Dojoese

Karate Terminology

A collection of thoughts and some facts

By

Verne Gilbert

 

Every now and then when they discover I study karate, some folks have asked me if I speak Japanese.  My answer is, no I speak Dojoese, a combination of English and Romaji karate terminology.

 

Although the words and phrases of karate terminology are Japanese in origin, the mere use of such does not constitute a working knowledge of the Japanese language.  I don’t speak Japanese nor do I know much about the structure of the language.  I have over the years through research discovered that the terminology I use and the way I use it contains misuse in spelling, translation and pronunciation.  My Dojoese ignores the many rules of Japanese grammar and sentence structure, which can change the meaning and use of words and phrases.  I suspect that I am not the only non-Japanese speaking karate instructor who realizes this deficiency.   As some have done, I could solve this problem by simply not using Japanese terminology.  Doing that however would compromise my belief that the study of the culture, customs and language of the parent country is of great benefit, if for no other reason than to expand ones awareness of life and add educational dimension to the study of karate.  I also believe we need to use that which we use correctly.  So, I recognize a deficiency but do not want to abandon my beliefs.  I guess the only recourse is to educate myself.  How do I do that?

 

I could spend a few years and a lot of money to learn the Japanese language.  This solution would certainly be of educational benefit to me personally and to a degree my students.  However in my every day life I would have little or no use for it.  In my karate life I speak Dojoese, so a full fledge knowledge of Japanese although beneficial is not necessary.   

 

There are many rules of grammar and sentence structure of Japanese that are not essential to my use of the terminology.  However, I should learn to implement some of the basic rules of the language.  More importantly, I can and should do a little research on the proper pronunciation and translation of the words and phrases I use.

 

Japanese like any language is comprised of the oral and the written.  Below is a brief description of both.  There are many books and even more website articles which discuss this topic in far greater detail.  I have found “surfing the web” to be very educational.

 

Oral Japanese:

Japan has many regional dialects, (hogen).  The dialects have different accents and some may be unintelligible to speakers from other parts of the country.  However, there are few communication problems among the people of different dialects as almost everyone understands standard Japanese, (hyoujungo), a dialect spoken in Tokyo.  In most cases, accentuation doesn’t make a difference in the meaning of the words.

 

Some dialects in remote areas such as Okinawa are arguably languages separate from Japanese.  In Okinawa there are at least five different dialects / languages, the most common of which is Uchinaguchi, most likely the language of the Okinawa karate founding fathers.  Even though it is in decline Uchinaguchi is still spoken in Okinawa today.  The mother of one of our young dojo members is Japanese, born and raised in Okinawa.  In various conversations with her she indicated to me that she speaks Japanese and English, her mother speaks Japanese and Uchinaguchi and her grandmother speaks only Uchinaguchi and does not understand Japanese.

 

Written Japanese:

Japanese is written in a mixture of kanji and the two kana, hiragana and katakana.

·        Hepburn generally follows English phonology and so gives the best indication to anglophones of how a word is pronounced in Japanese. It was standardized as American National Standard System for the Romanization of Japanese (Modified Hepburn), but this status was abolished on October 6, 1994. Hepburn is the most common romanization system in use today, especially in the English-speaking world. Japanese school children now learn Hepburn when they first begin to learn the English alphabet in junior high school.

·        Nihon-shiki is the oldest and least used of the three main systems. It follows Japanese phonology and the syllabary order very strictly and is hence one of the few systems of romanization that allows lossless mapping to and from kana. It has also been known as ISO 3602 Strict form.

·        Kunrei-shiki is a slightly modified version of Nihon-shiki, which eliminates several relics of the differences between the kana syllabary and modern pronunciation. For example, if the words kana  and tsukai are combined, in kana the result is written with a dakuten (voicing sign)  atop to indicate that the tsu is now voiced. Kunrei-shiki (and Hepburn) ignore the underlying kana and represent the sounds as they are pronounced (kanazukai), but Nihon-shiki retains the difference and romanizes the word as kanadukai. Kunrei-shiki has been standardized by the Japanese Government and ISO (ISO 3602). Kunrei-shiki used to be taught to all Japanese elementary school students.

