Delica Canada | Mitsubishi Van Club

Just wondering what the consensus is on the pronunciation of "Delica". Does the middle syllable "i" sound like the "ee" in see, or like the "i" in sit? I've heard it both ways and am curious.

I've also been meaning to post this question. I say it with the "I" pronounced like the "I" in sit.

clearly the cooler way

Delica stands for; Delicate Carrier (to Delicately Carry)

In Japan, they pronounce it "Delicka" and this is how I pronounce it too. (They actually call it Derricka due to the way they speak!)

Over here in the UK we have a car called a Celica (Toyota) and it is pronounced "Seleeeka" so a lot of the UK owners adopt this way of pronouncing it and call their Delica a "Deleeeka"

Often I just refer to it as a "Deli" and this gets around the whole pronunciation issue except around people who don't know about the vehicle and think you are talking about the cold meat counter at the local store!

I thought Delica came from "Delivery Car'. I assumed it would be pronounced accordingly. I recall having a conversation about them with a guy I met at VI Custom Imports a year ago and he kept insisting on correcting me by repronouncing the name in a painfully deliberate manner after I had uttered it it. He obviously felt it was named after a cinnamon bun that tasted 'Delicious'.

Hi Bruce,

Looks like we were typing at the same time. Interesting the different derivatives of the name. I got my interpretation of where the name came from from the Mitsubishi Facts and Figures book, Page 33, which can be seen here:
http://www.mitsubishi-motors.com/corpor ... ct2005.pdf

However I'm sure it's probable they also used 'Delicate Carrier'.

Thanks for that - I was just trying to find the part of the Mitsubishi website where I read it as Delicate Carrier? It was a few years ago now and seems no longer to be there.

It was in some sales pitch about the motor and was followed by some of that lovely Japanese gobbledygook like "while we play in the bosom of nature feeling the physical ironic belief" or something like that? (you know the lovely phrases they use!!)

Either way it still translates as Delicka not Deleeeka and I always feel the latter sounds wrong. There are quite a few videos (you tube etc...) where you can hear Japanese people pronouncing it Derricka.

One absolute 'no no' that really gets me over here is when people call it a 'Deleeshia'!! WHERE to they get that one from?

Thanks for the input all. I've been saying deleeka, but will adjust to delicka. Here in Canada we called the popular Toyota Celica "sel-leeeka" too, but the Toyota TV adds called it sell-ika. Same difference with the Deli's, it seems. Del-ick-a sounds good and I feel better pronouncing a name properly. "Deleeshia", shudder! Thanks again.
Scott

I've always pronounced it with an 'ee' sound because most Japanese words which use the Roman letter 'i' sound like that. They tend you use a 'y' for the short 'i' sound. Also, with the language studies I've taken over the years, the 'i' usually has an 'ee' sound and not the short 'i' sound usually associated with English.

And if you think we're having trouble trying to figure out how the Japanese pronounce "Delica", what were they thinking when they came up with this ad? http://www.engrish.com/detail.php?image ... 2008-01-18

I've always said "DELL-i-ca", following the Japanese pronounciation that sounds something like "DEH-ri-ka" (I could type it in IPA, but most would be none the wiser). There are a couple of D:5 ads on YouTube where you can hear this.

There is an Aussie L400 review on YouTube where they pronounce it "de-LEE-ca". Just to confuse things.

...laura

I haven't heard anyone else say it "DelEEka", always "Dellika", but I think I'll stick with my Deleeka.

del ick a. but I also say cel ick a. Laziest way is the best way in my book.

I spoke with someone who has a linguistics degree (from England, which seems to give it credibility), and aside from all of the completely mystifying terminology (what the hell is a frickative? - probably didn't spell that correctly either...) the answer was straightforward. According to the actual spelling of the word, the long ee would be correct (del-ee-ca). If it were to be the short i sound, there would either have to be a double L (dellica) or, as has been shown in this thread, a ck instead of just a c (delicka).

Now, that said, how it's spelled and how it should be pronounced are generally unrelated, and I make no claim that the long ee is the correct pronunciation in anything but the linguistic phoenetic spelling sense. (pretty obvious I didn't get the linguistics degree!) After all, people who speak English all over the world can't even agree on how to say the word grass, let alone a word coined by someone in Japan.

So, perhaps we need some sort of compromise. Any suggestions? Deli works, but as was mentioned before, the sliced meat question comes up. Maybe you could just say Delica really really fast so that all those internal syllables just blur together and no one can tell what the hell you just said anyway (which is generally the response when people ask just what on earth you're driving no matter what you say).

Reading the above, thinking back to a pedantic English Prof we once had and the Don Quixote pronunciation lecture he once gave us, I had to bite my tongue, but I couldn't resist, so here goes:

The British refuse to accommodate the pronunciation of foreign names or words to any sounds not actually contained into the (sometimes transliterated) English spelling of such.

With equal vigor, they also find an almost compulsive need to annunciate each and every letter of said word or name. We therefore have Don Quixote being pronounced by the British as Don Quicks-oat, and Don Juan as Don Jew-an. We shall not even mention Jag-u-ar.

Since there is no indication that William Blake was not canonic in following the fashion of his fellows, the Blaketashi Dervish also pronounces all foreign words and names exactly as written, including Katakana Japanese. The name of the Delivery Car, of course, is pronounced, er.... ‘Delica.’

"How should one pronounce Katakana in the presence of an Japanese speaker when the sound of the word in Nihongo is very different from how it is written in English?" you may muse. The truth is very simple. Delica is simply a deterioration of the prima lingua, which is English, and the correct pronunciation, even of Katakana, is the English pronunciation. Be proud of your pronunciation, dear reader! It may be the first time your four wheeled friend ever heard its name pronounced properly!

Having read all that, I propose we drop 'Delicka' and/or 'Deleecka' in favour of 'Derricka', thus giving credence to the people from whence we adopted these fine vehicles.

Domo arigato