Talk:Katakana/Archives/2013

ヰャ, ヰュ, ヰョ: silent w?
Since the w in ヰ (wi) is silent, are the syllables ヰャ, ヰュ, ヰョ (wya, wyu, wyo) in the table above pronounced as ヤ, ユ, ヨ?

What’s their raison d’être?

Tohuvabohuo (talk) 08:26, 4 January 2013 (UTC)

Yōroppa
Is it certain that ヨーロッパ / Yōroppa is from English? Isn't it more likely that the word is derived from Dutch or Portuguese? 惑乱 分からん 17:00, 23 November 2006 (UTC)


 * No, Yoroppa is the Katakana spelling for "Europe", so it can't be derived from Dutch or Portuguese. --Burai 22:15, 23 November 2006 (UTC)


 * Was that seriously meant as an explanation? If it was derived from English, I think a spelling like ユーロップ / Yūroppu or similar would have been more likely... 惑乱 分からん 23:21, 23 November 2006 (UTC)


 * [] says ヨーロッパ is derived from Portuguese 'Europa'.--RedDragon 05:52, 24 November 2006 (UTC)


 * Thanks, I figured that. The Portuguese came before the English, and the -a-spelling looked suspicious? "Ajia" and the other continents as well? 惑乱 分からん 12:42, 24 November 2006 (UTC)


 * The spelling ヨー doesn't match with any European language that I know of. From either Portuguese or Dutch one would expect エウローパ. But I agree that if it had been from English, I'd expect final プ. &#8212;Largo Plazo (talk) 12:39, 12 July 2008 (UTC)


 * I hope the topic's not dead for you guys. I'd just like to mention that the word Yōroppa can also be written in kanji - 欧羅巴.  This is the same as an older Chinese name for Europe.  Maybe the Japanese word isn't neatly from just one language.  The "pa" part could be an imitation of the Chinese pronunciation (who knows which Chinese language).  The other thing I can add is that when Japanese people came up with their loanwords, they didn't always add the vowel that they usually tend to.  For example, "korokke" (コロッケ) is the word for "croquette."  We'd expect it to be "kurokke" because "u" is usually added to "k" when there's no vowel, but they just felt like using "o."  Maybe they just felt like using "pa" instead of "pu," and it is from English.  Who knows?  Anyway, it's a nice question, but it actually belongs in the discussion to a different article, like "Gairaigo," or "Japanese Words of Portuguese Origin." (Ejoty (talk) 14:57, 15 September 2009 (UTC))


 * Well, japanese dictionaries (dictionary.goo.ne.jp being a decent online one) list ヨーロッパ as ヨーロッパ【(ポルトガル)Europa】 It's a portuguese word. Like tenpura. 78.50.81.12 (talk) 15:38, 18 March 2011 (UTC)


 * Although is the most common Portuguese pronunciation, substituting the  for, ,  ,  and  are all possible in casual, fast speech. In Vernacular Brazilian Portuguese, monophthongization to  or  is all but uncommon (I may use both of them myself). Ancient European dialects may have it even as  or ! The Japanese probably understood that Portuguese "vowel encounters" in most times meant whatever that may float your boat, and choose the pronunciation they found easier.


 * The sokkuon in this case helps to differ between and . By giving "emphasis" to the Japanese, they meant a closer pronunciation to our latter vowel. And エウロッパ would also sound quite absurd, because it'd be pronounced , with the first syllable sounding like "eú" to our ears, what is surely much more distant to a "natural" Portuguese pronunciation than those I cited.


 * Ásia is always, though, as the stress in this word forms a minimal pair with azia i.e. heartburn. Lguipontes (talk) 17:00, 4 July 2013 (UTC)

The "KW" Kana
I looked at the page about transcribing English to Japanese, and it says that the "WI" kana is written as "UI." Wouldn't same thing change "KWI" to "KUI"?