 

Hepburn is the system that the karate terminology of Dojoese is written and therefore is of special interest to me.  There are a lot of rules of grammar and sentence structure involved with using Romaji, all of which are interesting and very good to know but not that important to my use of Dojoese.   My primary concern is spelling, pronunciation and word use, (meaning).

 

Japanese Word Use and Pronunciation

There are several very good web sites that explain all aspects of reading and writing the Japanese language. I particulary enjoyed the following and would recommend anyone interested in the Japanese language to study this site. 

Japanese for the Western Brain

http://kimallen.sheepdogdesign.net/Japanese/index.html

 

The following excerpt from the website, 24 Fighting Chickens,  Japanese Karate Terms by Rob Redmond - October 12, 2005, http://www.24fightingchickens.com/2005/10/12/japanese-karate-terms/, explains Japanese word pronunciation and use in terms that made it very easy for me to understand.  Being a martial artist Mr. Redmond explains many karate terms in detail.

Vowels

‘A’ as in shot, hot, and dot - the long A sound sounds like the English short O vowel. Open wide and say “Ahhhhh.”

‘I’ as in sheet, meet, greet, and speak. - the I sound is always exactly like the long E in English. There is no short I sound in Japanese that rhymes with hit or bit.

‘U’ as in book and foot. - Be careful with the U. It does not sound like the words hoot, shoot, or loot. The U in Japanese sounds like book. The long U of English does not exist in Japanese.

‘E’ as in head, jet, sped, and met. - The E always sounds like the short E of English. Be careful not to pronounce it like a Spanish E that rhymes with hate, bait, or slate.

 ‘O’ - There is no Japanese O equivalent in English. The English long O is a dipthong. That means that the O in Boat is actually pronounced like a long O and then a long U. Booouuuut is what Japanese hear you say whenever you say boat, coat, loan, tone, toe, joe, or schmoe. The English long O is a two syllable, two toned vowel. In Japanese, be careful to only say the ‘O’ portion. Do not slide into the oo noise that follows the O in English words.

Long Vowels
Japanese has a feature that English does not have. Japanese has long vowels. In English, a long vowel sound is a change in pronunciation such as from bot to boat - from a short O to a long O. In Japanese, vowels are always pronounced using only the five sounds given above, but there is a catch. The vowels are either one syllable or two syllable, meaning that you’ll have to extend them longer by pronouncing them twice.

A good example of this is the kata Jiin. In order to say this properly, you give the JI syllable one beat, and you give the I syllable one beat, and you give the last N one beat, meaning that the word is not like gene, but rather like gee-ee-nn.

It gets worse. The Japanese hear the long E, as in bet, as a sound as in bait. So, when they romanize words with the long E, they generally spell the sound EI - just to confuse us, yes.

I’ve written the long vowels below like this: aa, ii, uu, ei, oh, respectively.

Combo Vowels
But wait, there’s more. The Japanese also want you to be able to make other sounds, so they have a way of placing one of the five vowels subscripted following a different one so that you can make more sounds. For example, to say the word stain, I would write SU TA I N using for katakana characters to represent four syllables from Japanese. However, the Japanese also allow me to write it SU TAi N, so that it sounds more like English. They generally only do this with foreign words, though, so for karate terminology, you are off the hook for that rule, anyway.

 

 

Japanese Consonants
The Japanese cannot pronounce many of our consonants. For example, the Japanese cannot say an R. However, through some strange event of which I do not wish to have inside information, the Japanese write their L/D noise with an R. So, my name is pronounced in Japanese as lobu ledomondo. However, because Japanese have a formalized roman character set, they exclude the L and use the R in their English writing of Japanese words. For crying out loud!

 

Yes, there are more rules you need to know! Did you really believe it was just Spanish sounding foreign speak?

 

The L noise that the Japanese write with an R sounds like a soft, half D noise when it is used in any place other than the beginning of the word. So, it ends up sounding like a single Spanish roll of an R. Not like rrrrrrrrodrrrrrriguez. Not like Enrrrrrrique as in Spanish, either. Rather, it sounds like only one spanish flip of an R noise. Maybe that’s why they use the R and say it sounds like Spanish?

