Not Even Phonetic

Horrible!  I cringe, sensibilities offended, every time I hear Andou Yuuko’s rendition of Aloha ‘Oe.  I have no idea what went wrong, but she’s pronouncing it “aloha o-wee” instead of “aloha oy“.  It’s not like the “oy” sound doesn’t exist in Nihongo (“oi”), and I hope it’s not like she never heard the song performed in its native ‘olelo Hawai’i previous to doing her recording.  I could almost imagine the producer or whoever did the lyric translation saying, “sing it o-wee… why? Because I said so,” like how native English speakers who do bit parts on Japanese movies have to read the script verbatim no matter how gramatically wrong the lines are.  We can’t really blame her though, until Americans learn to say “Tokyo” with less than three syllables.  I think this is a theme song for a current movie or drama…