Death Note, anyone?
I'm not going to talk about death gods and their notebooks, but instead I going to talk about a name; that is, the name of the mysterious detective, L.
If you know a bit of the Japanese language, or an avid manga reader (like yours truly), then you may have known that the consonant L doesn't exist in Japanese. So how do the Japanese pronounce 'L'? That's easy: with 'R' sound instead.
You can quickly see some difficulties that the Japanese face when speaking English. Oh yes, firstly, they will tend to say 'Engrish'. Beside these, there are a wide range of possibilities for puns also.
Death Note contains some of the most amazing uses, or perhaps exploitations would be a better term, of this non-existence of 'L' consonant.
Firstly, the name of the protagonist is? Yamato Raito.
/raɪto/ is how most Japanese would pronounce both 'right' and 'light'. This is significant. One of the recurring themes is justice and fairness. Yamato Raito claimed that his act of killing people was justice; is he 'right'? Moreover, after his murder spree escalated to international level some people saw him as the 'light' that guides the world to be a better place, after the criminals are disposed of. Is he?
Now let's go back to our elusive detective, L. With that kind of elaborate consideration for a protagonist's name, don't you think the mangaka would choose a name with equally hefty significance? This one is pretty obvious, isn't it? 'L' is a consonant that doesn't exist. Isn't it the most appropriate name for a detective who always telecommunicates with changed voice without showing his face? Whose existence itself is doubted?
Considering all these, the most brilliant thing is of course later in the story Raito killed L and assumed L's role as world-renowned detective bent on capturing Kira. The self-righteous Light behind the mask of L, what more could you ask?
I'm not going to talk about death gods and their notebooks, but instead I going to talk about a name; that is, the name of the mysterious detective, L.
If you know a bit of the Japanese language, or an avid manga reader (like yours truly), then you may have known that the consonant L doesn't exist in Japanese. So how do the Japanese pronounce 'L'? That's easy: with 'R' sound instead.
You can quickly see some difficulties that the Japanese face when speaking English. Oh yes, firstly, they will tend to say 'Engrish'. Beside these, there are a wide range of possibilities for puns also.
Death Note contains some of the most amazing uses, or perhaps exploitations would be a better term, of this non-existence of 'L' consonant.
Firstly, the name of the protagonist is? Yamato Raito.
/raɪto/ is how most Japanese would pronounce both 'right' and 'light'. This is significant. One of the recurring themes is justice and fairness. Yamato Raito claimed that his act of killing people was justice; is he 'right'? Moreover, after his murder spree escalated to international level some people saw him as the 'light' that guides the world to be a better place, after the criminals are disposed of. Is he?
Now let's go back to our elusive detective, L. With that kind of elaborate consideration for a protagonist's name, don't you think the mangaka would choose a name with equally hefty significance? This one is pretty obvious, isn't it? 'L' is a consonant that doesn't exist. Isn't it the most appropriate name for a detective who always telecommunicates with changed voice without showing his face? Whose existence itself is doubted?
Considering all these, the most brilliant thing is of course later in the story Raito killed L and assumed L's role as world-renowned detective bent on capturing Kira. The self-righteous Light behind the mask of L, what more could you ask?
2 comments:
hmmm yos...actually they don't have the "R" sound. neither do they have "L" sound. the sound that they have is between the two though it sounds more towards "L".
That's why all of them having difficult time pronouncing my nickname.
Oh is it?
I am following the romaji:
Romaji for L is /eru/
So the pronunciation of the romaji is actually as you say?
Interesting.
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