The transcription of English to Japanese has been done since the earliest cultural contacts between English speakers and Japanese. During the Edo period, kanji were used phonetically to write English and other foreign words, but in the modern period katakana have become the principal target script. Unlike the systems for romaji, there is no standard for transcribing into katakana, and methods vary. However, generally all methods attempt to preserve the pronunciation of English, not the spelling. That is, transcription not transliteration is done. The following text needs to be harmonized with text in the article History of Japan#Edo Period. ... Japanese writing Kanji Kana Hiragana Katakana Hentaigana Manyōgana Uses Furigana Okurigana Rōmaji Kanji (Japanese:  ) are the Chinese characters that are used in the modern Japanese logographic writing system along with hiragana (平仮名), katakana (片仮名), and the Arabic numerals. ... The English language is a West Germanic language that originates in England. ... This article or section does not cite its references or sources. ... Japanese writing Kanji 漢字 Kana 仮名 Hiragana 平仮名 Katakana 片仮名 Uses Furigana 振り仮名 Okurigana 送り仮名 Romaji ローマ字 The title given to this article lacks diacritics because of certain technical limitations. ... Transcription is the conversion into written, typewritten or printed form, of a spoken language source, such as the proceedings of a court hearing. ... Transliteration is the practice of transcribing a word or text written in one writing system into another writing system. ...

This article deals with transcription of English words into the nearest phonetic equivalent in Japanese. For the transcription of English words into Japanese kanji (Chinese characters) please see ateji. The reverse of this article can be found at Romanization of Japanese. Japanese writing Kanji Kana Hiragana Katakana Hentaigana Manyōgana Uses Furigana Okurigana Rōmaji Kanji (Japanese:  ) are the Chinese characters that are used in the modern Japanese logographic writing system along with hiragana (平仮名), katakana (片仮名), and the Arabic numerals. ... Ateji (当て字 ) guessed characters are Kanji selected to write a borrowed non-Chinese or native Japanese word with the intent of implying an etymology, which is fanciful or false. ... Japanese writing Kanji Kana Hiragana Katakana Hentaigana Manyōgana Uses Furigana Okurigana Rōmaji The romanization of Japanese is the use of the Latin alphabet (called rōmaji )   in Japanese) to write the Japanese language, which is normally written in logographic characters borrowed from Chinese (kanji) and syllabic scripts...

Reasons for transcribing

The purpose of the transcription partly determines how it is done. There are reasons why one would want to transcribe an English word to Japanese: Many legal documents, such as company registrations, require that only Japanese script is used. A computer database may need entry in Japanese script for the purpose of sorting and collation. Educators want to explain the pronunciation of English words by transcribing. Loan words from English are usually written in a transcribed form. Or one may simply be interested in how one's name looks in Japanese. Commercial law or business law is the body of law which governs business and commerce and is often considered to be a branch of civil law and deals both with issues of private law and public law. ... The term or expression database originated within the computer industry. ... A loanword (or a borrowing) is a word taken in by one language from another. ...

Accordingly, there are different priorities for the transcriber. The educator might want to indicate many of the subtleties of English pronunciation whereas a person naming a new product might be more concerned with the ease of pronunciation for native speakers of Japanese. First language (native language, mother tongue) is the language a person learns first. ...

Difficulties

Japanese distinguishes fewer sounds than English. For example, Japanese does not distinguish the vowel sound of "run" and "ran", or the consonant sound of "row" and "low". Moreover the rules by which sounds can be combined in Japanese are generally more restrictive than the English rules. As a result, the pronunciation of the transcribed word can differ quite considerably from the original word in English. Note: This page contains IPA phonetic symbols in Unicode. ... In articulatory phonetics, a consonant is a sound in spoken language that is characterized by a closure or stricture of the vocal tract sufficient to cause audible turbulence. ... This article is becoming very long. ...

