Resembling some classic gaffes by U.S. President George W. Bush, Aso has recently been failing during speeches to correctly pronounce certain words, many of them commonly used in daily Japanese. The words are written in kanji in his scripts.
On Wednesday at Gakushuin University in Tokyo, speaking about the May earthquake in Sichuan, China, he mispronounced the word “mizou” (unprecedented) as “mizo-yu,” a nonword, and later read the word “hinpan” (frequent) as “hanzatsu” (complicated).
Now in addition to Rozen Aso (because he likes Rozen Maiden manga), Japanese Prime Minister acquired a new nickname: KY Aso (Kanji Yomenai).
Sources:
- Aso raises eyebrows with nonwords and wrong words (Japan Times)
- Taro “KY” Aso has a little trouble reading his speeches (Japanator)
- Taro “I-can’t-read-kanji” Aso publicly proves incompetency in Japanese language (Tokyo Mango)
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I knew the young people were starting to mess up with their kanji, but this is unexpected..
Yes, he might be one of the richest officials, but he certainly might use some more education 😛