# shikashi



## truepurple

A word I picked up from watching Bleach years ago, it's used alot there (one of the first words I picked up along with "baka") Seems to mean something along the lines of "but" or "in addition", joining two separate thoughts on a similar topic.

But I know "demo" means "but". But perhaps like english, there is more then one word for for the same meaning, or similar meanings.

So what approximately does "eskuzi" mean? And how is it different from "demo"?


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## 810senior

I'm afraid that word doesn't make sense. (the idea about _demo _is correct when it's used as conjunction)
Would you give me a context where it was included?


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## truepurple

I would have to go over old episodes of Bleach till I came across it to give you a actual example. But I can make up some examples as it seemed to work in Bleach and other animes.
Mostly as the role of "but" but also "in addition" like I said, so...

'The enemy is at the gate, eskuzi, they have a real large guy who can break down that gate. '
Granted, it never seemed to be used after such a short thought as "enemy at the gate", but hopefully you get the idea without me having to make up a longer dialogue.

Person A
'Take this sword and slice him up till he can regenerate no longer'

Person B.
Eskuzi, there is a rumor that he is immune to the damage of sword strikes!

Often used when one person was reporting something to someone else.


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## Shiratori99

I think what you mean is "shikashi", which means "however".

Anyway, you should really read up on Japanese romanization (romaji) before asking such questions, since it's almost impossible to guess what you mean if you write in English phonology, and out of memory no less.

Here's a useful link: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Romanization_of_Japanese


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## truepurple

Sorry, that link is not at all helpful to me. It doesn't even help me with the basic of how one pronounces romanji. But even if I did know how to use romanji to pronounce words written in it, that still wouldn't be all that helpful in this case.

I don't see any way but spelling phonetically and hoping someone knows what word I mean, since subtitled anime does not show things in romanji except sometimes for song lyrics.

Also, I was informed by a few japanese/english bilinguals that one should not try to learn japanese through romanji, because that will misinform you how to pronounce things or something.


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## 810senior

I'm sorry there's no word that resembles the _eskuzi _in pronouncing, you have probably misheard the pronunciation of that.


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## truepurple

Shiratori99 already said it.


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## karlalou

We need to see the word at least in ひらがな or romaji (NOT romanji) to know what is your problem.

About pronunciation, you can hear almost any word at forvo.com. If not you can request it.


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## truepurple

They don't use english or romaji for japanese words on forvo, so, no I can't. Unless someone puts the characters here for "shikashi" or what ever else for me to copy past.

Also, what does forvo have to do with knowing what romaji to use with what word?


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## Flaminius

If you have Shiratori's rōmaki tables under your belt, you will find し for <shi> and か for <ka>.

Transcribing just the word you want to know the meaning of can be confusing.  Transcription of the whole sentence would have helped us.  That way, we will come to know your transcription style and get a few hints for whinch word you intended.

I wonder where the first vowel of <eskuzi> came from.  It may be a filler "eh" or the last vowel of the preceding word.  An important feature of the Japanese phonology is that a word does not end with a consonant.  (Devoicing is frequent especially between voiceless consonants but they are not the same as no vowels being there in the first place.)

Compared to that, <s> and <z> do not seem very surprising.  English /s/ is far more sibilant (hissing) than that of Japanese.  I have seen, or heard in this case, in English TV programmes how professional level mics can miss English S sounds.  In Japanese, /sh/, not /s/, can manage to match the English S in sibilance.


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## truepurple

> If you have Shiratori's rōmaki tables under your belt, you will find し for <shi> and か for <ka>.



I am confused and do not understand most of what you said here. Especially confusing is where you compare oriental characters to sounds. I don't know much, but I do know that oriental characters represent thoughts, not sounds. I remember there are different types of writing though, I suppose one type that represents sound. But then what does that have to do with romaji that uses english characters and sounds?



> Transcribing just the word you want to know the meaning of can be confusing. Transcription of the whole sentence would have helped us.



