That was English?

[mbarker]

On a recent Japanese quiz show, they asked which of the following Japanese words was actually borrowed English:

furefure (pronounced foo-ray, foo-ray)
washoi (pronounced wah-shoi)
yoshoi (pronounced yo-shoi)
(one other which I have forgotten)

The person answering the quiz went "huh?" My wife, who has lived in America for quite a while and with me for even longer, went "huh?" and turned to me. I looked at the list and went "huh?"

Then they revealed the answer. Of course!

"Hooray" is English, and the Japanese version repeats it for fun. Of course, there is also this slight slippage in the phonemes - the closest Japanese phoneme to "hoo" is "foo". The "re" (pronounced ray) is a common conversion. But that fooray, fooray cheer just doesn't quite sound right to the native speaker, or even the acclimated speaker.

So remember, when you want to cheer your team on, yell "fooray, fooray" and see who notices.

Comments

[dsgood.livejournal.com]

Not much worse than what French and English have done to words borrowed from each other. Guess what the English original of "redingote" was, for example.

And how many francophones would recognize the squaredance term "dosey-do" as being originally from French?