How to Properly Pronounce Ryu

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At lunch I was playing Ninja Gaiden on the XBox. While a good game, it doesn't compare to the orignal NES trilogy. What can I say, I am a sucker for 2-D nostalgia. All of the games are unbelievably tough and still keep me entertained. But this isn't a game review. This is about the main character, Ryu Hayabusa. The pronunciation of his first name has been something that has baffled me for years. Through 1991, my cousin and I always would pronounce him as Rye-You. I said my pronunciation around the EGM geeks who quickly corrected me (and patronized me) and swore that the name was Roo, "do you really think the Japanese actually say Rye-You?"

So we have two pronunciations:

- Rye-You
- Roo

I start doing a little research and found a YouTube video where someone gives examples of the Street Fighter series for the pronunciation of Ree-You (they are actually arguing between Rye-You and Ree-You and it has some NSFW language).



Now we have three pronunciations:

- Rye-You (Me)
- Roo (EGM)
- Ree-You (YouTube guy)

Went to WikiAnswers and they are with the EGM guys and it is Roo.
http://wiki.answers.com/Q/How_is_Ryu_pronounced

Yet, it still doesn't seem that any of these are correct.

I started here and the pronunciation of R


He describes it as 70% R sound, 20% L sound, and 10% D sound.

Then I went here and found the pronunciation for yu.
http://web.mit.edu/~isshinryu/www/pronun.html

The site has the pronunciation of yu as yoo and the pronunciation of ryu as r/lyoo.

In the end, it seemed that the pronunciation should be Dyoo or Lyoo more than a straight Roo so that is what I am going with. In the end the proper pronunciation should be Dyoo or Lyoo.

After all of that research, I came across this video that more or less agrees with me and is fun to watch it pronounced by actual Japanese speakers.


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