so is there something wrong with my copy or is this really how it is for everyone else?
http://i.imgur.com/S7eeAcC.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/0XTv1fK.jpg
were samurais just not mainstream enough back then?
A bit weird, yes. But must just point out the the plural doesn't need an 's'. One samurai, seven samurai, 47 or however many you want samurai. Japanese doesn't do plurals.
shareThe subtitles are incorrect.The word is samurai...not samuri.
You must remember that when you see Japanese words written in the English alphabet,what you are reading is a romanization of a word written in a completely different script than the alphabet.
Most western languages use a different character for each letter of the alphabet....even when they use a completely different alphabet from English, like the Russians Cyrillic alphabet. Words and sounds are created by the groupings of these letters.
The Japanese written language is not an alphabet styled language with different characters for each individual letter.
It is Syllabic in nature with characters representing whole syllables.. either vowels... or consonant/vowel combinations.
"N" is the only Japanese consonant to stand alone. the result of which.... every Japanese word ends in a vowel,or N.
Spelling out the word Samurai syllabically... would be thus...
サムライ
サ = sa
ム = mu
ラ = ra
イ = i
Spelling the word as... Samuri...
Would completely ignore the ラ(ra) an イ(i) characters and substitute リ (ri) instead.
I joined the Navy to see the world, only to discover the world is 2/3 water!
Good stuff, Sailor, but shouldn't it be in hiragana, not katakana?
さむらい
The kanji is interesting -
侍
Person, temple.
Fascinating language. Maddening, but fun.
Hiragana or Katakana... both work for the demonstrative purpose needed here.
Normally the word would be written using the Kanji. Kanji is used namely for nouns and the base or root of various verbs and adjectives....etc.
Hiragana is used for the conjugation of or altered tense of verbs... and other various grammatical reasons which do not have a place in the Chinese from which the Kanji were originally derived.
Katakana, which I chose to use above is used for rare or unusual words. foreign loanwords. and a variety of other reasons. To include being used as a means to show emphasis, much as italicisation or boldface would be used in English print.
As I was emphasizing the syllabic nature of the structure of the Japanese language rather that the logographic nature of Kanji... I chose Katakana over Hiragana.
謝罪いたします.
I joined the Navy to see the world, only to discover the world is 2/3 water!
Indeed. Katakana make me laugh, it's like doing a puzzle - you gaze at the kana, mutter them over to yourself and suddenly shout 'Valentine!' or 'New Zealand!' or whatever.
Kanji are just a plot to make us poor gaijin feel stupid:)
it's like doing a puzzle - you gaze at the kana, mutter them over to yourself and suddenly shout 'Valentine!' or 'New Zealand!' or whatever.