There are other rules involving consonants changing sound when not at the beginning of a word. The word for punch, tsuki, becomes zuki anytime it is placed at the end of a word. Tsuki. Gyaku-zuki. The TSU noise cannot survive being after another syllable. There are exceptions to this rule for some words. You don’t need to know them all.

N is the only stand-alone consonant. Did I remember to mention that all Japanese syllables are either the five vowels, a consonant followed by a vowel, or N? The Japanese sounds look like this:

See anything in there that bothers you? The si must be pronounced just like the word she. The ti must be pronounced like chi as in cheese. If you learn words one at a time as terms, this list of possible sounds will not bother you so much. It should explain a lot about why Japanese pronounce English the way that they do. They have a lot of sounds missing that we make in English, and it’s hard to learn to make a noise you never made before.

Japanese do not generally make imitative sound effects with their mouths. Instead of making an explosion noise with their mouths, they always use the equivalent word like “Boom!” For example, you might try to sound like a dog barking when you are telling a story about a barking dog. You’ll make a barking sound, not say “Woof woof woof.” You might write the word that way, but you won’t actually say that. Japanese actually say that. To them, dogs say “Wan wan wan.” And, that’s exactly how they imitate them.

 

 

Counting to Ten

Japanese have two numbering systems: Japanese and Chinese. The Japanese system is native to the islands of Japan. The Chinese system is taken from Chinese and modified for their use. Don’t think that the Chinese use those pronunciations, because they don’t. The Japanese just took those sounds from the Chinese. Thus, they are called onyomi, or “sound readings.”

Generally, you count to ten using the Chinese system. However, when you are counting things like pencils, books, cats, and fingers, you generally use the Japanese system plus a counter. For example, pencils are cylindrical, so they are counted using the word hon. Punches are cylinders too, so they also take that counter. That’s why we say ippon kumite. It is one cylinder sparring. There are a lot of different counters, and you have to learn each one for each different kind of thing. Chopsticks use zen, books use satsu, and sheets of paper use mae. There are at least 100 different counting words. Using Japanese counters is sort of like counting animals in English - a flock, a herd, a gaggle, a pack.

The number 9 has two different pronunciations. The Japanese tend to prefer one or the other depending on the situation. Frankly, when to use one or the other is quite confusing. Stick to ku. The Japanese also sometimes drop into the Japanese numbers when they are superstitious about using the Chinese numbers. For example, the kanji for death is pronounced shi. Therefore, the number four is often said as yon.

Japanese words almost always end in a vowel sound of a, i, u, e, or o. In the alphabet given above there is only one letter that does not end in a vowel. The Japanese do not generally pronounce the ending vowels in their speech very often, though. The word arimasu sounds to most people as “adimas.” However, if you listen very, very carefully, you’ll hear that final vowel noise in there ever so slightly for just a moment.

Tsu(ku) = Punch

Tsu(ku) is a verb. It is pronounced more like ts-ku without the first u sound. In a noun form it is tsuki. It literally means to thrust, pierce, stab, or prick. The word punch is our loose translation of the idea, not the word. So, when you punch in karate, you tsuku. The polite form, which is more appropriate in a classroom, is tsukimasu (pron. ts - kee - mahs). When the word appears following another word, it changes form sometimes to Zuku. So, the following words are available:

Keru = Kick
Keru is a verb meaning to kick. A kick, a noun, is keri. When keri follows another word in a compound, sometimes it changes sound to a “g” making it like the following combinations:

 

Ukeru = Receive
Ukeru is generally translated as “block” in karate dojo. In fact, it means to receive something. You could receive a present, a good grade, or a letter. It also means “to get” as in “I got the joke.” Uke is the noun form, and therefore means “reception.” Uke do not block. These techniques enable you to receive the opponent’s attack. If you think of blocking as receiving, it becomes much easier.

 

Tatsu = stand
Tatsu is the verb for “stand.” When used in its polite form, it is tachimasu. When used as a noun, it is tachi. After another character, the pronunciation generally changes to dachi with a ‘d’.