Why Can't A Name Be Written Literally In Japanese?

Question

My Japanese knowledge is very limited, so I am not good in Japanese alphabet.
With the help of an online Japanese name converter, I tried writing a name in Japanese, but the resulting name does not sound exactly as it is in English. It seems some characters turn into other characters.

The name is: Siavash Divani The result is: シアバシュ ディバニ (shiabashu dibani)

As you see in the parentheses, it sounds different from the English spelling. Is it possible to write the name in Japanese in a way that sounds just the way it is written in English? If the answer is no, why? Wikipedia says that only the kanji system has over 50,000 characters. So, it seems it should support writing foreign names in a way that sounds the way you like.

Answer 1

Basically, there are just some sounds that exist in other languages which cannot easily be phonemically represented in Japanese.

Disclaimer - this is a simplified answer, but ...

As with any language, you must differentiate between the actual sounds (phonology) and the writing system which represents the language (orthography). Although there are several thousand kanji characters which form the basis of the writing system (2136 on the official list), that doesn't mean there are 2136 individual sounds. In fact, there are approximately 50 sounds in Japanese (or around 100 if you include dakuon and yoon). By 'sounds', I mean the variations of vowel and consonant combinations which are used in spoken Japanese.

That is probably a lot less than you imagined. As such, there are some sounds that exist in other languages which are not easily transferred to Japanese. They simply are not part of the standard collection of sounds in Japanese phonology. A famous example is that there is no strict equivalent of 'l' and 'r' in Japanese - the ら、り、る、れ、ろ sounds are used to represent both. So if your name was 'Roland', it would be difficult to represent the difference between the 'r' and 'l' sounds. It would be ローランド, which when pronounced would not contain the distinction that you would hear if pronounced in English, for example.

Answer 2

The amount of kanji is irrelevant because they are a writing system. The thing is that, when writing a foreign word in japanese, what happens is that the sound of the word is aproximated to the sounds available in the Japanese language, and then it can be written down using a Japanese syllabary such as hiragana or katakana (not Kanji). What you see in alphabet script is just the transliteration from the version in the japanese syllabary (where the original pronunciation has been lost already) to the western alphabet script.

For this reason, what is important here is the set of sounds (to be accurate, phonemes) that Japanese people use in their tongue. This set of sounds is not so large when compared to other languages.

Let's compare what wikipedia says in regards of phonemes for both Japanese and English:

The phonology of Japanese features about 15 consonant phonemes, the cross-linguistically typical five-vowel system of /a, i, u, e, o/, and a relatively simple phonotactic distribution of phonemes allowing few consonant clusters.

The number and distribution of phonemes in English vary from dialect to dialect, and also depend on the interpretation of the individual researcher. The number of consonant phonemes is generally put at 24 (or slightly more). The number of vowels is subject to greater variation; in the system presented on this page there are 20–25 vowel phonemes in Received Pronunciation, 14–16 in General American and 19–20 in Australian English.

• Japanese: 15 consonant phonemes and 5 vowels

• English: 24 consonant phonemes and 14 vowels (at least)

Since there are far more sounds in English than in Japanese, that means for sure that there are English sounds that Japanese people can't say using their phonetic system. That's one of the reasons why it is not possible to say foreign words with an accurate pronunciation for Japanese people. The sound "si" does not exist in Japanese, that's why the "Si" at Siavash becomes シ{shi}.

Another aspect which is equally important is that in general, aside from ん{n} (which sounds like "n"), any other consonant phoneme in Japanese is necessarily followed by a vowel, so it is not possible to reproduce combinations of consonant sounds together with accuracy, nor consonant phonemes alone either.

That's the reason why the "sh" at Siavash is changed to シュ{shu}. In the Japanese system, separating "sh" from "u" (or any other vowel) is not a possibility. They form an indivisible unit both in terms of writing (シ{shi}, one single symbol) and speech.

It's worth mentioning that in some instances, vowel devoicing happens, effectively enabling several consonants to get pronounced together as well as enabling ending words with a consonant sound, and this could play out with シュ{shu} in Shiavashu, where the voewl "u" is devoiced and we end up with the pronunciation "sh" even though it's written as シュ{shu}. See this Q&A for more on devoicing (thanks @KarlKnechtel !).

There may be other limitations or constraints that contribute to change significantly the original pronunciation of a foreign word in Japanese.

Answer 3

The simple answer is that there aren't enough sounds.

There are set sounds for the vowels "e", "i", "a", "o", and "u", as well as 40 other standard sounds and one standalone "n." These sounds are "k", "s", "t", "n", "h", "r", which each have the full three kana, as well as "y" that has three kana and "w" that has two (Okinawan has two other "w"s in we and wi, but these are non-standard)

If we add the voiced "Diacritics", then we add sounds for "g", "z", "d", "b", and "p", adding another 25.

Adding digraphs (e.g., "kya", "sha"), we get another 30 sounds.

This is a grand total of 103 sounds. However, you will notice that a few sounds are missing when compared to English: "v", "l", "x", "f", and "q".

X is normally substituted for a "z-" sound (as in "xylophone"), while using x (as in "x-ray") is pronounced "ekkusu."

L is almost always substituted with "r-", thsu "ball" can be "baru".

Q is substituted with a "k-"

F is written as "fu" plus a smaller vowel kana (unless the sound is explicitly "fu")

V is seems to be always pronounced as a "b", and the standard writing is as such, however the non-standard writing can be done by putting the voice marks by the "u" kana and writing a smaller vowel kana next to it (similar to the digraphs).

Your program likely didn't utilize this way of writing "v", so if you really want it:

シアヴァシュ ディヴァニ

As an aside, the reason for the trailing "u" on your first name is that Japanese is a phonetic language, so with the exception of "n" (sometimes pronounced "m" when before a "p" or "b"), all letters have a consonant followed by a vowel. Most adults drop the trailing "u" when reading (thus hearing "des" instead of "desu"), so your name should be pronounced fairly close.