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English words used in Japanese

Sinspawne

...what?!...
Joined
17 Jul 2004
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Many english words used in japanese end with the letter o.

does that go for all adopted words?

ex: Fight - Fighto.
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also any advise about independant study would be greatly apreciated
 
Sinspawne said:
Many english words used in japanese end with the letter o.

Yup yup.
Sinspawne said:
does that go for all adopted words?
Er, do you mean
a) Do all adopted English words end in Japanese with 'o' ?
or
b) Do all words adopted into Japanese (English or not) end with 'o' ?

The answer is 'no' to both.
バンダナ bandana
... but I can't think of any good non-English examples right now.
 
It's just that all english words i've heard end with an o
like my example earlier. (only word i can think of at the moment)

so any explanation would be fine
 
Sinspawne said:
It's just that all english words I've heard end with an o
like my example earlier. (only word i can think of at the moment)
Not all do. バンダナ for example ends in an 'a', and probably came via English.

Sinspawne said:
so any explanation would be fine
Well it's quite simple.

In Japanese a word can end with an 'n' ん
or a word can end with one of 'a' 'i' 'u' 'e' 'o' sounds.*

Therefore any English word ending in a consonant other than n ん has to be treated specially.

For example Fred ends in a 'd'. But as Japanese can't end with 'd' it turns it into a 'do'. fureddo フレッド. Another thing that often happens is the ッ, that effectively 'doubles' the next consonant sound, is often added before the end. e.g. fureddo not furedo. This is because it emphasises the sound of the consonant in the final syllable (mora in Japanese) which makes it sound slightly more like the original.

* But it could be かきくけこ (ka, ki, ku, ke, ko) and so on for all the other Japanese sounds.
 
Thank you

I only understood some of it, but i believe my question was answered.
im only a newbie so i can't read anything written in actual japanese letters
 
Sinspawne said:
Thank you

I only understood some of it, but i believe my question was answered.
im only a newbie so i can't read anything written in actual japanese letters

See here
and if you can't see the Japanese characters also see here.
 
I'm not the brightest candle in the room...
 
Sinspawne said:
I'm not the brightest candle in the room...
Nobody expects you to learn Japanese overnight.

But you should be able to pick up the kana in a fortnight or two if you work at it.
 
really!? A forth night eh?

I havent really given it my all in my studies. lack of time and resources i guess..
But as soon as i get my things together, I'll get my thumb out of my *** and do my absolute best!
I knew it would be hard when i started, but "giving up" is certainly not part of my vocabulary.

I really look up to you guys, helping others like this. you have my eternal gratitude
 
Sinspawne said:
really!? A forthnight eh?
Yeah, well that doesn't include the KANJI ... you don't want to know how long that takes

Sinspawne said:
I knew it would be hard when i started, but "giving up" is certainly not part of my vocabulary.
Good luck!
 
sux, im too busy with my studies to learn the kana in a few weeks, has taken me a month+ to learn hiragana, just because my animation corse is so hard out :/..
 
actually you'll only find o at the end when the foreign word ends with t or d. because in other cases they use the "u"-line as it is quiet when at the end. and the u line for t is tsu which doesn't resemble the sound of t at all. e.g. "bed" would be betsu! exeption: shirt = shatsu
 
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