Fudschijama

English: Mount Fuji, Japan (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

It is always amazing how superficial knowledge and wrong information prove to be so much stronger than the "real" thing.
This picture shows an entry in a German-Japanese dictionary, published 1972, calling the highest mountain in Japan "Fudschijama".
I have seen this on English sites too, even official sites of the American government!!!

However, no Japanese ever calles the mountain by this name.
It is "Fuji-san", where "san" is the character for MOUNTAIN - and NOT the honorific "Mister".

In Germany there are probably MANY more people who know the "Fudschijama" than those who know its real name.
This kind of artificially created 'misunderstanding' is NOT helping to improve communication between different cultures ...

misunderstandings ...

Image via Wikipedia

Japanese language has a lot of aspects. Some of which can create for foreigners some unexpected "twists" either in their own expression, the way they are understood by others - or "the way you understand how the world works".
For example, the written language uses four different means to graphically express the spoken word: 1) Chinese characters, 2) TWO forms of Japanese alphabet = Hiragana and Katakana and the Latin alphabet. In particular the Japanese alphabets may sometimes cause confusion, because they render individual sounds where apart from the five vowels ALL other sounds are expressed in an alphabetic expression by TWO letters: a consonant and a vowel. Like
ka, sa, ta, na ...
The second of the mentioned alphabets is used MOSTLY for writing foreign words. Because of the additional vowels you hear as a foreigner, you may sometimes "mistake" what you really hear for something else.

For example, I remember when I first heard the word "windbreaker" = meaning a piece of clothing.
I was sort of stunned, because I could not for the life of me figure out, why people would like to "break windows".
THAT is how I recognized the spoken word with the additional vowels: "window breaker" ...

It took some explaining, but I finally got it.

Related articles

• Writing systems - Japanese (readingwithphilology.wordpress.com)
• Five Facts About The Japanese Language (socyberty.com)
• "Fuckin-sale":  https://nyuwa.wordpress.com/2012/02/24/fuckin-sale/
• Computer technology and rendering my name (in Japanese):  https://nyuwa.wordpress.com/2012/04/05/%E3%82%B3%E3%83%B3%E3%83%94%E3%83%A5%E3%83%BC%E3%82%BF%E6%8A%80%E8%A1%93%E3%81%8C%E7%99%BA%E9%81%94/
• Rendering my name by NHK (in Japanese):  http://transcurio.blogspot.jp/2012/03/nhk.html