I just saw someones thread get deleted for asking for a translation just a few days ago. If I gave a full sentence, that would be like asking for a translation and my thread might get deleted. Besides, as previously mentioned, I didn't have a full sentence, these are just words I pick up as I watch anime. Sometimes if a word is isolated enough for me to pick up a meaning, I will replay that part several times to listen to how it sounds and repeat several times to myself, said meaning (and may go back latter and do it again for good measure, got animes marked specifically for learning certain words) In order for me to pick up these word meanings, it has to be isolated and/or repeating, the rest is just noise I don't know yet. (hopefully slowly picking up meaning of the noise overall to aid in future word pick up)

Part of my anime training has allowed me to catch english words mixed in with japanese words. Don't know if this is pathetic or not, but fairly often, especially when first watching subbed animes, I would miss english words mixed in with the japanese ones, the accent often being so heavy they would blend in.

shikashi

To my ear, the first sound represented by _sh_, sounds like it should in english, or close enough, like in "show" or "shine". But the second sound does not sound like that to my ear from my memory, it sounds more like a _z_ or a partial _j_, like a buzz sound that doesn't exactly have a direct english comparison that I can think of, but might be the sound someone might make if they were trying to imitate a bumble bee.

BTW, _s_ and _sh_ are definitely distinct sounds with there main commonality IMO is that they are both quiet sounds, and they depend primarily on the tongue and not at all on vocal cords.

I make the _sh_ sound by pushing the middle of my tongue close to the roof of my mouth and forcing air past it. For more volume, purse your lips, that is, turn them outwards like you were going to give someone a kiss that leaves maximum lipstick on them. Force the air going between the roof of your mouth and the middle of the tongue through a tighter space for more volume still.   That is probably why _sh_ is the sound of choice for people to indicate they want quiet, its inherently a quiet sound itself, but can do it louder for people who aren't paying attention. It's called shushing, _shshshshsh_! means people want you to be quiet.  (I apologize if I am explaining something obvious, I don't know how universal or not this is) Rudely talk loud during a movie in the US for examples on how _sh_ sounds.

I make the _s_ sound by putting the front of my tongue near my top front teeth and forcing air between the space. Pursing lips is useless, might even make things harder. The _s_ sound is definitely harder to make loud and it is understandable if people of other native tongues might miss it, not trained to listen for such a quiet and often quick sound, or if mics can't pick it up all the time.

If anything maybe the second "_sh_" in the romaji version of the word is a mix between the two technics plus vocal cord action. It's hard to describe, but when I make the sound I think is correct, I make _e_ with my vocal cords, and use my whole tongue pressed upwards, pushing the sound past it so that the tip of my tongue vibrates a bit. Which is very much like how one would make the _z_ sound,  not exactly the same, but closest comparison.


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## M Mira

truepurple said:


> I am confused and do not understand most of what you said here. Especially confusing is where you compare oriental characters to sounds. I don't know much, but I do know that oriental characters represent thoughts, not sounds. I remember there are different types of writing though, I suppose one type that represents sound.


Chinese, not Oriental, characters, represent thoughts, and Japanese incorporated them in their writings as Kanji. But what the other posters suggested was hiragana, a syllabic alphabet that's phonological.

And actually, only a small, although commonly used, set of Chinese characters represent shapes or ideas, the majority are phonetical combined with an unpronounced disambiguating cue called "radical".


truepurple said:


> But then what does that have to do with romaji that uses english characters and sounds?


Not English, Roman

Romaji are simply methods to write hiragana and katakana with the Roman alphabet, it doesn't sound different from Japanese witten with Chinese characters and native syllabaries, thus romaji don't use English sounds, mostly the spelling is mimicing Latin, only a few like SHI, CHI and JI are mimicing English spellings and they are still not the same, then there's R which is only written that way because it's a flap, and it's actual pronunciation is a rare one that's found only in a handful of languages.


truepurple said:


> I just saw someones thread get deleted for asking for a translation just a few days ago. If I gave a full sentence, that would be like asking for a translation and my thread might get deleted.


Asking what specific words in a sentence means is fine AFAIK


truepurple said:


> Besides, as previously mentioned, I didn't have a full sentence, these are just words I pick up as I watch anime. Sometimes if a word is isolated enough for me to pick up a meaning, I will replay that part several times to listen to how it sounds and repeat several times to myself, said meaning (and may go back latter and do it again for good measure, got animes marked specifically for learning certain words) In order for me to pick up these word meanings, it has to be isolated and/or repeating, the rest is just noise I don't know yet. (hopefully slowly picking up meaning of the noise overall to aid in future word pick up)


IMHO, this is a extremely poor way to learn Japanese without some basic understanding of its phonology and grammar, the former is radically different from English in vowels, stress and voicing contrast, and the latter is agglutinative with grammatical politeness mixed in, so there are like "natchatta" and "natteshimaimashita" meaning the same thing with the dictionary/citation form "naru" plus two other components that are remotely similar with English past tense and perfect aspect. I don't think most people could learn Japanese just by picking out the isolated parts.


truepurple said:


> Part of my anime training has allowed me to catch english words mixed in with japanese words. Don't know if this is pathetic or not, but fairly often, especially when first watching subbed animes, I would miss english words mixed in with the japanese ones, the accent often being so heavy they would blend in.


