Weird game names?

Started by maxellnormalbias, October 21, 2014, 09:07:21 pm

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Unlike most other written languages Japanese is almost always written the way it's spoken. The only exceptions I can think of is the two particles は and へ that are pronounced [wa] and [e] respectively although they are written with the characters for ha and he (as most spelling inconsistencies in languages this has historical reasons behind it, they were originally pronounced [ha] and [he] in classical Japanese).

Note that words like ekisutora and conpyuuta are not broken English, they are simply considered Japanese words with foreign origin (and written in katakana to make that clear). Although Japanese people that have trouble with English pronunciation will pronounce more like the Japanese versions of English words, and will often not understand what you mean if you pronounce too much in proper English (like what Raverrevolution experienced in Akihabara).

ebinsugewa

Just to add a bit more info about this: the issue you're referring to deals with something called phonotactic constraints. Different languages have different rules about where certain sounds can appear in syllables. Japanese is very strict, whereas English is rather lax about those rules.

Quote from: maxellnormalbias on October 23, 2014, 10:56:44 am
Yeah, I know, however "Family" is written as フアミリ (Fu/a/mi/ri) However it's NOT pronounced "Foo-ah-mee-ree". So I thought コントラ (Co/n/to/ra) would be pronounced "Contra", not "Con-to-rah".


It sounds much more like 'contra' when spoken quickly. No one elongates the syllables like that when speaking in normal speech. Be careful of the small kana like tsu or a - something like 帰ってきた (as in Kaettekita Mario Bros) is not kaetsutekita.

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Quote from: ebinsugewa on December 01, 2014, 05:03:17 pm
Just to add a bit more info about this: the issue you're referring to deals with something called phonotactic constraints. Different languages have different rules about where certain sounds can appear in syllables. Japanese is very strict, whereas English is rather lax about those rules.

This is also related to why it's hard to pronounce sounds outside your own language. Europeans (languages with lots of different sounds) generally have it easier to pronounce Japanese compared to Japanese and Chinese people (languages with few sounds) that are having a hard time pronouncing words in European languages.