How do you pronounce this word? HUGE debate!?

T

Tygergirl1416

New member
Soooo, it's come down to this. The great debate! You know the Top Ramen noodles? Come on, everyone knows those...

Well do you pronounce it "ray-men" or "rah-men"?

I say it one way and my boyfriend says it another. I always ridicule him, but then wondered if he was in the minority or majority. What better way to find out than a Y!A poll!?

Need lots of answers to prove my point (hopefully, LMAO).
Mickey D,

Whilst I understand your reasoning for posting the way you did, your answer wasn't what I asked for. I asked how you pronounce the word so that I could show the results to my boyfriend.

Your reply came across as borderline uppity and this was meant only to be a fun, informative poll about OPINION.
 
"Rah-men" is the culturally "correct" pronounciation. It's one of my biggest pet peeves when people say it "Ray-men." It makes me think of that game Ray Man.
 
This isn't really a matter for which a poll is appropriate. There is a right way and a wrong way to pronounce words and personal preferences revealed by a poll are surely not designed to discover which is which. Virtually all "a" sounds, except mostly for foreign words, in Japanese are pronounced "ah" and ramen is one of them.
 
I've always pronounced it "rah-men" I'm surprised, I've never heard it pronounced "ray-men". Based on the spelling, it just doesn't make sense.
 
I always pronounced it "Rahmen".

There's a book I bought for my son about how to make the transition from college to "real life" and its title is... "No More Ramen."
 
American English is descriptive, British English is prescriptive. That means that in the US, the experts go around to see how people actually pronounce words, then put that in the dictionary as the proper pronunciation. In England, the language experts and professors decide for themselves how a word should be pronounced.

So if enough people said 'RAY-men', that would be the correct pronunciation. But I think more people say 'RAH-men'. I've never heard it called 'RAY-men'.

Now it's funny. I just looked it up on dictionary.com. The proper pronunciation they give is RAH-men, but of course this is not an Englishw word, it's a Japanese word. And the Japanese word is given with a long A (an A with a - above it), which means they would say RAY-men. It sounds funny to me, but apparently that's how the Japanese pronounce it.
 
The best solution is to ask a native Japanese how to pronounce it. Barring that, it seems that in the USA, both pronunciations are correct. But that doesn't mean that either of them is correct in Japanese.

You say tom-a-to and I say tom-ah-to......
 
I pronounce it Raymen lol.

This is just like one of those things which my and my friends argue about... like for example if Bebo is pronounced Bee-Bo or just Be-Bo... it drives me mad :S
 
Back
Top