"Accent" happens fairly often when shoehorning foreign loanwords into native phonology, like how almost nobody pronounce "karaoke" and "tycoon" remotely resembling Japanese, or "entrepreneur" like French.


truepurple said:


> shikashi
> 
> To my ear, the first sound represented by _sh_, sounds like it should in english, or close enough, like in "show" or "shine". But the second sound does not sound like that to my ear from my memory, it sounds more like a _z_ or a partial _j_, like a buzz sound that doesn't exactly have a direct english comparison that I can think of, but might be the sound someone might make if they were trying to imitate a bumble bee.


How about the "s" in pleasure and treasure? Is that what you're looking for?


truepurple said:


> BTW, _s_ and _sh_ are definitely distinct sounds with there main commonality IMO is that they are both quiet sounds, and they depend primarily on the tongue and not at all on vocal cords.
> 
> I make the _sh_ sound by pushing the middle of my tongue close to the roof of my mouth and forcing air past it. For more volume, purse your lips, that is, turn them outwards like you were going to give someone a kiss that leaves maximum lipstick on them. Force the air going between the roof of your mouth and the middle of the tongue through a tighter space for more volume still.   That is probably why _sh_ is the sound of choice for people to indicate they want quiet, its inherently a quiet sound itself, but can do it louder for people who aren't paying attention. It's called shushing, _shshshshsh_! means people want you to be quiet.  (I apologize if I am explaining something obvious, I don't know how universal or not this is) Rudely talk loud during a movie in the US for examples on how _sh_ sounds.


Where's the tip of your tongue placed? Is it higher or lower than the middle of your tongue? If I read Wikipedia correctly then it's supposed to be the highest point in English sh but lower than the center and the blade of the tongue in Japanese.


truepurple said:


> I make the _s_ sound by putting the front of my tongue near my top front teeth and forcing air between the space. Pursing lips is useless, might even make things harder. The _s_ sound is definitely harder to make loud and it is understandable if people of other native tongues might miss it, not trained to listen for such a quiet and often quick sound, or if mics can't pick it up all the time.
> 
> If anything maybe the second "_sh_" in the romaji version of the word is a mix between the two technics plus vocal cord action. It's hard to describe, but when I make the sound I think is correct, I make _e_ with my vocal cords, and use my whole tongue pressed upwards, pushing the sound past it so that the tip of my tongue vibrates a bit. Which is very much like how one would make the _z_ sound,  not exactly the same, but closest comparison.


Perhaps it's aspiration? Like English p in "pie" and "spy" and t in "tag" and "stag"?


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## Flaminius

truepurple said:


> I am confused and do not understand most of what you said here. Especially confusing is where you compare oriental characters to sounds. I don't know much, but I do know that oriental characters represent thoughts, not sounds. I remember there are different types of writing though, I suppose one type that represents sound. But then what does that have to do with romaji that uses english characters and sounds?


The scripts used in Japanese consist of two syllabaries (letters that represent a syllable), one set being called _hiragana_ and the other _katakana_, and Chinese characters, which represents morphemes (or ideas, thoughts, roughly speaking).  Oriental characters would include any scripts used in languages east of Constantinople.  : -). The word we are discussing is represented by three letters from hiragana; しかし.  Orthographic standards as to what words are to be represented by what script are too complicated to discuss now.



> I just saw someones thread get deleted for asking for a translation just a few days ago. If I gave a full sentence, that would be like asking for a translation and my thread might get deleted.


You can give up to three sentences for establishing the context for your enquiries.   Translation requests are quite different from providing context.  I understand you do not have the full sentence in Japanese but try to pick sounds immediately before and after your target.  It will be a good training for your listening comprehension.  It help the rest of us figure out the word too.  For instance your target may turn out to be not a word but a inflected part.  Then, you have to have it attached to another word in order to figure out the meaning.



> BTW, _s_ and _sh_ are definitely distinct sounds with there main commonality IMO is that they are both quiet sounds, and they depend primarily on the tongue and not at all on vocal cords.


