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by layer8 1413 days ago
“Dzi” is a nonstandard romanization for “ji”, both spellings refer to the same Japanese syllable “ジ”. Similarly for “lla” vs. “ra” (Japanese “ラ”). Thus both spellings “Godzilla” and “Gojira” refer to the same Japanese word “ゴジラ”. Here’s how it sounds like in Japanese: https://forvo.com/word/gojira/
1 comments
saghm 1413 days ago
Maybe my phrasing was a bit clear (and maybe I'm misunderstanding the Wikipedia quote!), but I read it as saying "gojira" was two syllables, the second of which was "jira". I naively would have expected it to be three sillables, "go", "ji", and "ra", but maybe I was misreading the Wikipedia quote and it was just talking about "dz" and "ji" and not the entirety of "jira".
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yencabulator 1412 days ago
Gojira is three syllables total, go-ji-ra (or non-standard older go-dzi-lla; never god-zil-la for Japanese -- it does not rhyme with deities).

Maybe you're suffering from the usual learning curve thing where non-native speakers have trouble differentiating parts of words, because the emphasis and pronunciation simply isn't what you're used to.

Native speakers don't emphasize every syllable separately, just like you wouldn't emphasize every syllable in na-ti-ve; or how a non-native speaker like me would try to split "separate" into syllables that as se-pa-rate or se-pa-ra-te instead sep-a-rate.

(As someone who knows a couple handfuls of Japanese words, and comes from a language with somewhat similar phonemes, gojira is pronounced exactly how I expect it to be pronounced.)

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saghm 1412 days ago
> Gojira is three syllables total, go-ji-ra (or non-standard older go-dzi-lla; never god-zil-la for Japanese -- it does not rhyme with deities).

Aha, okay, that's what I was thinking; I was confused by the phrasing that Wikipedia used (i.e. "the product name comes from the second syllable") and assumed that meant that "jira" was a single syllable (the second), and thought that I might be missing something about how the pronunciation works. It sounds like I was just misreading the Wikipedia quote though, so thanks for bearing with my confusion and explaining it!

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