Toyota = Abundance of rice

[GeneW]

Originally Posted by eTiMaGo

Yep, but in this case that's to do with the limitations of their language, if there's no phonetic "DZ" kinda sound in Japanese, they have to approximate with the closest native sound. Same reason why it took me years to pronounce "the" properly (no TH sound in French)

seeing KARAOKE and pronouncing it KARI-OKIE is just... er...

....seems kind of natural, ne c'est pas?

French is a great language in which to sneer or curse. It was also once the scientific language of Europe, especially at the turn of the 20th century, when Poincare and others were leaders in Math and Physics. I have two years of University French and two years of Spanish. The two together in one head with marginal fluency in both can cause amazing gaffes.

Gene