44
Phonemes and Allophones
In English, we have two different /p/ sounds. When you say pin, you use an aspirated [pʰ] sound, and when you say spin you use an unaspirated [p˭] sound.
This may come as a surprise! English speakers generally think of them as being the exact same sound. That's because English doesn't have any pair of words which are ...
35
According to jisho.org パン has its origins from the Portuguese word “pão”, and was originally written as 麺麭 or 麪包 before being written as パン like it is today.
Is this pure coincidence or do they have the same origins?
Seeing as how both Spanish and Portuguese are Latin-based languages, I think it's not a stretch of the imagination to say that the origins ...
25
Any word read in on'yomi in Japanese and using the Sinic hanja reading in Korean is probably ultimately attributable to Middle Chinese, unless evidence can be found of an independent coinage somewhere on the Japanese archipelago or the Korean peninsula.
Terms like the ones below are likely borrowings from Middle or later Korean, rather than Chinese. We can ...
23
I share your experience. Sticking straight to the katakana pronunciation below, I have never had the problem of someone not understanding me any more. I believe this is the pronunciation currently taught in Japanese schools.
A: エー【HL】
B: ビー【HL】
C: シー【HL】
D: ディー【HHL】
E: イー【HL】
F: エフ【HL】
G: ジー【HL】
H: エイチ【HLL】
I: アイ【HL】
J: ジェー【HHL】
K: ケー【HL】
L: エル【HL】
M: エム【HL】...
21
When a word is loaned by another language, it is not always true that a loan word has the exact same meaning as the original word. You have to know how it is used in Japanese to know what it means in Japanese.
トイレ has both meanings. For example:
トイレに[行]{い}ってもいいですか? (Literally) Is it OK to go to the bathroom (restroom)?
トイレが[流]{なが}れません. The toilet doesn't ...
21
This is not pure coincidence, but the Japanese did not get the word パン
from Spanish, but rather Portuguese. The coincidence part is that Spanish and Portuguese are very closely related languages and share a huge volume of cognates.
It's not happenstance that things worked out this way, and I think it's interesting to understand a bit of the historical ...
21
Your suspicion is leading you down the right path.
ドア is in fact a loanword from English. According to Jisho.org, ドア is used in reference to a Western-style door. This is a door that opens on hinges.
Before the introduction of Western-style doors, you are also correct to assume that the Japanese had doors as well. These doors would slide on a track. In ...
18
It is 和製英語. Sometime around the 1920s, employees at 東京電燈会社 created a device which consisted of a plug and outlet. This was called コンセントプラグ "concentric plug". Outlets without the plugs are now referred to as コンセント. Needless to say, English "concentric" does not make much sense.
18
I think on reading ヴァ, ヴィ, etc., people usually try to pronounce it differently from バ, ビ, etc., but with varying success. In fact, I think most Japanese that try to distinguish ヴァ and バ pronounce what would be //v// indeed like the Spanish [[β]], a voiced bilabial fricative (or like a combination like [[bβ]]). That seems to make sense since the voiceless ...
18
Derivation of レシート
Numerous dictionaries state that レシート is from English receipt. See, for instance, the Dajisen and Daijirin entries visible here at Kotobank (in Japanese), or here at Wiktionary (in English; full disclosure: I edited that entry. See the listed sources there for authoritatively edited materials.).
Why it is rendered this way in Japanese
...
18
ウィ is the standard way of transcribing [wi] or [wɪ]. Similarly ウェ is used for [wɛ] (for example website → ウェブサイト) and ウォ for [wɒ] or [wɔ] (for example wombat → ウォンバット or walkman ウォークマン).
Here ウ is used to emulate the [w] sound and ィ is a small kana, indicating the vowel. The small ィ also makes ウィ into a digraph (same length as single full-sized kana).
...
17
I'm fairly certain that this has to do with pitch in Japanese and accentuation in English.
The natural pitch for デバグ【HLL】 is HLL, whereas デバッグ【LHLL】 would naturally be LHL (and バグ【HL】 is HL). To mimic accentuation by pitch (i.e. accented syllables get a high pitch after transliteration), the ッ is necessary to give the バ a (natural) high pitch. バグ already ...
16
西瓜（すいか）is a Japanese word, borrowed from the Chinese. It is not known exactly when watermelons arrived in Japan, though it was most likely after the Muromachi period (1333-1573 CE). Words which are native to Japan, borrowed from China, or borrowed a long time ago tend to be written in Kanji and Hiragana. Incidentally, 「西」means west and 「瓜」means melon or ...
