December 11, 2007

Fukudome, The New Greatest Name in Baseball?:

posted by Bill Lumbergh to baseball at 01:35 PM - 22 comments

Huh. All this time, I thought I worked at the Fukudome.

posted by jerseygirl at 01:42 PM on December 11, 2007

Oh goodie, another name the US commentators can butcher so as not to offend. (Assume it is pronounced how it looks.) Like the CART driver Hiro Matsushita. They monged it into "Mat-Soosh-Ta".

posted by Drood at 01:48 PM on December 11, 2007

Hilarious jerseygirl!

posted by Bill Lumbergh at 01:51 PM on December 11, 2007

Seriously, how do you pronounce his name?! Foo-koo-doe-may? And really they couldn't pronounce Mat-sue-she-ta?

posted by lil'red at 02:30 PM on December 11, 2007

It's not going to happen, but I'd love to see him sign with the Twins and play at the Metrodome. Fuk u dome indeed. AGNP

posted by AaronGNP at 02:42 PM on December 11, 2007

Huh. All this time, I thought I worked at the Fukudome. You work at the Mass RMV?

posted by holden at 03:05 PM on December 11, 2007

No, but I bet I field the same amount of stupid questions as your average RMV employee.

posted by jerseygirl at 03:18 PM on December 11, 2007

Seriously, how do you pronounce his name?! Foo-koo-doe-may? And really they couldn't pronounce Mat-sue-she-ta? They could, but they'd be wrong. While it's probably most common for Western names to stress the next-to-last syllable (MI-chael, Mc-DON-ald, etc.), in Japan it's pretty common for the next-to-next-to-last syllable to be stressed (SA-chi-ko). To make matters of pronunciation even more confusing, the next-to-last syllable is often so de-emphasized that it is almost not pronounced (or at least not the vowel part). Hence, a Westerner would tend to pronounce Matsushita as "mat-soo-SHEE-ta", but the correct pronunciation is closer to "mat-SOOSH-ta". That's how we ended up with Daisuke Matsuzaka's first name originally being commonly mispronounced as "dai-SOO-kee" and then getting its spelling butchered into the (reasonably) phonetically close but utterly dumb-gaijin spelling of "Dice-K".

posted by lil_brown_bat at 03:55 PM on December 11, 2007

so Fuck You Dome, then?

posted by jerseygirl at 04:04 PM on December 11, 2007

Well, as long as you think "Dice-Kay" sounds about right, "Fuck You Dome" can't be too far off, can it?

posted by lil_brown_bat at 05:09 PM on December 11, 2007

I'd go with FOO-koo-doe-may. Ichiban!

posted by worldcup2002 at 05:11 PM on December 11, 2007

You'd think that Joey Buttafuoco would have an opinion on this wouldn't you?...

posted by Tinman at 05:31 PM on December 11, 2007

Sounds like a place in Thailand that charges $6 cover.

posted by THX-1138 at 06:08 PM on December 11, 2007

Well, as long as you think "Dice-Kay" sounds about right, "Fuck You Dome" can't be too far off, can it? You're asking a girl who fully understands the Boston accent and the Maine accent what sounds right.

posted by jerseygirl at 06:13 PM on December 11, 2007

You're asking a girl who fully understands the Boston accent and the Maine accent what sounds right. HAHA!:) It always bugs me the way guys with long names get their names butchered when they go to America. Allesandro Zanardi became Alex. Juan-Pablo Montoya has been called "Johnny Mo"... Then there's the "Dice Kay" thing. (Which just makes me think of Andrew Dice Clay.) Are American commentators really that lazy? Anytime someone has a remotely complicated name they mong it up. Of course a friend and I have christened Fernando Alonso "Fred" just to make fun of this pattern of idiocy.

posted by Drood at 06:19 PM on December 11, 2007

I read it, and think he must be really selfish in bed. Of course, I'm so selfish in bed I turn my Trojans inside out so they're ribbed for my pleasure.

posted by wfrazerjr at 08:09 PM on December 11, 2007

well, he's a Cub. imagine if Harry Caray was still around.

posted by goddam at 12:54 AM on December 12, 2007

Juan-Pablo Montoya has been called "Johnny Mo"... Then there's the "Dice Kay" thing I've never heard Montoya referred to by anything other than his full name. And "Dice K" is how Daisuke is pronounced. Besides, if you'd ever seen the man on the street interviews after the Bruins signed Dimitri Kvartolnov back in the 90s, you'd know why we get a phonetic spelling around here.

posted by yerfatma at 06:25 AM on December 12, 2007

And "Dice K" is how Daisuke is pronounced. Well...sort of. Like a lot of languages, Japanese has a much more distinct vowel pronunciation than American English, so the "dai" doesn't have the "diiiiiiiiiiieeeeeeyyy" pronunciation that you tend to get with American English, and the "ke" is not "kayyyyyy" either.

posted by lil_brown_bat at 07:46 AM on December 12, 2007

If you take the word "daisy",cut out the "sy"then you would pronounce Daisuke,"Day-Soo-kee.So "Fukudome"would be pronounced "Fuck-you-dome"Definetly something to have a little fun with for sure without any disrespect to ones name.I know that in Japanese,thats not how it's pronounced.Although now I'm curious as to how it is.

posted by Ghastly1 at 12:17 PM on December 12, 2007

Well...sort of. Like a lot of languages, Japanese has a much more distinct vowel pronunciation than American English, so the "dai" doesn't have the "diiiiiiiiiiieeeeeeyyy" pronunciation that you tend to get with American English, and the "ke" is not "kayyyyyy" either. Close enough for government work. The point is where the emphasis goes, which was news to me when he got signed.

posted by yerfatma at 02:05 PM on December 12, 2007

It stands to reason that even if this guy can hardly swing a bat, he is worth having on the team solely on jersey sales.

posted by bender at 02:34 PM on December 12, 2007

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