If writing for a Japanese audience, it is worth checking whether there is already an accepted transcription into Japanese, and whether the meaning of the new word has changed in Japanese. The word mishin illustrates both pitfalls: not only is this an unexpected rendering of the English word "machine", but the Japanese word's meaning is limited to sewing machines. It is also worth noting that some terms which may at first glance appear to be mangled English loanwords are, in fact, loans from other languages: koppu (drinking glass) is not a version of the English "cup" but a loan of Dutch kop, and tabako is from Portuguese tabaco, not from "tobacco". A modern machine (Singer Symphonie 300) A sewing machine is a mechanical (or electromechanical) device that joins fabric using thread. ...

Procedure for transcription

Most Japanese people do not use a systematic procedure for transcription; instead they transcribe according to their perception of the English pronunciation, albeit significantly influenced by the spelling. However, the process can be represented formally as a set of transformations, which is presented in one possible order below. Proficient Japanese speakers internalize the transformations and perform them all simultaneously when inserting English words into written or spoken Japanese.

Step 1: Transcribe the English phonetically

The first step is to start with a phonetic representation of the English word, as distinct from the spelling. The phonetic transcription should reflect the careful pronunciation of the word. Spelling can often mislead as to what the pronunciation is. If there is any doubt, a dictionary will provide an accurate indication of what the sounds are. The letter x typically corresponds to two sounds (ks) and the digraphs sh, ch, and th each correspond to a single sound. The English sounds in the examples below are in the International Phonetic Alphabet. (See International Phonetic Alphabet for English and IPA chart for English for explanation of these symbols used for transcribing English.) Phonetic transcription (or phonetic notation) is the visual system of symbolization of the sounds occurring in spoken human language. ... For information on how to read IPA transcriptions of English words see here. ... The symbols of the International Phonetic Alphabet can be used to show pronounciation in English. ... This chart shows concisely the most common way in which the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) is applied to represent the English language. ...

Step 2: Transform the vowels from English to Japanese

Japanese has a different and smaller sound set than English, so many sounds have to be changed to equivalent or similar sounds in Japanese. The Romanization system used here is a variation of the Hepburn system, where long vowels are represented by doubled letters (ii, ee, aa, oo, uu) and the moraic nasal is represented with capital N. Japanese writing Kanji 漢字 Kana 仮名 Hiragana 平仮名 Katakana 片仮名 Uses Furigana 振り仮名 Okurigana 送り仮名 Romaji ローマ字 For other meanings, see Hepburn (disambiguation). ...

Vowels need to be changed to correspond to use the five Japanese vowels. Typically, the vowels used in a British Received Pronunciation are used as the base English vowels for transcription, using the following system, where doubled vowels mean long (2-mora) vowels: Note: This page or section contains IPA phonetic symbols in Unicode. ...

In rhotic dialects of English, r sounds at the end of syllables, but for the purpose of transcription into Japanese, this sound transcribes into a vowel sequence ending in a, except for the sequence [ɔɹ], which corresponds to Received Pronunciation [ɔː], and is transcribed as oo. That is, car becomes kaa not karu, and pork becomes pooku not poruku. Yōon (拗音) is a feature of the Japanese language in which a mora is formed with an added y sound. ... Yōon (拗音) is a feature of the Japanese language in which a mora is formed with an added y sound. ... In linguistics, rhotic can refer to: a rhotic consonant such as IPA a rhotic accent such as General American an r-colored vowel such as IPA This is a disambiguation page — a navigational aid which lists pages that might otherwise share the same title. ...

Step 3: Transform consonants

Some consonants require changing during transcription into Japanese. This process has three substeps:

Transform non-Japanese sounds to closest Japanese equivalents

First, English has a few consonant sounds that Japanese lacks or only contains in certain contexts, so they must be transcribed into other sounds that Japanese has.

There are other English consonants that Japanese lacks, such as /ʃ/, the closest equivalent being /ɕ/. And though both languages contain /h/, in Japanese it assimilates to /ç/ before /i/. (See Japanese phonology) However these differences in pronunciation are small enough that they need not be considered different sounds for the purpose of transcription. This article deals with the phonology (i. ...

