Transcription into Japanese

Japanese writing
Kanji
Kana
Hiragana Katakana Hentaigana Man'yōgana Sogana
Uses
Furigana Okurigana
Braille
Rōmaji
Hepburn (colloquial) Kunrei (ISO) Nihon (ISO translit.) JSL (transliteration) Wāpuro (keyboard)
Punctuation
v t e

In contemporary Japanese writing, foreign-language loanwords and foreign names are normally written in the katakana script, which is one component of the Japanese writing system. As far as possible, sounds in the source language are matched to the nearest sounds in the Japanese language, and the result is transcribed using standard katakana characters, each of which represents one syllable (strictly mora). For example, America is written アメリカ (A-me-ri-ka). To accommodate various foreign-language sounds not present in Japanese, a system of extended katakana has also developed to augment standard katakana.

Katakana, like the other Japanese kana, hiragana, has a one-to-one correspondence between sounds and characters. Therefore, once the sound of a word is established, there is no ambiguity in its katakana "spelling" (unlike spelling in English, for example).

A much less common form of transcription, not covered in this article, uses kanji characters for their phonetic values. For information on this method see Ateji.

Practicalities of transcription

Syllable structure

The most conspicuous result of transcription into Japanese is the insertion of vowels, often making words significantly longer. This is because Japanese phonology has (C)V(C) syllables (optional starting consonant, vowel, optional ending consonant): it does not allow consonant clusters at the start of a syllable, and the only ending consonant is either the nasal ン, n or a geminate consonant – indeed, these closed syllables are due to ancient Chinese loanwords, and originally Japanese was strictly (C)V.

Since Japanese has few closed syllables, syllable-final consonants in the source language are often represented using the -u (or sometimes -o or -i) kanas with implicitly silent vowels – though this vowel often is pronounced in Japanese – or the syllable coda is not represented at all. For example, the name Jim is written ジム (Ji-mu). A similar principle applies to consonant clusters; for example spring would be transcribed as スプリング (su-pu-ri-n-gu).

Diphthongs

Japanese has only five native vowel sounds, each a pure vowel (monophthong) with a long and short form, and some degree of approximation is necessary when representing vowels from, for example, English. Diphthongs are represented by sequences of vowels, and pronounced with hiatus, as a sequence of discrete monophthongs, not a diphthong, as in ブラウン (Bu-ra-u-n, the surname Brown).

Phonemes

Japanese does not have separate l and r sounds, and l- is normally transcribed using the kana that are perceived as representing r-. For example, London becomes ロンドン (Ro-n-do-n). Other sounds not present in Japanese may be converted to the nearest Japanese equivalent; for example, the name Smith is written スミス (Su-mi-su). Foreign sounds can be difficult to express in Japanese, resulting in spellings such as フルシチョフ Furushichofu (Khrushchev), アリー・ハーメネイー Arī Hāmeneī (Ali Khamenei) and イツハク・パールマン Itsuhaku Pāruman or イツァーク・パールマン Itsāku Pāruman (Itzhak Perlman).

Long vowels

Long vowels are generally written with ー to indicate lengthening, as in コーラ kōra (cola), rather than writing a distinct vowel ×コウラ *koura. There are two irregularities of note here. Firstly, lengthening of the final vowel may be ambiguous, and vary over time or between users. For example, in present Japan, "computer" is generally represented as コンピューター konpyūtā (long final), but in some cases, such as the computer industry, following Japanese Industrial Standards, it is represented as コンピュータ konpyūta (short final).^[1] Secondly, in modern Chinese loanwords, notably food names, in careful transcription diphthongs are represented by separate vowels, even if in Japanese they would appear to be a long vowel; this is particularly common with òu, especially in 豆 dòu "(soy) bean", usually rendered as トウ. Further, long vowels in the Japanese transcription need not reflect Chinese pronunciation. For example, the dish 東坡肉 "Dongpo pork", in pinyin dōngpōròu (dōng·pō·ròu), is represented in Japanese as ドンポーロウ donpōrou, or more commonly トンポーロウ tonpōrou. Note that in Chinese pinyin ō represents a high tone, while in Japanese ō represents a long vowel, and /d/ is pronounced differently (Chinese /d/ is similar to Japanese or English /t/). This distinction is not always followed, and varies by term: the spelling トンポーロー tonpōrō is also common; and in terms such as 回鍋肉 twice cooked pork, the spelling ホイコーロー is more common, despite representing diphthongs.

Extended katakana

In modern times, an extended katakana system has developed to cater for foreign sounds not present in Japanese. Most of these novel katakana forms are digraphs, composed of standard katakana characters, but in digraph combinations not found in native words. For example, the word photo is transcribed as フォト (fo-to), where the novel digraph フォ (fo) is made up from フ (normally fu) plus a novel small combining form of オ (normally o). In other cases novel diacritics may be applied to create new sounds, such as ヴ for vu, which consists of ウ (u) combined with a dakuten to indicate a voiced pronunciation.

Interpunct

Japanese is written without spaces between words, and, to aid understanding, foreign phrases and names are sometimes transliterated with an interpunct separating the words, called a nakaguro (中黒, middle dot); for example, ビル・ゲイツ (Bill Gates). When it is assumed that the reader knows the separate gairaigo words in the phrase, the middle dot is omitted. For example, the phrase コンピューターゲーム konpyūtā gēmu ("computer game") contains two well-known gairaigo, and therefore is not written with a middle dot.

Katakana tables

The following tables give the Hepburn romanization and an approximate IPA transcription for katakana as used in contemporary Japanese. Their use in transcription is, of course, in the inverse direction.

Standard katakana

1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2
2. ↑ 2.0 2.1 2.2
3. ↑ 3.0 3.1 3.2 3.3 3.4

Extended katakana

The following katakana have been developed or proposed specifically for the purposes of transcribing foreign words.

See also

• Romanization of Japanese

References