 * クィック is quick in Japanese. If transcribed to roomaji, it would be kwikku. The reason behind this is kuikku would be クイック. It could be argued that there is no difference since they are pronounced the same. However, timing wise they are different: クィ is 1 syllable, クイ is 2. They are different... technically. Neoprofit (talk) 22:30, 19 September 2008 (UTC)


 * In Archaic Japanese, Kwa, Kwi, Kwe, and Kwo were written as くゎ, くゐ, くゑ, くを respectively, but this has died out in Modern Japanese. Only a small Wa Kana exists, the others have to be created with a undefined code.  moo cows rule talk to moo 19:48, 19 January 2009 (UTC)


 * With &lt;sub&gt;&lt;/sub&gt;, the characters are not only smaller, but also lowered. With &lt;small&gt;&lt;/small&gt;, they are only smaller, which looks better to my eyes : くゎ, く ゐ, く ゑ , く を.
 * Tohuvabohuo (talk) 12:15, 2 November 2013 (UTC)

Geminate character ッ also in overview
Can the geminate character ッ also be included in the overview table like is done for っ in the overview of Hiragana? I know the table on row * is very full, but hopefully it can be squeezed in somewhere. For example by putting 4 cells in row * under the three columns of ya yu yo, allowing for ーッヽヾ. SvGeloven (talk) 10:23, 21 April 2010 (UTC)
 * I added it to the Hiragana one iirc, and I was unsure how I'd add it here. Perhaps we can move the ye ones up to the top? That'd give us a 4th column. - MK (t/c) 02:37, 26 May 2010 (UTC)
 * I started working on it but this table is a mess. I don't even think several of these should be included. If anyone else wants to take a stab at it, this is what I got done:


 * - MK (t/c) 02:51, 26 May 2010 (UTC)

th and dh?
What’s the intended pronunciation of テァ, テゥ, テォ, デァ, デゥ and デォ?

In the table above they are transcribed tha, thu, tho, dha, dhu and dho. But what is the value of those “th” and “dh”? Are they the English th, i.e. /θ/ and /ð/, or aspirated plosives, /tʰ/ and /dʰ/?


 * Does nobody really know anything about this?


 * Tohuvabohuo (talk) 10:20, 2 November 2013 (UTC)

Where's ヴ?
There are two instances of ヴ in this article and wikipedia doesn't show the romaji which is "vu" --Primus1x (talk) 13:05, 1 December 2013 (UTC)
 * I can only find it once, in the Unicode table. However, it’s dealt with in Transcription into Japanese. — Christoph Päper 18:55, 1 December 2013 (UTC)

Syllabary?
Is n a syllable? We all know it isn't. So why is katakana called here a syllabary? (ditto for hiragana). OK, I know why, because that's how MOST sources seem to call it. BUT, I think we should call it a morary. Or should I say, that's what a prof. at my previous university said, and I just happen to agree with him. Now, this alone is probably not good enough an argument for wikipedia, so I found three example pieces of evidence, if you will: 1)"Thus, a minority of graphemes represent one phoneme each and the vast majority of graphemes represent two phonemes each. Japanese linguists traditionally worked with a timing unit termed onsetu, which led McCawley (1968) to define the Japanese phonetic orthography as a morary rather than a syllabary.3" https://dspace.library.uvic.ca:8443/bitstream/handle/1828/2974/Japanese%20Verb-Form%20Transformation%20by%20Early%20Second-Language%20Learners.pdf 2)"Written Japanese has three ortographies, or writing systems: the set of characters taken from Chinese, kanji, and two “syllabaries” (technically MORARIES, systems of writing that represent each mora with a character - analogous to a syllabary, but whose components are morae instead)" http://www.swarthmore.edu/SocSci/Linguistics/Papers/2006/seiders_phoebe.pdf p. 7 [graphic pdf, ctrl+f not working] 3)"Indeed, the writing system of Japanese would probably be better described as a "morary" instead of a "syllabry", since one generally has the same number of morae as kana (with the exception of clusters like kyu or shu [syu]), while it frequently has more kana than morae. Shimbun, for instance, is written si-n-hu(voiced)-n, two syllables but four morae, and four kana." http://listserv.brown.edu/archives/cgi-bin/wa?A3=ind0004c&L=CONLANG&E=7bit&P=367366&B=--&T=text%2Fplain;%20charset=us-ascii&header=1 116.81.194.120 (talk) 14:05, 29 December 2013 (UTC)
 * A syllabary is any non-segmental phonographic script, i.e. one whose primary graphic signs correspond to combinations of consonants and vowels (although one or the other may be optional). There probably is not a single “syllabary” which truly and only encodes syllables. By the way, /n/ can be syllabic in many languages, even if it isn’t in Japanese. A “morary”, if that was an established term and hence not original research, would just be a special kind of syllabary. — Christoph Päper 16:18, 29 December 2013 (UTC)