They are distinct sounds in English as well as in Japanese.  I wonder, however, your first  transcription <eskuzi> may not suggest that the English S is closer to the Japanese SH than to the Japanese S.  Japanese S is produced with the tip of the tongue held close to the teeth bed of the upper jaw.  I would say the place of articulation is more backwards than that of the English S.  The Japanese SH is produced not with puckered lips but lips slightly pulled sideways.  The place of articulation, or where the air current makes the most of vibration, is similar to that of the English S.  It involves the teeth. 

When air current is forced through hard objects like teeth, part of its vibration gets to a very high frequency.  I notice that the voice of some English speakers over the loudspeaker gets "cracked" (Don't know the technical or the colloquial word for it; loudspeakers get silent for 0.1 seconds or so after S) when they utter S.  It means that their S contains a sound with higher frequency than that the microphone can pick.   Anyway, it does not matter much since you are now hearing /sh/ instead of /es/.




> If anything maybe the second "sh" in the romaji version of the word is a mix between the two technics plus vocal cord. It's hard to describe, but when I make the sound I think is correct, I make e with my vocal cords, and use my whole tongue pressed upwards, pushing the sound past it so that the tip of my tongue vibrates a bit. Which is very much like how one would make the _z_ sound,  not exactly the same, but closest comparison.



There is no /z/ in Japanese.  The voiced counterpart of /s/ is being written <z> in most transcriptions but it is [dz] in actual pronunciation.  If you hear [z], the chances are that something else was intended by the speaker.  A candidate is /shi/, with the vibration of vocal chord started off a few milliseconds earlier than the utterance of the vowel I.

I may be wrong in more than a few points in the above paragraphs but I hope it promotes understanding of different phonological make-ups of the two languages.

And please capitalise language names such as English, Japanese and Chinese (rule #11).


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## Shiratori99

Pronunciation of shikashi: http://forvo.com/search/しかし/


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## truepurple

Thankyou very much shirator, though I would still appreciate answers to those last questions, Flaminius. Also, thank you very much for your help so far too, Flaminius.

With forvo, it sounds like "shkushe"


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## Shiratori99

truepurple said:


> With forvo, it sounds like "shkushe"




Well, so you know how the Japanese a and i are pronounced now ^^


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## truepurple

Except I am not hearing any sound at all between the /sh/ and /k/


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## Shiratori99

truepurple said:


> Except I am not hearing any sound at all between the /sh/ and /k/



It often becomes silent when followed by a plosive.


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## truepurple

I thought the main point of Romaji was phonetic spelling using English or whatever characters. So for there to be silent letters within seems counter-intuitive.

Or if you are talking more generically, then that isn't the case. I don't exactly know what you mean by plosive, but I assume /k/ qualifies. Like "sticky" for example, not a silent /i/ or "shit" or "kit", if you mean the other way around.


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## Shiratori99

truepurple said:


> I thought the main point of romaji was phonetic spelling using english or whatever characters. So for there to be silent letters within seems counter-intuitive.
> 
> Or if you are talking more generically, then that isn't the case. I don't exactly know what you mean by plosive, but I assume /k/ qualifies. Like as in kite or kit, either way, not a silent "i".



Romaji are the transliteration of the letters of the Japanese syllabary alphabet: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/31/Table_hiragana.jpg

They're not the transliteration of complete words, so in certain circumstances their pronunciation varies (just like those of the original letters, see above).


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## fredericaferdinanda

Sorry, I just found this thread from 6 years ago and I need to butt in with my 2 cents. I don't think you misheard the word, @truepurple. What you need to remember is that in anime, sometimes the characters have different ethnicities and say foreign words with japanese accent. Try saying "Eskuzi!" aloud and throw in some hand gestures , what does it sound like? To me, it's quite obvious that this Bleach character is Italian and what he says is "Scusi!" (Excuse me in Italian). That's just that.


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## gengo

truepurple said:


> I thought the main point of Romaji was phonetic spelling using English or whatever characters. So for there to be silent letters within seems counter-intuitive.



Japanese words written in romaji give the basic, standard pronunciation, and that of shikashi is indeed three syllables: shi + ka + shi.  However, as in all human languages, the spoken form is often distorted from the standard pronunciation.  As one example, we often pronounce "going to" as "gonna."  The fact that we say "gonna" doesn't make it counter-intuitive to spell the words as "going to."  Nor is it surprising that shikashi is often pronounced more like "shkashi."



fredericaferdinanda said:


> To me, it's quite obvious that this Bleach character is Italian and what he says is "Scusi!" (Excuse me in Italian).



That's what I was going to say, although it's not really obvious either way, since we don't know how well the OP heard the word.  Still, I think you may be right.


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