15
While it does appear in the Japanese dictionaries with the meaning of "gasoline", I would say it is not common to use it like in English, except for a few special cases like ガス欠｛けつ｝(being out of fuel) and ガス代｛だい｝ (gas bill*; can be used for both things such as propane gas and for other types of fuel, like gasoline, diesel, etc).
In general I would say that ...
15
The term is a loanword from the English term human beatbox or beat box: a person that makes musical sounds using the human vocal organs. The abbreviated term is beatbox or beat box. The performer is also called a human beatboxer or simply a beat boxer. The word human was retained in the term to enable understanding of its usage within specialized communities ...
14
It appears that コンセント derives from "concentric plug", as plugs were round (concentric) in early 20th century England.
source
14
There should be exceptions, but I suppose this is largely based on the transitivity of the original Japanese verb before it was replaced by the loanword.
(～に)キスする = (～に)口づけする
(～に)アクセスする = (～に)進入する/接続する
(～に)リベンジする = (～に)復讐する
(～に)コンサルトする = (～に)相談する
(～に)タッチする = (～に)触れる
When the original Japanese verb is transitive, the loanword version is also transitive.
(～...
14
Short Answer:
As for the Japanese language, we didn't have such a word and I don't think we should have had. Ancient Japanese only knew as far as India, that means they only knew one "landmass" in their world. Just like the Nile means "river", or the Sahara means "desert", it was not supposed to have a name, except "outside of Japan".
Long Explanation:
...
13
Heads up: Some of this is going to be a bit obscure. Wikipedia covers some of this ground; examples consisting of proper names, place names, etc. were checked via Japanese Wikipedia articles.
ウィ、ウ、ウェ、ウォ
Due to holes in the ワ column (including the general restriction of 「ヲ」 to grammatical duties), 「ウ」can pair with other vowels to replicate /w/ ...
13
Most Ainu loanwords in regular use are names for plants/animals indigenous to northern Japan, such as reindeer (トナカイ) and sea otter (ラッコ). These loans are old enough that there are usually kanji that can be used for them:
馴鹿 (トナカイ, also read じゅんろく)
海獺 or 猟虎 (ラッコ)
However, many plant/animal names are usually written in katakana in everyday use (e.g. カバ ...
13
This is a community wiki post.
cup
コップ drinking cup
カップ coffee cup, etc.
iron
アイロン clothes iron
アイアン metal iron (Fe)
lemonade
ラムネ nativized fruit-flavored pop soda
レモネード lemonade
machine
ミシン sewing machine
マシン machine in general
micro
ミクロ tiny
マイクロ micro (SI prefix 10-6)
pudding
プディング pudding in general
プリン custard pudding
strike
ストライキ strike (...
13
That's not likely to happen, as long as the survey was conducted in Japanese.
USA → アメリカ, 米国{べいこく}
As like most nations outside US do, we prefer to abbreviate the country's name to toponym.
USSR → ソ連{れん} (ソビエト)
Russia → ロシア
("united states" → 合衆国{がっしゅうこく})
If someone should believe that the Soviet Union was America, then it's another failure of public ...
13
Because хорошо is pronounced just like ハラショ.
http://ja.forvo.com/word/хорошо/
12
Japanese 国語審議会 (National Language Council) recommends longer (with ー) forms since 1991. So foreign words in textbooks for elementary school students usually have trailing "ー".
http://www.mext.go.jp/b_menu/hakusho/nc/k19910628002/k19910628002.html
注3 英語の語末の‐er, ‐or, ‐arなどに当たるものは，原則としてア列の長音とし長音符号「ー」を用いて書き表す。ただし，慣用に応じて「ー」を省くことができる。
〔例〕 エレベーター ギター ...
12
Snailboat's answer is based more on "conservative" Japanese where /ɸ/ is not a phoneme. However in younger people's Japanese, /ɸ/ and /h/ are distinguished before all vowels other than /u/: ハ != フア != ファ. This is of course a loanword-only distinction, and could probably be thought of half-phonemic and restricted to the "Anglo-Japanese" sublanguage. (One ...
12
Use アイディア (or アイデア) when it's replaceable with resolution, suggestion, etc. If you really want to avoid loanwords, you can use "(良い)考え".
What shall we do? Do you have any idea?
何しよう? 何かアイディアある?
An idea is something that solves multiple problems at once. -- Shigeru Miyamoto
アイデアというのは複数の問題を一気に解決するものである -- 宮本茂
Use 概念【がいねん】 (or 考え方) when it's ...
Only top voted, non community-wiki answers of a minimum length are eligible
