So I have been wondering from this video: https://youtu.be/U4okFm62gxk
How would one write the Katakana for this name that has an exclamation mark? And how would we pronounce it? Thanks!
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Sign up to join this communitySo I have been wondering from this video: https://youtu.be/U4okFm62gxk
How would one write the Katakana for this name that has an exclamation mark? And how would we pronounce it? Thanks!
People have been voting to close this as a "translation request". I vote we reword it into a question basically asking: "how are the clicks in 'click' languages represented in katakana?" because this actually got me super interested and I've been doing a little research...
I first checked the Japanese wikipedia pages for these languages hoping they would have katakana representations of words but unfortunately no such luck, they all use romaji. I did however find the names of lots of languages which start with a click though:
The !Kung language is seems to be クン語 on wikipedia. Xhosa is コサ語(コーサ語、ホサ語とも表記する), !Xoon is コオ語 and ǁXegwi is ケグウィ語.
It would appear that a click, at least at the start of words, is normally represented using カ行 katakana.
Therefore, assuming the name in the video is pronounced correctly by the guy and that I'm hearing him right (I'm sure it's not, and it's super difficult to hear him, but...), I propose that something like クイレイ would be a good katakana representation. Anyway, the point is it would start with a カ行 letter.