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Need some translation help

JustinIs18

Sempai
30 Apr 2016
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I know that this word is ナイトクラブ is Night Club in English, but when I try to translate it using Hiragana tables it comes out as Naitokurabu am I confused, I thought the translation would come out to Night Club, not Naitokurabu. Can anyone explain please, I am confused by this.

Hiragana Katakana Tables
 
Japanese pronunciation doesn't match English pronunciation and the kana reflect Japanese pronunciation. Foreign words borrowed into Japanese get a bit hammered and warped to make them fit the sounds that exist in the Japanese language. "Nightclub" comes out as "na i to ku ra bu".
 
Japanese pronunciation doesn't match English pronunciation and the kana reflect Japanese pronunciation. Foreign words borrowed into Japanese get a bit hammered and warped to make them fit the sounds that exist in the Japanese language. "Nightclub" comes out as "na i to ku ra bu".
Alright, I wasn't aware of that. Is it like that for a lot of words?
 
Alright, I wasn't aware of that. Is it like that for a lot of words?
Yes, it's true for almost all loan words. If you look over the kana tables you'll find all the sounds that can be used to spell Japanese words. Pick almost any random English word and try to turn it into Japanese, and you'll quickly see why it has to be an approximation.
 
Yes, it's true for almost all loan words. If you look over the kana tables you'll find all the sounds that can be used to spell Japanese words. Pick almost any random English word and try to turn it into Japanese, and you'll quickly see why it has to be an approximation.
Thank you :) I wasn't very aware of that, damn guess I'll have to start studying Japanese hard, wasn't as easy ad I expected.
 
I disagree, since I'm not as fortunate as you and don't have your knowledge on the language, keep in mind I'm below beginner
Trust me, figuring out English loan words from katakana is either the easiest thing about learning Japanese or at least in the top three easiest things. Not that it's always easy, but everything else is harder.

I wish I was advanced, but I'm still working my way through being a beginner.

Good luck in your studies!
 
I think the difficult part in writing loan words would be the proper utilization of 'ー'.
For instance the word cruise. It's not written as クルズ kuruzu but it's written as クルーズ kuru-zu. With ru- being elongated.
Or the word book is written as ブック bukku instead of ブク buku.

I even had long debates about the spelling of my name Nathan 「ねースン」ne-sun and not ネイサン neisan or ネーサン ne-san.

Even the word ramen is spelt as ラメーン rame-n.

I am still trying to understand how to correctly use this in both hiragana and katakana.
 
Um...never. I didn't even realize I spelt it incorrectly. Thanks for the correction. I meant ラーメン ra-men. Just thumb typing away.
 
Since the メン part comes from the kanji 麺 (めん) that seems rather odd.

Where have you seen ラメーン instead of ラーメン?
Lol! I take that back, I also misspelled ラーメン in my introductory post for new members. Thank you again for the correction on 麺, I have to be more careful.
 
I thought the translation would come out to Night Club
If you take a look at those tables you'll see that that is not even possible. In Japanese you can't end words on consonants such as T or N. Some English words in Japanese are quite straightforward such as ナイト which sounds pretty much the same except for the ending "o" sound. Others can be quite the tongue twister such as マクドナルド.
 
If you take a look at those tables you'll see that that is not even possible. In Japanese you can't end words on consonants such as T or N. Some English words in Japanese are quite straightforward such as ナイト which sounds pretty much the same except for the ending "o" sound. Others can be quite the tongue twister such as マクドナルド.
Perhaps I'm wrong, but I thought n was the only final consonant in Japanese.


温泉
パソコン

I thought all other final sounds were vowels.
 
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