I will never understand how Japanese words ever make it on the list of finalist words

thEY'RE NOT HARD TO SPELL??

this happens every year i swear

because americans pronounce them stupid. Like "saki" instead of "sake"

rofl

that would throw me the fuck off if someone wanted me to spell "sake" and said "saki"

but the word was tokonoma??? i didn't even know it made its way to english??? and they said it right???

sighs at English

what does... that mean????

tokonoma is an alcove where art and flowers are displayed in the house

idk why english would need the word

lmfao???? we don't have those

yEAH

oh god don't get me started on sake as a japanese word

there was a kid in my 101 class who insisted on saying saki because he reasoned "even if this is a Japanese class, we're in the States and English says saki"

I screamed at him a lot because he argued the same for latin being pronounced "wrong" by classicists and I... sigh

...

let me punch this kid

おねがい・・・

aaaAAAあああ

I'll punch him too

To be fair, they're also expected to spell French, Spanish, Norwegian and any number of words with foreign origin. And phonetics aside, they might not be familiar with the Japanese language.

Or they get their conventions mixed up. It's not hard for that to happen.

/devil's advocate, out