This might sound really stupid but I am learning katakana and I realized that some game names like "Contra" are spelled funny, like "Contora". (こんとら in hiragana, I don't know how to type katakana)
Has anyone else noticed this?
Funny story about that game;
When I was in Japan last year I was looking everywhere in Akihabara for it. Finally I walked into Trader and asked the store employee if they had it. Yeah yeah I know about the language barrier, but I thought Contra was known as that there also. Anyway, the guy was clueless on my request so I pulled out my phone and looked it up and showed him a picture. Then right away he was like, "Ohhhh Contora!!" and found the game quickly. Stupid me I wasn't even thinking that's how it would have been said. I am still so happy to this day at how much cheaper I got it than asking price online.
Oh! So it is pronounced "Contora" for the famicom version. I thought it was just a kana limitation, kind of like how famicom is spelled "fu-a-mi-ko-mu" because there's no "fa" or "com" in kana.
Given that the game is Japanese in origin, "Contra" is actually the weird spelling ;)
Contra's name is weird, anyway, since the kanji they use for the title are pronounced kontora, but it's not a real Japanese word.
It's a practice called Ateji, where the kanji characters are used for their sound but not for their meaning. That's what's usually done in China when borrowing words from other languages. In Japan it's typically done when you want your title to appear really old-fashioned or grandiose. It's like when us in the west use Elizabethan English for dramatic flair or something like that. Salamander's title is also written in Ateji.
Most modern japanese thinking, that speak broken language is cool. Maybe this is the way to hide low level of education. Excessive use of katakana, abbreviations(read Orwell) etc etc etc
I would be hard-pressed to be convinced that Contra was not named after contras (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contras), which predate the video game, are jungle militants, and as a foreign word, is seemingly spelled the same, コントラ (kontora).
Quote from: 80sFREAK on October 22, 2014, 04:42:44 pm
Most modern japanese thinking, that speak broken language is cool. Maybe this is the way to hide low level of education. Excessive use of katakana, abbreviations(read Orwell) etc etc etc
In other words: slang. Something that every language in the world has. ;)
Quote from: M-Tee on October 22, 2014, 06:36:29 pm
I would be hard-pressed to be convinced that Contra was not named after contras (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contras), which predate the video game, are jungle militants, and as a foreign word, is seemingly spelled the same, コントラ (kontora).
I would believe that this meaning ultimately goes back to the root word meaning of "against", from Latin / Greek of long ago.
Quote from: Bob-Bob on October 22, 2014, 09:05:51 pm
Quote from: 80sFREAK on October 22, 2014, 04:42:44 pm
Most modern japanese thinking, that speak broken language is cool. Maybe this is the way to hide low level of education. Excessive use of katakana, abbreviations(read Orwell) etc etc etc
In other words: slang. Something that every language in the world has. ;)
Slang is slang, but usually it is for minorities. As i said, read Orwell.
Circus Chablie
Quote from: maxellnormalbias on October 21, 2014, 09:07:21 pm
This might sound really stupid but I am learning katakana and I realized that some game names like "Contra" are spelled funny, like "Contora". (こんとら in hiragana, I don't know how to type katakana)
Has anyone else noticed this?
Remember that Japanese generally can't pronounce strings on consonants together. So 'extra' becomes 'ekisitora'. So, the name Contra can be translated into phonetics but may still be spoken differently.
Quote from: smeghead on October 23, 2014, 10:06:44 am
Circus Chablie
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Quote from: L___E___T on October 23, 2014, 10:22:36 am
Remember that Japanese generally can't pronounce strings on consonants together. So 'extra' becomes 'ekisitora'. So, the name Contra can be translated into phonetics but may still be spoken differently.
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".
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".
Family, in katakana, is ファミリ, not フアミリ. Note the little ァ. ファ is pronounced "fa", so Fa-mi-ri is the right pronunciation. 'Fu' is the only "F" sound in the katakana alphabet, so it's combined with a bunch of other small characters to make other "F" sounds (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fu_(kana) (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fu_(kana))).
Oh! Thanks. So, yeah, I guess it's just how it has to be written.
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).
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.
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.