* It is possible to notate /v/ in Japanese kana, and it is done in the Japanese spellings of "Vietnam" (ヴェトナム vetonamu) and "Vicks" (ヴィックス vikkusu), but the sound does not exist in native Japanese phonology and is usually changed to "b" when transcribing English words. Japanese writing Kanji 漢字 Kana 仮名 Hiragana 平仮名 Katakana 片仮名 Manyogana 万葉仮名 Uses Furigana 振り仮名 Okurigana 送り仮名 Rōmaji ローマ字 For other meanings of Kana, see Kana (disambiguation). ... 50g Vicks VapoRub. ...

Palatalize coronal obstruents

Next, Japanese requires coronal obstruents "s", "z", "t", "d" to be palatalized when they occur before the vowel i, so if these consonants occur before "i", either they change to their palatalized form or the vowel "i" changes to "e": Palatalization means pronouncing a sound nearer to the hard palate, making it more like a palatal consonant; this is towards the front of the mouth for a velar or uvular consonant, but towards the back of the mouth for a front (e. ...

• "si" changes to "shi" (Remember "si" might come originally from "thi", as in thick).
• "ti" changes to "chi" or "te"
• "di" changes to "ji" or "de"
• "zi" changes to "ji"

In recent loanwords, "ti" and "di" are often preserved. In kana, this sound is represented by a full-sized "te" or "de" and a small-sized "i": ティ (ti), ディ (di). Japanese writing Kanji 漢字 Kana 仮名 Hiragana 平仮名 Katakana 片仮名 Manyogana 万葉仮名 Uses Furigana 振り仮名 Okurigana 送り仮名 Rōmaji ローマ字 For other meanings of Kana, see Kana (disambiguation). ...

Double voiceless obstruents after short vowels

In Japanese, the voiceless obstruents "p", "t", "k", "s", "ch", and "sh" have geminate (doubled) forms, written using a sokuon (small tsu) character, and in English transcription these geminates are used after short vowels. Short vowels are vowels which are transcribed using the vowel table above using a single vowel ("a", "e", "i", "o", or "u"). This transformation is usually but not always applied in the middle of a word. Also, sometimes syllable-final "t" is transformed to "ts" instead of "tt". Japanese writing Kanji Kana Hiragana Katakana Hentaigana Manyogana Uses Furigana Okurigana Rōmaji The sokuon (Japanese: ) is a Japanese symbol consisting of a small hiragana or katakana tsu. ...

Step 4: Add epenthetic vowels

Japanese has strict constraints on the structure of syllables, and any syllables that violate these constraints have vowels inserted until the constraints are met. These are called epenthetic vowels. In linguistics, an epenthetic vowel breaks up a consonant cluster that is not permitted by the phonotactics of a language. ...

• The only consonant clusters (sequences of consonants with no intervening vowels) allowed in Japanese are the geminate (doubled) consonants cch, mm, nn, ss, ssh, tch and tt. However, the sounds represented by the English digraphs ch, sh, and ts are considered single sounds for the purpose of transcribing into Japanese.
• Japanese syllables can only end in vowels and N.

Any sequence of sounds that does not obey these rules must have epenthetic vowels inserted. The epenthetic vowel is usually "u", but there are a few exceptions: In linguistics, a consonant cluster is a group of consonants which have no intervening vowel. ...

• "m" does not take an epenthetic vowel when followed by "b" or "p", but is instead replaced by "N", which is pronounced the same as "m" in those contexts. (See N (kana)) For example, computer becomes "コンピュータ" (koNpyuuta). "N" is also pronounced as /ŋ/ before "k" or "g", requiring no epenthesis after the "n" in words such as "ink", which becomes "インク" (iNku)
• "t" and "d" take "o" as an epenthetic vowel, because they would otherwise become palatalized "tsu" and "zu" if followed by "u".
• "ch" takes "i" as an epenthetic vowel.
• "k" usually takes "u" as an epenthetic vowel, but sometimes it takes "i".

