About character ー

[hideway]

I've started learning about sentence construction and I've come up with the ー, being used in different contexts that I don't quiet understand.

One example is the Japanese word for Australia, that in romaji it's Oosutoraria which I would presume it would be writen オオストラリア. But according with the website I'm studying it is written オーストラリア with a ー replacing the second "オ", I'm supposing that maybe it means repetition in this case? :?

But before I found this I got an example of yet another use for it, placing it before the politeness suffix like this: サリーさんじゃないです。 (I'm not Sally). I've only seen this once and it was with a non Japanese name, am I correct to assume that, in this case, it is working as some kind of barrier between the name and the san sufix, maybe to avoid confusion with names ending in "san"?

Also it seems very similar with the number 1 kanji. Are they the same?

PS: I've an off topic doubt, is it supposed to add chan to the end of pet's names? or one should just leave the name without it?

 

[leonmarino]

Hello there!!
The 「ー」 is not the same as 「一」(one). It is fairly simple really; the 「ー」 extends the vowel.
So in the case of Sally: サリー is actually サリイ. (リ=Li, so the 「ー」 is a "i")
In the case of ball: ボール is nothing more than ボオル. (ボ=Bo, so it's a "o")
In the case of baked rice: チャーハン it's チャァハン. (ヤ=Ya, so "a")
Etc. And for your other question, 「～ちゃん」 is a addition to any word to denote "little ..." with people, often meant in a cute way. So you might call your little sister Michiko-chan, or your good friend Ken-chan, or your pet Nyanko-chan etc. Mind you it's more often used for pets and girls, and only for very good male friends.

 

[hideway]

Thanks for the reply, it was most helpful.

 

[leonmarino]

Oh by the way the ﾂ「ﾂ〜ﾂ」 is pretty similar. It's a more fluctuating extension.

ゴ～ル！＝ ゴオォオォル！ = Goal!

Difficult to explain but it adds some dynamism to the pronunciation.

Good luck on your studies!!