English pronunciations in Japanese shows/movies

[Kraco]

I'm looking at those charts, and I don't see any characters that represent "Ja", "Jo", "Ju" etc.

Combinations of Ji plus Ya, Yo, and Yu.

[Psyke]

Yup. For words starting with J, it is written by using a Ji followed by a small ya, yu, or yo.

Eg: じゃ = Ja (Jya)、じゅ = Ju (Jyu) 、じょ = Jo (Jyo)

[Danad_corps]

In case you are wondering, the Ji sounds comes from an alternative to the "shi" character. The alternatives goes as follows.

Starts with Turns into
K G
... i'll just scan a page or two from my Jap txt to show u. it'll be easier





This'll show you how words are formed using hiragana and katana. If you want to make a word from another language, you use katakana.

And um, i don't think "its all good as long as it sounds right" works. I mean, they teach this stuff to kids in Japan and im sure the teachers woudln't want to see 10 variances of the same word. Not only that, but my teacher wouldn't have corrected the katakana on our in-class dialogue project if there wasn't a correct spelling of the word.

[Munsu]

I was oversimplifying... Of course there's going to be some correct way to spell things. What you have to realize is that there isn't one set way to spell all the Names since there are various ways to pronounce it; you can use the Michael example above. So it all depends on the intended pronounciation you're looking for and having the correct set of characters to represent those sounds.

Also, your Japanese teacher is not absolute... the Japanese language is complicated as it is, that I'm sure that even the teachers are still learning some things about the language. I know I've seen a lot of discrepancies between teachers and the romanization of the small "u" character.

For example, some would argue that "Tookyoo" is the correct romanization while others would argue it's "Toukyou".

[Danad_corps]

I see what you mean. Just like all languages spoken today, it evolves as time passes.

[Winged Dancer]

First of all, as a non-native English speaker, I can say this.... English is a BITCH to pronounce. Spanish and Japanese are way easier, as they are mostly pronounced the way they are written....

Meanwhile, English has The Chaos, which makes all students of English choose death rather than reading that aloud.

The thing about Japanese is that it is a syllabic language. All of its "letters" are actually [I]simple[/I[ syllables, composed of a consonant and a vocal:
K+a = Ka (か)
W+o= Wo (を)
S+e= Se (せ)
And the wonderful exeptions of "N" (ん) and "Tsu" (つ), and even those depend on how they are romanized.

Because of that structure, it is very difficult for them to pronounce syllables composed of more than two letters and, even more so syllables with more than two consonants and words ending in a letter other than "N".

So, to take one of your examples,
Cloud
In English, it divides into "Clo - ud", but since a sound like "Cl" is impossible to write in Japanese (same with the final "d"), they guide themselves by sound and write it "Ku-ra-u-do".

Most Japanese agree that the reason they can't speak good English is because of the Katakana, too. Quoting my Okaasan, "If a kid goes to school and the teachers tell him "I like milk" but the kid writes "Ai raiku miruku", he'll never be able to pronouce it and will never get an understanding of it."

So now you know. The day characters are called "Cloud" and not クラウド is the day the the common Japanese will be able to pronounce English.

[Kraco]

It's interesting how deeply the syllabic system affects their thinking (capabilities). After all, they should all learn also the latin alphabets in school, and thus, in theory, they should also be able to use them to write, speak and think western words in a correct way. But I guess it's not that simple.