What are the correct pronunciations?

Question

What the heck are the actual pronunciations for "manga", "anime", and "yaoi"??
I've heard SO many different ones for each of the three and I'm so confused >.<
Apparently there is no end to these kinds of debates on forums and such

My (incorrect?) pronunciations:
Manga (mayn-gah)
anime (an-ee-may)
yaoi (yah-oy)

How do YOU pronounce them??
Is there really a "correct" pronunciation or is it just another "to-mah-to/to-may-to" thing?

Answer 1

Manga: Mahn-gah (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Manga.ogg )

Anime: Ah-nee-may (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Anime.ogg )

Yaoi Ya-oh-ee (no sound file for this one :/)

Answer 2

These are all Japanese words. Japanese has very specific rules for pronunciation, so it's only a "tomato/tomahto" thing if you have no respect for the words' language of origin.



In Japanese all syllables are pronounced equally, so no syllable has emphasis. Here are the correct pronunciations:

"mah-n-gah" (three syllables, both 'a' sounds pronounced as the a in "all")

"ah-nee-may"

"yah-oh-ee" - note: in Japanese there are no dipthongs either so pronounce each vowel separately.

Answer 3

manga: /manga:/

anime: you got that right!

yaoi: ya-aa-o-i



p.s. those are japanese pronunciations...they are pronunced the same way as they appear:

learn from here:

http://www.learn-japanese.info/pronunciation.html



Edit:

that page doesn't deal with g, z, d, b, p

but once you learn how to pronounce 'em, it won't be hard to come up with the correct pronunciation on your own...

Answer 4

Manga http://comicbooks.about.com/od/manga/ss/manga101.htm



Anime http://www.tapanime.com/General-Info/whatanime.php



yaoi http://forvo.com/word/yaoi/

Answer 5

I have heard that "yaoi" is pronounce "yow-ee," but I could be wrong about that.

Anime= "an-(short) i-may"

Manga= pronounced just like it's spelled