Some time ago, I watched a video about how kawaii products in Japan look different than what’s sold in Western markets. An item sold in Japan will have this perfect, nuanced color palette while the Western version gets the corporate version of the character(s) on a bold color background. Although, that doesn’t seem to be the case with official Pokemon or Sanrio merch these days!

Anyway, the person who made the video is really into J-fashion. But they kept saying ‘coo-wah-E’… Like a combo of the cook and how some would say Hawai’i (with the pause before the ii part). A couple people said it sounded like they were saying kowai (scary), which I also thought at times watching the video.

This isn’t the first time I’ve noticed this. 🙉 In almost every video where an English speaker says the word, it’s pronounced like that. Maybe it’s because of how it’s spelled?

If you want to say kawaii in an English sentence, the closest pronunciation will be more like car (minus the r) + why. It’s not be perfect, but closer than anything starting with koh or koo or kuh. The “why” sound is sort of extended because kawaii has a double i. So…maybe it DOES sound like Hawai’i with a pause? But there’s no pause, just a slight pitch change and extension as you say it.

At the end of the day, English speakers have always and will always butcher loanwords. 😅 I still say “carry-oh-key” when I’m talking to my family. And of course, the same thing here applies to speakers of all other languages out there (to varying extents). Languages be hard. 👀

I wanted to post about this just in case anyone reading wants to avoid accidentally saying “scary” when they mean to say “cute”!