Query on Katanaka

[flower07]

Hi everyone,

I am from India. I was looking for some supportive JLPT forums and Google landed me down here. As I am totally new to Japanese, I joined the ABK-AOTS DOSOKAI center here in India. It basically is a combined track for both level 4 and 3 so that we can take up the exam for level 3 by Dec 2009.

It has just been two classes (weekend) since I joined them and they just started with Hiragana. Out of over-excitement I learnt both Hiragana and Katakana. I felt quite ok with Hiragana when I started practicing to write words using it. However, when I started writing words with Katakana, I tend to have a tough time.

For example, the Word England spells out like Igirisu (in Romanji) When written in Katakana. Similarly, Egypt - Ijipute, Ukraine - Ukuraina, etc. I am quite confused when it comes to writing words using Katakana.

Can someone explain me how to go about this?

Doumo Arigatou Gozaimasu

PS: The question to prevent spam during the registration was so tough for someone like me who has just started with Japanese. I used Google translation to get it right. Well, it's the Japanese equivalent for Book

[Landei]

"Igirisu" doesn't come from "England". I guess it's from Portuguese "Inglese" or so (with this nasal Elvis-n).

The reason for the strange words is, that some sounds just doesn't exist in Japanese. There is no way to render "pt", so they insert the "least intrusive" vowel, the "u". Similar, a word ending with "t" or "d" is usually written with "to" or "do". The suffix "-er" gets a log "ra" etc. There is also no "si" and "tu" in Japanese, they are often substituted by "shi" and "tsu". There is no vi, vu, ve, vo, the "v" is often written as bi, bu, be, bo (violin -> baiorin) instead. All of this may sound terrible confusing, but once you heard enough examples, it becomes quite easy to "translate".

For more details, look here:
http://www.guidetojapanese.org/katakana.html
and here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Katakana

[flower07]

Hi Landei,

Thanks for your reply and I think I am kind of getting the hang of it now.

I am just wondering, is it also pronounced the same way as baiorin? or is it just the way how we write it and read as Violin?

Also, can you please tell me how to write the foreign words PRASEEDHA and PRANAV in romanji? I guess PRASEEDHA would be PaRaShiDa and PRANAV would be PaRaNaWa. Am I right?

[routinfigneuton]

[ericspinelli]

I have been living in Japan and studying Japanese for about 2.5 years and consider myself fairly capable. I still have trouble with writing katakana. It's tempting to write them the way I hear them, rather than the way Japanese people from a 100 years ago heard them. Things like エイ vs. エー are always fun.

As Landei mentioned, there are some patterns you can use to guide you, but sometimes it just comes down to learning the exact spelling the Japanese way. Luckily, the pronunciation follows from the spelling.

Some of the words sound surprisingly close to the original, some don't. However, for as many words that you will have a hard time understanding with the butchered pronunciation, Japanese people will have a hard time understanding the correct pronunciation. It's all just a fun game.

-Eric

[flower07]

[NeWbY]

You don't write it to make it look like the original word. You write it the way you pronounce/hear it, ke-ni-ya.

It was funny when I had to write my birth place in katakana. I wrote it the way i thought it should be, and then let it pronounce by a Japanese friend. I had to change it like 5-6 times before his pronouncation came close to the original :P

[JanneM]

Most katakana words are loanwords. But they are Japanese words, so their pronounciation (and thus spelling) may vary a lot from the original foreign word.

Don't think of, say, "テレビ" (television) as a weirdly mangled English word. It isn't. Think of it as a Japanese word that happens to be especially easy to remember.

Also remember that a fair amount of "real" Japanese words are actually loanwords that's been around for long enough to lose the obvious connection. 天麩羅 (tenpura), deep fried fish and vegetables, for instance, is originally Portugese but got "kanjified" at some point. And today 珈琲 (コーヒー, coffee) seems to be undergoing the same process; it's becoming more and more common to see it written with kanji than in katakana.

[routinfigneuton]

[flower07]

Thanks a lot for all your time, guys! I have now started practicing to write a lot of English nouns in Katakana for the sake of understanding it better. Once when I feel quite OK with it, I might then start with the Kanji.

Take care everyone.

[flower07]

Hi again everyone,

As I was a lot bothered, I got hold of the Japan's Built-in Lexicon of English-based Loanwords by Frank E Daulton book and now I am a lot convinced and started to understand 'what, how and why'. I just wanted to share this information because, there might be many other students wondering like me about the Katakana. Go through that book, it answers it all.

Thanks once again everyone.