Because each Japan’s cities they have most of Kanji (Chinese Character) associated with them. For a Chinese speaker, the Japan city’s name is pronounced directly with Kanji’s Chinese pronunciations. However, for non-Chinese speakers, they naturally pronounce the cities’ name with Kanji’s Japanese pronunciation. This sometimes cause problems. As in most cases, the English notation for Japanese cities’ name does not differentiate the elongated word syllables and short syllables. e.g. “O” or “Oh”/”Oo”, so it’s much likely that many people pronounce Japanese cities’ name incorrectly. Long form is pronounced as short form. Osaka is one of the typical example. This episode will explain this phenomenon.
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