Tagged Questions

6
votes
2answers
183 views

Is there a generally accepted “rule” for truncating loan words?

I've noticed that sometimes loan words (usually pairs) are truncated to just the first two morae from each word: Smash Brothers　➤　スマッシュブラザーズ　➤　スマブラ "Don't mind."　➤　ドンマイ I assume this is ...
2
votes
1answer
135 views

Is one transcription of “Andrew” more standard than another?

I recently looked at the disambiguation page for Andrew on the Japanese Wikipedia, and found that there were several "アンドルー"s, and several "アンドリュー"s. I couldn't discern any trend that one form ...
6
votes
1answer
233 views

Katakana words with Kanji. How did that happen?

Some words are written with katakana, but also have kanji. For example: コーヒー　珈琲 ページ　頁 How did this happen? They are loanwords, but no doubt had Japanese equivalents before these variants were ...
6
votes
7answers
593 views

Why are the katakana important to learn?

I've just started, and everything says learn your hiragana and katakana first. The hiragana, very clear. I guess you can say an awful lot of things in Japanese with hiragana. But everything I've been ...
15
votes
4answers
744 views

Who decides what katakana will be used to form English loan words?

I love katakana, mostly because of how the characters look. But I am constantly baffled by why certain loan words from English are constructed using certain katakana sounds. For example, if someone ...
11
votes
5answers
135 views

ユーザ or　ユーザー, which is more in use or is there no difference?

ユーザ or　ユーザー, which is more in use or is there no difference? I see both of them in use, but is there one that is more correct than the other or is at least the prevailing standard? a similar word is ...