Son Goku's name pronunciation confusion (DB Ep 21)

[jpranevich]

I *know* that this has been discussed somewhere here before, but I cannot find it. I just finished watching Dragon Ball episode 21 as part of a rewatch I'm working on and the Budokai announcer completely botches Goku's name. I think he's reading the characters as they would be pronounced in Japanese while Goku's name gets a Chinese reading or something similar to that, but I can't find the thread where I learned that and I'd like to know more.

Can someone point me at the right place to look? (Or explain it, if you can't find the link either...)

[RedRibbonSoldier#42]

Yes, I belive it was a kunyomi/Onyomi switch up, but I don't have that part in Japanese so I don't know the exact mistake. Son Gokuu is the Japanese name based off of Chinese (from a long time ago, and after pronounciation shifting into Japanese phonology.)

Edit: to explain more, most kanji have multiple readings. When they were ripped from chinese a thousand years ago, they were assigned to a native japanese word and also kept their chinese pronouciation, with mild to heavy modification since Japanese has different sounds and no tone. So now the "chinese" reading only sometimes vaguely resemble how modern chinese people read kanij. Son Gokuu uses the chinese sound based readings, but there is no more native japanese way to say it, and no one but Japan reads it like that.(Son Gokuu the character was invented after Japan had readings for kanji, and they just used the sound based readings like in most names encountered) Contrast to Shenron, who is given a name based on actual chinese, not the chinese based japanese readings, but then still modified to japanese phonology. The japanese-chinese reading would be jinryuu and the japanese-japanese reading would be kamitatu. Shenlong is chinese-chinese. Shenron is Japanified-chinese-chinese, and has to be given in phonetic script since it's not a Japanese reading at all.

So Son Gokuu is Japanese, whatever the guy said was other Japanese readings that don't make a real name, and Sun Wukong is Chinese. So, in conclusion, Gokuu was not given a more especially Chinese name then what is standard in Japan. The dude was just not familiar with the name and guessed the wrong reading, as real life Japanese names use all combinations of the possible readings for the kanji(and readings outside of dictionaries too).

[jpranevich]

If you care to check it out, I believe this is the right link to Funimations's free stream of the episode:

https://www.funimation.com/shows/dragon ... ble/uncut/

(I pay them for commercial free for now but I am hoping these old episodes end up on Crunchy Roll soon...)

[RedRibbonSoldier#42]

I got paywalled. Can you hear what the guy says and transcribe it?

[Theophrastus]

The announcer misreads Goku's name as "Mago Gosora".

[RedRibbonSoldier#42]

The announcer misreads Goku's name as "Mago Gosora".

So then yes, he just switched to kun'yomi for everything except 悟 /go/.

[nickzambuto]

The real question is, to somebody who speaks Japanese, was the joke actually funny?

[TekTheNinja]

The real question is, to somebody who speaks Japanese, was the joke actually funny?

Honestly probably not.

[Nejishiki]

The real question is, to somebody who speaks Japanese, was the joke actually funny?

I'd imagine so, yes. They love their pun-based humor overseas & Toriyama was known as a master of that style of writing. The readership knew what to expect & likely read through early Dragon Ball for that reason, even if the narrative was gravitating towards more action around that point. Toriyama's classic humor was the serial's backbone during the gradual transition, at least.