My handle... "rquethe"

[rquethe]

Nobody ever knows how to pronounce it because it is a made-up word. But I have a pronounciation for it.

The 'r' is like the 're' in "requiem." The 'que' is like the 'que' in "quest." And the 'th' is like the 'th' in "math." So sort of re-qwe-th...

My question is how I should write this in katakana since it is an odd pronounciation?

ラクウェッス？ That's my guess.

 

[TwistedMac]

that "su" looks a bit out of place to me.. but i dunno :?

 

[PaulTB]

that "su" looks a bit out of place to me.. but i dunno :?

The trick with these things is to think of a word that ends in -th which has already been katakana-ized.

ダメです。

 

[rquethe]

Does it necessarily have to end in -th? I've heard words that had 'th' in the middle that used that same "su" sound.

Also, in my Berserk anime, one of the characters name is Griffith. Pronounced Guriffusu or something to that effect... At least that "su" is there for sure.

 

[PaulTB]

Does it necessarily have to end in -th? I've heard words that had 'th' in the middle that used that same "su" sound.

No, but it's a good idea because you don't know that the rules will be the same in the middle of a word - even if they do have the same sound in English.

Also, in my Berserk anime, one of the characters name is Griffith. Pronounced Guriffusu or something to that effect... At least that "su" is there for sure.

グリフィス (gurifisu)
I suspect you may need to lose the ッ in ラクウェッス

 

[fixelbrumpf]

How about "レクェス"? "re" sounds more like the "re" sound in "requiem" to me, and according to my textbook [kwe] sounds are written "クェ" and the additional u isn't needed. I'd also lose the glottal stop before the "su" as I don't think it's really needed. Anyone else think us Westerners tend to overuse them when we're trying to translate words into katakana?

 

[PaulTB]

according to my textbook [kwe] sounds are written "クェ" and the additional u isn't needed.

que as in Quest is written クエ (At least in Dragon Quest ドラゴンクエスト

 

[Elizabeth]

Does it necessarily have to end in -th? I've heard words that had 'th' in the middle that used that same "su" sound.

To preserve a "thu" sound in the original word....but it's hard to think of many examples from English like that offhand.