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This occurrence appears to happen when the speaker is trying to sound cute, or
is possibly under the influence of something... They break one of the words
into syllables or characters, with pauses in between where they broke up the
word.

For an archetypal example:

> ご飯にする？お風呂にする？それとも、 **あ・た・し** ？  
>  "Do you want dinner? Or do you want a bath? Or do you want _me_?"

Or, when one character confesses their love to another, you might hear だ・い・す・き
_da-i-su-ki_ "I-love-you".
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2015-06-30T16:28:11.620
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2015-07-11T21:49:40.720
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spoken-language anime
Why are words sometimes broken into syllables when said?
I've heard it a few times myself and the subtitles do tend to either spell out
the English letters or break up the syllables. While the characters of many
languages (including Romance, Germanic, and Semitic languages) have names, the
same is not true of Japanese, Chinese, or other Asiatic languages.

Characters will sometimes break up their speech in anime for the same reason
that you have unnatural breaks in English movies. ("This. Is. Sparta!") I'm
sure it _can_ have violent overtones in Japanese just as it can have playful
overtones in English. It all depends on the context and presentation.
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2015-06-30T18:45:12.800
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Japanese is not as [tonal of a
language](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tone_\(linguistics\)) as English with
its rhythmic iambic pentameter (English is said to be ["a stress-timed
language"](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_phonology#Rhythm)) or
[Chinese](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standard_Chinese_phonology#Tones)
(Japanese does have some tones, such as _kami_ [paper] vs. _kami_ [god] vs.
_kami_ [hair] or _hashi_ [bridge] and _hashi_ [chopsticks]). In English,
emphasis is often accomplished by changing the tonal stress of the sentence.
For example, "What are you [doing NOW]{LLLLLLHHH}?" or "[What are YOU doing
now?!]{LLLLLLLLLHHHLLLLLLLLLLL}" or "[What ARE you doing
now?!]{LLLLLHHHLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLL}" or "[WHAT ]{HHHHL} are you doing now?!"
Because Japanese does not default to this, enunciating syllables with pauses
is an alternate way to create emphasis in a sentence.
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answer
I've pretty much only heard separation of syllables in those contexts when an
anime character is being super flirty/seductive. It is most commonly used in
this way with わたし and あたし, and sometimes with 大好き and 秘密. It has a pretty
specific tone of voice when being used in this manner too.

Of course, separation of syllables can also be used to just "spell" words,
although I feel that it would often come off as angry-sounding or insulting to
the other person's intelligence if you do it just to add emphasis. A better
way to express emphasis in a casual, friendly context would be to repeat the
word you are emphasizing at the end of the sentence.

> 私だよ。私。  
>  It's _me_.
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answer