The seasons
Let’s start with the seasons!
From cherry blossoms to autumn leaves, the illustrations beautifully capture the essence of Japan’s four seasons.
Luxury Items
Next up: luxury items!
Try pronouncing wine as ‘Uwine’ or Cheese as ‘Chee’ aloud — considering how its commonly phonetisized as ‘wa-in’ (ワイン）or ‘chi-zu’ (チーズ), its not far off from the correct pronunciation right?
Interestingly, ‘tabaco (煙草)’ was originally a Portuguese word, and it’s written as ‘えんそう (enso)’ in these books!
Animals
And now for the animals…
‘hare’ refers to a wild rabbit.
And ‘camel’ is written in kanji (漢字) — a nice bonus for anyone brushing up on their characters! And now for the animals…
Facilities
Some of the facilities shown are rarely seen in daily life today.
In the illustration of a prison, someone appears to be held captive…
On Instagram, one Japanese user who tried pronouncing the words commented,
“Old pronunciations are often easier for my friends to understand than the modern ones ♡”
Why not share with other Japanese people who are learning english?
Click here to see it on Instagram
Image credit: Pictorial Dictionary, The Metropolitan Museum of Art (some images cropped)
This article is translated from https://intojapanwaraku.com/lifestyle/266266/
