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As in "Wu Tang" or something similar. Would it be something like ウゥ? I know that "wool" is written as ウール, but 1) the "woo" sound is pronounced slightly differently than "wu", and 2) ウール doesn't give you the "pushed" sound of the 'w'.

And not just at the beginning of a word. Specifically, I was watching this video of a guy who goes by the name of "Swoozie", visiting Tokyo. How would he (or others) write that name?

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    If I wanted to distinguish /wu/ from /u/, I wouldn't use kana. Also, related: japanese.stackexchange.com/questions/643/…
    – user1478
    Dec 13, 2012 at 23:10
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    I've seen ヲゥ before.
    – Zhen Lin
    Dec 13, 2012 at 23:28
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    There is no standard way in Japanese to describe the vowel /u/ or the combination /wu/ used in English, because neither sound exists in Japanese. In loanwords, the former is usually transcribed as ウ and the latter ウー, as you know. I am not sure what your question is.
    – Tsuyoshi Ito
    Dec 13, 2012 at 23:39

4 Answers 4

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ウータン・クラン

http://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/ウータン・クラン

かな？

As per Mr.Ito, "In loanwords, the former is usually transcribed as ウ and the latter ウー, as you know. "

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  • OK, but what about the name "Swoozie" like I asked, where the sound is in the middle of the word? Following that rule, it would be スージー, which sounds more like the female name "Suzie". It doesn't give the "push" of the 'w'. Maybe スゥージー?
    – istrasci
    Dec 13, 2012 at 23:54
  • maybe スウージー. swoon is スウーン i think. u can prob find Swoosie Kurtz (actress name) in kana somewhere, she was in a few big movies.
    – yadokari
    Dec 14, 2012 at 0:02
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    @istrasci Lets assume that you could devise some kana sequence to spell "wu". Since the sound [wu] does not exist in Japanese, how would you expect Japanese speakers to be able to pronounce that kana sequence?
    – Dono
    Dec 14, 2012 at 0:03
  • @Dono, I guess you're right in principle, but it's kind of a gray area. Japanese has ヴ (although I believe it's never mandatory to use it), but I wouldn't consider /v/ to be part of native Japanese phonetic inventory.
    – dainichi
    Dec 14, 2012 at 0:35
  • @istrasci Swoozie Kurtz doesn't have her own Japanese wikipedia page, but I managed to find her name on the page for Liar Liar. It's transcribed スウージー・カーツ.
    – rurouniwallace
    Dec 14, 2012 at 2:47
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Dono has a point in his comment where he mentions that even if there were a way to transcribe it, the sound [wu] does not exist in Japanese.

Let me first explain why it doesn't exist.

The Japanese phoneme /w/ as in /wa/,/wi/,/we/ and /wo/ (transcribed as ワ,ウィ,ウェ and ウォ) is not the same as the phoneme /w/ in English. /w/ in Japanese is the approximant (which is more or less like a non-syllabic vowel) corresponding to the vowel /u/, which in Japanese is pronounced with relaxed lips, whereas /w/ in English is pronounced with rounded lips. /wu/ is possible in English, since when going from the /w/ to the /u/, the lips lose some of the rounding. However, in Japanese, /wu/ doesn't make sense, since /w/ and /u/ are pronounced in the same way. Hence /wu/ = /u/ -> ウ.

Many non-native Japanese speakers are unaware of this lack of rounding on the Japanese /w/ (and maybe /u/ as well), just as many native Japanese speakers are unaware of the rounding in English.

Back to Dono's point. Japanese does have a way to transcribe /v/, namely with ヴ, although I would argue that /v/ doesn't exist in Japanese (or at least, it's usually realized the same way /b/ is). I think one reason that /v/ has a transcription whereas (English) /w/ doesn't could be that the concept of your upper teeth touching your lower lip is fairly easy to understand, even if that sound is not in your phonetic inventory. But the whole thing about rounding, that's a bit more complicated. Also, Japanese /w/ works as a good approximation of English /w/ except for the specific case of /wu/.

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  • are you saying that ヴ is pronounced the same as ブ?
    – Axe
    Dec 14, 2012 at 2:02
  • @ogicu8abruok, well, it depends. I guess it is an indication that it should be pronounced as /v/, but most people don't (or can't). Actually, in most cases people would write ブ, not ヴ. クリスマスイブ is more common than クリスマスイヴ (my intuition, plus Google hits, for what that's worth), and pronouncing it /-ibu/ is much more common than pronouncing it /-ivu/ (I would take the latter either as snobbery or an attempt to explicitly show how it's written).
    – dainichi
    Dec 14, 2012 at 3:31
  • Actually, I think the realisation of ヴ, if distinct from ブ, will be closer to [βɯ] than [vɯ].
    – Zhen Lin
    Dec 14, 2012 at 10:04
  • watch this from 7:30 to 10:30 if you want to hear a million examples of words with v... youtube.com/…
    – Axe
    Dec 14, 2012 at 15:57
  • @ZhenLin, well [β] is already an allophone of /b/ in Japanese, so that just confirms my theory that /v/ doesn't exist (for all) in Japanese. That it is supposed to represent a labiodental voiced fricative, is confirmed here: ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E3%83%B4 "有声唇歯摩擦音"
    – dainichi
    Dec 17, 2012 at 0:46
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In japanese, it had a letter "wu", it´s ウ without the top line, i remember studying japanese and the wu was like that, and in the japanese keyboard language, if you put "wu" it just makes a U. Not sure why it does that.

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    I am not sure I understand what you mean by "ウ without the top line", you are not confusing it with ワ wa? 于 is supposedly katakana for "wu", but it has had very little, if any, actual usage...
    – a20
    May 18, 2020 at 15:45
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You write it like this “于”. The hirigana form looks like a combination of “け” and “ほ”.enter image description here

I wouldn’t use this on anything important though, because this letter is obsolete, if you want, you can use it for fun.

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  • japanese.stackexchange.com/questions/643/…
    – 月ランセ
    Jan 24, 2019 at 0:34
  • Someone said the same thing in the comments and didn’t get downvoted.
    – 月ランセ
    Jan 24, 2019 at 0:36
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    FWIW, you can't downvote a comment. Also, you're doing little to explain your answer. A screenshot of a Google search does nothing to explain, for example, that this is an archaic character that is not in use in modern writing.
    – psosuna
    Jan 24, 2019 at 0:45
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    Obsolete is a little inaccurate because that implies it fell out of use rather than seeing essentially zero use historically.
    – user1478
    Jan 24, 2019 at 15:08

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