The rule for "tsu" described above is sometimes replaced by one where "tu", written in kana with a full-sized "to" followed by a small "u": トゥ, is used. For example, the name of the film "The Truman Show" in Japanese is "トゥルーマン・ショー" (turuumaN shoo) ã‚“, in hiragana, or ン in katakana, is one of the Japanese kana, which each represent one mora. ...

Step 5: Break into morae

Japanese is divided into morae, with each mora containing one of the following: Mora (plural moras or morae) is a unit of sound used in phonology that determines syllable weight (which in turn determines stress) in some languages. ...

• A consonant and a single vowel (CV)
• A consonant, "j" and a single vowel (CjV)
• A single vowel (V)
• Moraic (final) "n" (N) ン
• Doubled (geminate) consonant ッ

Step 6: Transcribe rōmaji into katakana

Each mora corresponds to one or sometimes two katakana characters. The second mora of a long vowel is uniformly transcribed as ー in katakana. Moraic "n" (transcribed here as "N") is ン in katakana. list of morae and symbols

Examples

Inconsistencies

Though commonly used katakana spellings tend to be consistent with the above system of transcription, there are also many exceptions. Some transcriptions are apparently based on misinterpretations of the word's pronunciation based on its spelling. For example, the "u" in "studio" seems to have been interpreted as if it were /ʌ/ (as in the word "study"), not /uː/, resulting in the transcription "スタジオ" (sutajio).

Though the basis for English to Japanese transcription is usually British Received Pronunciation, with its different short "o" sound and unpronounced rhotic "r"s, there are also exceptions. The words "cocktail" and "soccer" are transcribed as "カクテル" (kakuteru) and "サッカー" (sakkaa), and the Japanese name of the English letter "r" is "アール" (aaru), which corresponds more closely to a rhotic accent. English pronunciation is divided into two main accent groups, the rhotic and the non-rhotic, depending on when the phoneme (the letter r, equivalent to Greek rho) is pronounced. ...

The final t sound in English words is usually transcribed as "ト" (to), but it in some words such as "fruit" and "suit" it is transcribed as "ツ" (tsu), making the pronunciation of some singular nouns sound more like their plural forms, even though plural "s"s tend to be ignored when transcribing English nouns into Japanese.

Transcribing using the steps outlined above results in the English short "i" sound becoming the Japanese i sound, but there are also cases in which it becomes the Japanese e sound. Examples include "digital" and "sticker" becoming "デジタル" (dejitaru) and "ステッカー" (sutekkaa). Also, the "re" in the English words "report" and "reporter", which is pronounced as /rɪ/ in Received Pronunciation, becomes re in "レポート" (repooto) and "レポーター" (repootaa), though they are sometimes alternately transcribed as "リポート" (ripooto) and "リポーター" (ripootaa)

Even within the common system of transcriptions, there are multiple possible ways in which a certain sound can be transcribed. This can result in multiple transcriptions of a single word, such as the name "David", which is written a number of ways in Japanese. Different pronunciations of the same word are sometimes used to show what meaning of the word is being used. For example, "ストライク" (sutoraiku) refers to a strike in baseball or bowling, while "ストライキ" (sutoraiki) refers to a workers' strike. Also, "ポンチ" (poNchi) refers to fruit punch while "パンチ" (paNchi) is used for other meanings of the word.

As mentioned above, many transcriptions (particularly those involving a non-final schwa) are non-fixed and are often based more on spelling than actual pronunciation. This often leads to words which sound similar to each other in English sounding radically different from each other in their Japanese pronunciations. While the pronunciations of the English words "pirate" and "pilot" differ only in the "l" and "r", the two words are transcribed respectively into Japanese as "パイレーツ" (paireetsu) and "パイロット" (pairotto), with the only difference between the original pronunciations disappearing and some new differences appearing in other places. In linguistics, specifically phonetics and phonology, schwa can mean: An unstressed and toneless neutral vowel sound in any language, often but not necessarily a mid-central vowel. ...

