#japanese loan words

[piracytheorist]

Have we talked about how Twilight went from "Anya will go back to the orphanage I picked her up from once the mission is done"

to "I'll write a cover letter so she can go to a better orphanage and be happier"

to "I'll make sure both my fake daughter and fake wife have a good life once the mission is done and I have to part with them"

because I think that's v important

[msburgundy]

play etymologies with me

[adhd-languages]

It’s really amusing to me that Sudoku is a loan word from Japanese that we use.

But in Japan, it’s copyrighted, so they use number place (ナンプレ, I think) which is the English name.

We just traded words :)

[haru-dipthong]

What is the "correct" pronunciation of a loan word?

In English, we often try to attempt the native pronunciation of loan words. And we don’t allow our writing system to control the way we pronounce foreign words. For example, we don’t pronounce “faux pas” as “fowks pass”, and if a friend asked for a “tor-till-ah” instead of “tor-tee-ya”, or “ka-rah-jee” instead of “kara-ah-gee”, you might politely correct them.

In Japanese however, it seems like no such effort is made. Foreign words are transposed into the Japanese writing system, and then read phonetically with seemingly little effort at maintaining the original pronunciation. Muhk-don-aldz becomes ma-ku-don-aru-do; work becomes waa-ku.

In English we know that a Spanish-origin word with two consecutive Ls makes a Y sound. Why then, don’t Japanese people know that you don’t need to pronounce all the extraneous vowels that the Japanese writing system forces into English-origin words? Japanese people certainly use more English loan words than English people use Spanish loan words, so it’s not an issue of familiarity.

I have a theory to expain this phenomenon. First, we have to assume the following things are true:

Some sounds or combinations of sounds that exist in one language don’t exist in many others. This means when a word is borrowed from a different language, the borrowing language often can’t reproduce the pronunciation perfectly as it appears in the native language.

People generally try to pronounce words correctly, as this leads to better communication and understanding, even if this effort is subconscious.

My theory is this, and it applies to any language: the “correct” pronunciation of a loan word is not the native pronunciation. It is actually the pronunciation that gets the closest to the native pronunciation while still only using sounds and combinations of sounds that exist in the language borrowing the word.

I was really satified when I came up with this because it explains a few odd happenings.

It explains why Japanese people make no effort to avoid pronouncing the extraneous vowels they add between consonants in English loan words (because such combinations of sounds simply don’t exist in the Japanese phonetic system).

It explains why people find cooking show hosts pretentious when they suddenly pronounce an ingredient with its native pronunciation, like “parmesan” (because the native pronunciation is “overshooting” - they did not use the agreed upon english pronunciation of the loan word).

It explains why, if I ask a supermarket staff member where the “tofu” is, with perfect Japanese pronunciation, they most likely will not understand me.

That said, my theory may be wrong, and as someone with no formal education in linguistics, I would love it if a real linguist or linguistics student responded to this post with a different opinion or more information!

[warau-okami]

Over on Twitter some well informed (I'm being sarcastic) person was telling English speakers that they don't need to know loan words or say them in Japanese.

Don't do that.

Just like loan words in English don't sound like their native pronunciation, loan words in Japanese are pronounced and are still Japanese words.

Can you name loan words that have different meanings than a native English speaker might think? There's more than 2 for sure.

[becomedog]

loan words that will have you saying "i simply would invent the letter v"* and "i would simply use a different word"**

[corvidconventicle]

Sometimes knowing written Chinese helps with guessing how to write Japanese words.

Sometimes the words are written completely differently, which is completely fine.

But sometimes one radical is switched and that just drives me up the wall

咖啡 = 珈琲

[diathadevil]

There’s nothing I fear more than learning a language and trying to remember said other language’s specific month names.

[homoerectusindeed]

the japanese word for hamster is hamusuta (ハムスタ) and its very endearing

[tlaquetzqui]

I wish the translators for Bocchi the Rock and Mononogatari would stop just having characters say things are “rock”. We don’t say that in English, that expression does not exist. We say they are metal.

[divorcetual]

japanese is an interesting language esp. in use of loan words, bcs often when it uses words from a latin based language it changes slightly given its syllabric structure (The japanese alphabet uses a mostly consonant-vowel syllable structure- basically every alphabet character represents a syllable, as opposed to the latin alphabet which represent individual sounds) and how some sounds will exist in latin languages and not in japanese (and vice-versa) And usually the loan words are still recognizable, even if changed slightly (see: kirisuto and christo (kee-ree-soo-tou vs kuu-ree-ss-tou)) but sometimes a loan word had so mant sounds that dont exist in japanese and/or cant be said without a sound added on (see the sharp "s" in christo changed to "su" in japanese) that u look at a word and u go thats not even a loan word atp that is just new vocaulary with one similar syllable

[vmddirectory]

Phony

京まりん, 06/23/2023

Choreography: Porushi

Distribution Video

Password Hint Translation: The title of the song in kanji. (two characters)

[ravenwolfie97]

okay i Finally feel like i have the time and energy to get back to genshin

it’s a small thing early on in the tcg grand prix thing but i thought it was interesting

so when kaeya greets charlotte, he says “enchantée”

which is initially in line with him being a smooth talking kind of guy

but since charlotte is from fontaine, which is mostly based on france, he’s probably just greeting her in her national language, which is really thoughtful and respectful of him

i just thought that was neat :0

[forcebookish]

is this like the matrix? did they choose katakana at random? or is it meant to sound out chinese? serira-serira isn't a word, but i could see kids learning chinese using katakana in the 25th century. especially if we accept that most of the tones in chinese have been flattened after ~500 years of american/anglo influence

[black-rabbit-razumikhin]

Wanting to take a soul-soothing break from exam studying to practice my new language only to remember that it's alphabet practice time and I'm so sorry but I can NOT tell the difference between these little dudes

[kaityslangblr]

Brand Names in Japanese are FUNNY and CUTE! (and RUDE?)