(no subject)

[unbibium]

I'm watching "How William Shatner Changed the World" on the History Channel right now.

Shatner just mispronounced "Takei" as "Takai".

Update: Ehh. I've seen better. It's the first Trekumentary I've seen since "Trekkies 2", but I'm not exactly raving about it. Jonathan Frakes is also in it, maintaining his reputation as Shatner's next-generation clone brother. He, too, was bored enough and cared little enough about his dignity to do this documentary. He got beamed into a British pub in his pajamas. I've already deleted it from TiVo.

Comments

Wait, do you mean

[vardissakheli.livejournal.com]

it's pronounced [a:I] like "ei" in German and he said [E:I] like "ai" in English, or the other way around?

Because I could have sworn that the few times I'd heard George say it it was [t&'ka:I]. Kind of like how "urusei" usually sounds like it ends in "ai."

Re: Wait, do you mean

[pentomino.livejournal.com]

"urusai" means "noisy", "urusei" means something else I forget what.

"Takei" is pronounced to rhyme with the letter "K" (American pronunciation). "Takai" is pronounced to rhyme with the letter "I", and means "expensive" or "high".

urusei

[vardissakheli.livejournal.com]

Annoying, as in "Those Annoying Aliens." But at least in little-girl anime voices I thought I'd generally heard it pronounced with kind of a short-U sound in place of the e, which makes it sound almost like "ai."

However, looking at japanese.about.com, I see I might have misinterpreted when those little-girl anime voices were yelling "Shut up!" (urusai), especially since they'd be yelling it at even more annoying (urusei) people than themselves.

And of course the pertinent question isn't really how it "is pronounced" correctly in Japanese, but how George chooses to pronounce it, since he's speaking English, not Japanese. If my wife's dentist can say "Vig-li-AHti," George can say "Ta-KYE" if he wants, and that's what I'd swear I'd heard. (As usual, I might well be swearing wrongly.)

And this would hardly be the worst mangling of his name ever. Shatner was noted for calling him Walter, wasn't he?

Re: Wait, do you mean

[miwasatoshi.livejournal.com]

The urusei in Urusei Yatsura is a pun:

Urusai (noisy, annoying) becomes urusei in vernacular Tokyo dialect (which IS different from hyoujungo / Standard in some ways). The kanji used for "sei" means "star or planet", sei is the "Chinese reading" as opposed to the normal reading of hoshi.