Timeline for Who decides what katakana will be used to form English loan words?
Current License: CC BY-SA 3.0
7 events
| when toggle format | what | by | license | comment | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Mar 3, 2014 at 10:42 | comment | added | hippietrail | @LucasTizma: Linguists don't actually have any concept at all like "phonetic language". This is because linguists don't study writing systems, spelling, etc. (Those fields are studied by other specialists though.) Linguists study naturally occurring human languages and regard writing as a technology recently added to a relatively small number of languages and having little effect on the languages themselves. (One exception is that the character-based writing system of Chinese has left a big impression on Chinese being a monosyllabic language.) | |
| Apr 27, 2012 at 13:27 | comment | added | Mel | @dainichi some americans pronounce tuna like "tsuna" or "chuna". I think I mostly hear women say "tsuna" | |
| Apr 26, 2012 at 21:54 | comment | added | Ian | @Jesse No they do. The government can't regulate the use of the language beyond official documents and the minimum requirement for education. There is no rule stating "news papers can only use these words", or "books can't use these words". Japanese magazines are famous for just making up new katakana words. | |
| Apr 26, 2012 at 8:51 | comment | added | dainichi | Not sure I understand the "tuna" example... why would it be "tsuna"? | |
| Apr 26, 2012 at 6:29 | comment | added | Jesse Good |
No one decides really. Well, actually the government regulates a lot of the words.
|
|
| Apr 25, 2012 at 22:09 | comment | added | user1316 | I definitely had in mind your last point that languages often assimilate borrowed words into their own "format", but I figure—and I'm no linguist—that Japanese is a largely phonetic language, whereas English isn't. So I could see the argument made that how we pronounce loan words is expected to be different. In my opinion, I feel like loan words in a phonetic-based language should just match as closely to the original word's pronunciation as possible, given the native syllabary. My $0.02, anyway. :) | |
| Apr 25, 2012 at 22:00 | history | answered | Ian | CC BY-SA 3.0 |