Did you recognize the first line of a famous song in my title? The hills are alive with the sound of music. Surely you've heard of it.
The other day we saw a Japanese lady on TV singing it in the Japanized English such as above; my English-speaking Japanese wife asked, "What'd she just say?"
This to me is one of the largest problems the Japanese have with English: they insist on writing it in Japanese symbols, which, even with all the available tricks, cannot produce the correct English pronunciations.
Actually, they can do whatever they please when borrowing an English word for use in Japanese. We do the same thing such as with karaoke, which we pronounce in a way that is utterly unrecognizable as Japanese. The kara is actually the same one as in karate, which we get close to right, but for some reason we insist on pronouncing it carry. Who knows why. (And in Japanese the oke part is okeh, not okie.)
But the problem for Japanese English speakers arises when they insist on memorizing English words that have been written in Japanese symbols, and then expect the English speaking world to understand them. Not going to happen.
Some years back when my kids were young, I was walking along with them out in the Japanese countryside when a gentleman out on his porch said, "Guddo moruningu."
When I responded with "Good morning," one of my boys said, "Oh, that's what he said." And that one's by no means the worst example.
They insist on pronouncing hello as haroh. I tell people haroh is a Japanese word, not an English one. I usually take this one step farther and say something along the lines of haroh-gozaimasu, since the word sounds as though it's been conjugated for that construction.
Sure, there are those native English speakers who pronounce the word as hallo, but I've never met one that pronounced it haroh. As I said, do what you want in Japanese, but don't be surprised when it doesn't work as English. The opposite is true as well.
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