There are also some inconsistencies in Japanese between the way English words are transcribed, and the way words from some other languages containing the same sounds are transcribed. A final velar nasal consonant in an English word (spelled "ng") is usually transcribed as "ング" (Ngu), but the same sound in Korean and Chinese words is transcribed as "ン" (N). For example "Hong Kong" and "Kung-Fu" become "ホンコン" (hoNkoN) and "カンフー" (kaNfuu) respectively, and the "Yong" in Korean actor Bae Yong Joon's name becomes "ヨン" (yoN). The velar nasal is a type of consonantal sound, used in some spoken languages. ... Bae Yong Joon (born August 29, 1972 in Seoul, South Korea), is a South Korean actor best known for his roles in numerous television dramas. ...

Non-standard transcriptions

The following are commonly used transcriptions which do not conform to the common system of transcription. This does not include Japanese abbreviations of English words or words which resemble English, but came into Japanese directly from other languages.

* in the case of James Curtis Hepburn, but not Katharine or Audrey Hepburn, whose last name is transcribed as "ヘプバーン" (hepubaaN). This does not adequately cite its references or sources. ... The Narnia books The Chronicles of Narnia is a series of seven fantasy novels for children written by C. S. Lewis. ... The New York Yankees are a Major League baseball team based in The Bronx, New York City. ... James C. HEPBURN The Reverend Dr James Curtis Hepburn (13 March 1815–11 June 1911) was born in Milton, Pennsylvania. ... Katharine Houghton Hepburn (May 12, 1907 – June 29, 2003) was an iconic four-time Academy Award-winning American star of film, television and stage, widely recognized for her sharp wit, New England gentility and fierce independence. ... Audrey Hepburn (May 4, 1929 – January 20, 1993) was an Academy Award-winning Dutch-British actress of film and theatre, Broadway stage performer, ballerina, fashion model, and humanitarian. ...

** "Holly" on its own is transcribed as "ホリー" (horii). Species Ilex ambigua - Sand Holly Ilex amelanchier - Swamp Holly Ilex aquifolium - European Holly Ilex bioritsensis Ilex buergeri Ilex canariensis - Small-leaved Holly Ilex cassine - Dahoon Holly Ilex centrochinensis Ilex ciliospinosa Ilex colchica Ilex collina Ilex corallina Ilex coriacea Ilex cornuta - Chinese Holly Ilex crenata - Japanese Holly Ilex cyrtura Ilex decidua...

Transcribing multiple words

In some instances, such as language textbooks or song lyrics, phrases or entire sentences may be transcribed into Japanese.

Multiple word transcription is typically done on a word-by-word basis, with no account being taken of word linking. For example, "an engineer" would most naturally be transcribed into Japanese as "a.N.e.N.ji.ni.a" rather than the more natural "a.ne.N.ji.ni.a", with the linking between the "n" and "e" represented by the Japanese mora "ne". In some set phrases, such as "kaman" for "come on", this general trend is broken. A set phrase is an expression (i. ...

Example of transcribing a whole sentence

English: "My hovercraft is full of eels."

Step 1: maɪ hɒvəkrɑːft ɪz fʊl ɒv iːlz

Step 2-3: "mai hobaakraft iz ful ob iirz"

Step 4: "mai hobaakurafuto izu furu obu iiruzu"

Step 5 "ma.i ho.ba.a.ku.ra.fu.to i.zu fu.ru o.bu i.i.ru.zu"

Step 6 「マイ ホバークラフト イズ フル オブ イールズ」

See also

• Gairaigo
• Non-native pronunciations of English
• Wasei-eigo

Gairaigo (外来語) is Japanese for loan word or borrowed word, and indicates a transliteration (or transvocalization) into Japanese. ... This article is becoming very long. ... Wasei-eigo (和製英語 wasei eigo, lit. ...

External links

• Loan Words from English (section of A Logical Japanese Grammar) list of morae and symbols
• Automatic transcriber