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Pronunciation of foreign names

Arthur68

先輩
5 Aug 2008
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I was wondering why my name , Arthur, is pronounced so differently in Japan. Supposedly, they say Aasaa or something like that.
I understand that the TH sound is not in the Japanese language, but what about R?
Ra, ri, ru, re, ro?
Take words like 'arata', 'aruite' and 'ataru'. Take the sounds of those words and you can come up with 'Aruteru' , 'Arateru', 'Arteru' or 'Aataru' which to me sounds more like Artur or Arthur than Aasaa.
Maybe it's just me. :?
 
It's normally アーサー as in "アーサー王".
Personally, I don't pronounce "Arthur" with a hard "r" as in "Arthur", but more like "Aathur", so it may depend on your accent in English. If you prefer to write your name another way you can, it's just that with common names it's easier for people to use standardised transliterations. アルテュール for "Arthur" as pronounced in France is also used.

Also just be aware that your other spellings may have other words associated with them so check before settling on one:
(aruteru) アルテル = a maker of telecoms equipment (ALTEL)
(arateru) アラテル = not much used
"Arteru" can't be written in kana.
(aataru) アータル is used for the Zoroastrian "Atar", but I guess most people wouldn't recognise it.
 
with the exception of the ん, Japanese syllables don't end in consonants. [a:sa:] is the way most people recognize and pronounce Arthur in Japan.
 
I was wondering why my name , Arthur, is pronounced so differently in Japan. Supposedly, they say Aasaa or something like that.
I understand that the TH sound is not in the Japanese language, but what about R?
Ra, ri, ru, re, ro?
Japanese doesn't usually transcribe R sounds which come after vowels, since it uses a kind of British pronunciation. Hence the r in Arthur and art and artichoke ends up as a long vowel, aa.
 
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