I think I'm learning Japanese

It’s a pretty simple word, really. tsurugi. tsu ru gi. Three syllables of a language I have been studying more than fifteen years. And I can’t get it right.

It is just one kanji character – 剣。Put it together with 道, the character for road/path, and you get kendo, which you can read about elsewhere in this blog. Kendo. Ken. That’s no problem. But on its own, the reading is tsurugi.

A tsurugi is a sword with a straight blade sharp on both sides. It is quite different in appearance and usage from the typical Japanese blade, which is curved and sharp on only one side.

I was talking about tomorrow night’s tsurugi class and was promptly interrupted. My wife repeated the word with correct pronunciation. I repeated it with incorrect pronunciation. Two repeats of that cycle, then my daughter got in on the action. She admonished me right away and repeated it with mother’s approval.

I don’t think it is fair that almost-six-year-old girls should be able to hear and instantly repeat with correct pronunciation. Or that I still can’t properly pronounce this word which is such an important part of my life. Hell, I can read and write the character and my daughter can’t begin to do that. Yet. There is a reason why I can work as an amateur translator but not as an interpreter. What comes in these ears just doesn’t come out my mouth, not as it should anyhow.

I can’t pinpoint the problem. I am tone-deaf and never never sing. Is it my ears? My voice? I tried every variation I could dream up with syllable stress, intonation, but nothing would satisfy these two nefarious judges of my spoken Japanese, now teamed against me in a none-too-subtle conspiracy. Tsu RUU gi. Nope. Tsuru gi. Nope. “tsurugi” repeats my daughter. “That’s what I said,” I insist. She bursts into peals of laughter, obviously not a proponent of the more humanistic, enlightened theories of education.

I’ll just use the Chinese word at home from now on. Basically the same character (剑), but it is pronounced jian (jee-en, as one syllable??) with a downward/ fourth tone. Much simpler. And anyway, no one in this house can fault my Chinese pronunciation.