Syllable structure 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), and
scratch would be transcribed as スクラッチ (
su-ku-ra-tchi).
Diphthongs and long vowels 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 vowel sequences, as in ブラウン
Bu-ra-u-n "Brown", ナイス
na-i-su "nice", ディア
di-a "dear/deer", レア
re-a "rare". etc. The English spelling (phonologically /ɔː/ (
RP) or /ɔːr/ (
GA)) is usually "diphthongized" as
o-a in Japanese (e.g. コア
ko-a "core"), possibly because it is also pronounced as a diphthong (/oə/) in some accents of English. English /eɪ/ is transcribed to either
e-e (エース
e-e-su "ace") or
e-i (スペイン
Su-pe-i-n "Spain"); similarly, /əʊ/ is transcribed to either
o-o (ショー
sho-o "show") or
o-u (シャドウ
sha-do-u "shadow"). 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). 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. Although the diphthong /au/ across languages is usually transcribed as アウ
a-u, local reading transcriptions of the same sequence from Mandarin, represented in both Wade–Giles and Pinyin as
ao are represented as アオ
a-o instead, again in more of a manner of transliteration based on these systems - e.g. マオ・ツォートン
ma-o tso-o-to-n (
Mao Zedong).
Consonants 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). The phoneme /v/ in various languages is transcribed either to
b or
v, although it is unknown whether there is such an equivalent phoneme /v/ in Japanese. For example, ベネチア
Benechia / ヴェネツィア
Ve-ne-tsi-a "Venezia" (Italian for "Venice"), オーバー
o-o-ba-a "over", ラブ
ra-bu / ラヴ
ravu "love".
Wa is usually written as ワ, although ウァ is sometimes used in transcriptions from Ancient Greek or Latin (e.g. ミネルウァ
Mi-ne-ru-wa "Minerva"). Geminated consonants are typically transcribed consistently and faithfully, as
gemination is also featured in Japanese. The only notable exceptions are /rr/ and /ɲɲ/, although /ll/ and /ʎʎ/ are still transcribed. Examples: is アッラーフ
A-r-ra-a-fu;
Italian Donatello is ドナテッロ
Do-na-te-r-ro; Italian
degli is デッリ
de-r-ri; but Italian
Verrocchio is simply ヴェロッキオ
Ve-ro-k-ki-o, not *
Ve-r-ro-k-ki-o. Italian /ɲɲ/ may be transcribed as the lengthened portion of the preceding vowel and a sequence of /nj/. For example,
Sardegna is サルデーニャ
Sa-ru-de-e-nya. Plain short consonants may be transcribed as geminated consonants to reflect the
laxness of the preceding vowel, although this is not universal and there are plenty of exceptions. For example: English
kick is キック
ki-k-ku and
castle is キャッスル
kya-s-su-ru, but
extra is エクストラ
e-ku-su-to-ra and
battle is バトル
ba-to-ru. This practice expands to almost all English
obstruents regardless of their
voicing (/k/, /ɡ/, /s/, /z/, /f/, etc.), also to German/Scots /x/, occasionally to /n/ and /m/ (as pseudo-geminated consonant sequences /nn/ or /nm/). For example: English
bag is バ(ッ)グ
ba-(g)-gu; English
Anna is アンナ
A-n-na; English
gamma is ガンマ
ga-n-ma; English
shuffle is シャッフル
sha-f-fu-ru; German
Mach is マッハ
ma-h-ha,
Masoch is マゾッホ
Ma-zo-h-ho. German [x] is transcribed roughly as
h-h, accordingly to its preceding vowel, if it's not followed by a vowel (e.g. マッハ
ma-h-ha "Mach", バッハ
Ba-h-ha "Bach", マゾッホ
Ma-zo-h-ho "Masoch"); [ç], its allophone occurring only after high vowels and consonants, are as
h if followed by a vowel (e.g. メルヘン
me-ru-hen "Märchen"), or as
hi if not (e.g. リヒター
Ri-hi-ta-a "Richter"). Russian /x/ is transcribed as
fu if not followed by a vowel (e.g. カザフスタン
Ka-za-fu-su-ta-n "Kazakhstan"). Mandarin [ɕ] (in pinyin
x(i)) is transcribed as
sh (e.g. シャオ
shao from 小
xiǎo "little"). Similar to the way speakers of English say Italian words, Japanese does not usually transcribe the Italian glide /j/ to reflect its true nature, but as /i/, perhaps for consistency and convenience. For example,
Venezia is ヴェネツィア
Ve-ne-tsi-a,
Sicilia is シチリア
Shi-chi-ri-a. Contemporary transcriptions of palatalized consonants from Slavic languages, however, are made using
yōon, e.g.: Russian ピャチゴルスク
Pya-chi-go-ru-su-ku (
Pyatigorsk), Polish ビェルスコ=ビャワ
Bye-ru-su-ko=bya-wa (
Bielsko-Biała).
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 ; for example, (
Bill Gates). When it is assumed that the reader knows the separate
gairaigo words in the phrase, the middle dot is omitted, especially for
wasei eigo. For example, the phrase
konpyūtā gēmu ("computer game") contains two well-known gairaigo, and therefore is not written with a middle dot; the same principle is applied for
panti sutokkingu ("pantyhose", lit. "panty stocking"), Japanese coinage.
Word length Because Japanese is written with relatively complex
Kanji characters, Japanese text must generally be written larger for legibility. Furthermore, as both Kanji and
Kana are traditionally of equal width and height, Japanese characters are generally much larger than Latin characters. As Kanji are logographic and Kana encode entire syllables (or rather,
morae), the higher information density of Japanese writing usually evens out with the larger text so that Japanese and English texts take about the same amount of space, but challenges arise with foreign consonant clusters incompatible with
Japanese phonotactics and the Kana system. For example, the word
remote control becomes the cumbersome リモートコントロール (
ri-mō-to-ko-n-to-rō-ru) in Japanese. Here, additional vowels are added between and , between and , and after at the word's end, and the vowels of
mo and
ro have been lengthened to mimic the English pronunciation. These additional sounds not only add to the word's length when spoken, but it also severely bloats the word when written. As such, the word is typically shortened to simply リモコン (
ri-mo-ko-n) in modern Japanese speech and writing. == Language-specific conventions ==