slyd Please help . . . . ??? What is the correct pronunciation of "Takamine" (as in the guitar). . . . ?? Is it Takamyne, Takameenie, or Takameen. A bit of a dispute here . . :-[ Many thanks
Wizard From wikipedia, if you believe it: The company name is often pronounced /ˈtækəmaɪn/ in English. Closer to the Japanese would be /tɑːkəˈmiːniː/.
AlanRatcliffe In Japanese the vowel at the end of a word is always pronounced (and BTW, all Japanese words end in either a vowel or an "n") and they stay pure regardless of consonants before or after them, so real pronunciation would be Tak-ah-mai-nee. That's how you would pronounce it if you were Japanese. ?
Bob-Dubery Tony Cox used to play high-end Tak's. He says that he had so many stolen that he figured the correct pronunciation was "take mine".
singemonkey It looks very much like the name was designed to have alternative pronunciation in English or Japanese. I don't think the company expects English speakers to use the Japanese pronunciation - and no one would know what the heck you're talking about, frankly. For my money, I'd go with Tak-a-meen. Tak-a-mine sounds like that weird American habit - ant-aye-climax. Speaking of which, I'm always surprised that lots of South Africans pronounce Ibanez - Aye-ba-nez - when it's an obvious imitation of a Spanish brand name. But with these things there's clearly no right or wrong.
