciations are absolutely abysmal--"what do you MEAN I'm not supposed to place higher stress on syllables?!"--so I never take anyone to task for getting something wrong that I can't do right myself. To this day, I pronounce Utena's name "ooo-TEN-uh" instead of the more correct "OOO-tena" so I'm part of the problem.