It must be because they love and respect British culture so much, right?
More because that’s just how most loanwords are treated, especially western ones. There are a few that slipped through the cracks, mostly ones that were either introduced early on post-contact, or electrical appliances for some reason.
Don’t forget ハッシュドポテト hasshudo poteto for hash browns!
Although I always hate romaji spellings because people unfamiliar with the pronunciation will absolutely not get the right idea by looking at it. It’s closer to “Hashdo poteito”
When I was a kid, before you could translate stuff on the internet and we were waiting months for the new batch of translated Dragonball Z episodes to hit Toonami (I swear, if I come home from school today and it’s goddamn Radditz again, I’m gonna Destructo Disc my mom’s Camry), I got like a tiny little I guess travel book for translating English to Japanese thinking that maybe I’d start learning.
The only word I remember is “hamburger” because the book showed the Japanese pronunciation as “haam baah gaah” lol
The thing is, the Japanese language has very few sounds compared to most languages, so their loan words have to be forced into the system of sounds they have.
For «hamburger» specifically, they don’t have any of the vowel sounds in the English word. They also lack the rhotic «r» sound, or really any «r» sound at all. Their «a» sound is an open sound as in «say aah», so they just ended up using a long version of it to approximate the «ur» and «er» sounds (which are really similar in American English!).
i was there with you, waiting for years for some legendary yellow hair
Honestly, I’m very thankful to have grown up with Dragon Ball Z with the Bruce Falconer soundtrack. Trying to go back to it now and listen to it with original Japanese music… It’s kind of awful for me lol Is that terrible to say?
Somehow I just knew these words would get the Japanizu treatment
It must be because they love and respect British culture so much, right? 😁 (pic related: Japan when they find out about britain)
More because that’s just how most loanwords are treated, especially western ones. There are a few that slipped through the cracks, mostly ones that were either introduced early on post-contact, or electrical appliances for some reason.
My absolute favourite is
フライドポテト furaido poteto
French fries
Don’t forget ハッシュドポテト hasshudo poteto for hash browns!
Although I always hate romaji spellings because people unfamiliar with the pronunciation will absolutely not get the right idea by looking at it. It’s closer to “Hashdo poteito”
My favorite in my one semester of college Japanese was:
Hotto chokareto (hot chocolate)
ホットチョコレート
It’s like the French with Le Weekend
Hotto!
When I was a kid, before you could translate stuff on the internet and we were waiting months for the new batch of translated Dragonball Z episodes to hit Toonami (I swear, if I come home from school today and it’s goddamn Radditz again, I’m gonna Destructo Disc my mom’s Camry), I got like a tiny little I guess travel book for translating English to Japanese thinking that maybe I’d start learning.
The only word I remember is “hamburger” because the book showed the Japanese pronunciation as “haam baah gaah” lol
That’s pretty close, though!
The thing is, the Japanese language has very few sounds compared to most languages, so their loan words have to be forced into the system of sounds they have.
For «hamburger» specifically, they don’t have any of the vowel sounds in the English word. They also lack the rhotic «r» sound, or really any «r» sound at all. Their «a» sound is an open sound as in «say aah», so they just ended up using a long version of it to approximate the «ur» and «er» sounds (which are really similar in American English!).
They totally have «r» sounds. らりるれろ or ラリルレロ
「ランチ」、「りょうり」、その他。
My favorite one is “Urubarin”, for Wolverine! Pretty close, yet so far.
i was there with you, waiting for years for some legendary yellow hair
Honestly, I’m very thankful to have grown up with Dragon Ball Z with the Bruce Falconer soundtrack. Trying to go back to it now and listen to it with original Japanese music… It’s kind of awful for me lol Is that terrible to say?
“tophat” is toppu hatto but “top hat” is shiruku hatto