[kj1980]

Originally Posted by Jinto Lin

Is 一さん　an alternative to 一晩　? Never seen that before
Well my comprehension of the language is not very high as you can see ^^' sry.
Ah let me ask another question, the example king describes it pretty good. How do you learn i.e. english spoken language in schools? With the use of カタカナ only, or is there a special phonetic writing, so japanese students will have a chance to figure out how to speak it i.e. king or kingu?

「1さん」 means I am referring to the first poster above.

Basically what I said was:

1さんの質問を理解して読んでから突っ込め ( ﾟДﾟ )ｳﾞｫｹ
I suggest you go back to comprehend the first poster was asking before making shrewed comments ( ﾟДﾟ )ｳﾞｫｹ


「英単語をそのまま日本語のカタカナにしたら」って質問だろうが！
The question at hand is "phoneticizing English words in Japanese Katakana"

だったら1さんが言うに「king」は日本語だとそのまま「王様」やないか！
[Before you correct me], you should've then made the comment of saying "King in Japanese is 'ousama' "



Now to answer your question...I'm sorry, I don't understand your question. So forgive me if the following answer may differ from what you had in mind but:

Japan has three different writing styles: hiragana, katakana, and kanji. Hiragana and Katakana are learned in pre-school and kindergarten.

Our language system is based on syllable phonetics. This is exemplified by our alphabet which is officially called the gojuu-onzu (the fifty phonetic chart), which is misleading because there are less than fifty of them. These characters were derived from Heian women who simplified kanjis into easier to memorize letters.

I won't list them all since these are readily available on the internet, and if you have interest in the Japanese language, you should have memorized them all by now.

Hence, our "alphabet" is based on phonetics, with each word being one syllable.

Flash foward to mid-19th Century when Cmdr. Matthew C. Perry brought his gunships and opened up Japan into the Western world. Influx of Western words suddenly came in. Words such as "democracy," "capitalism," "economy" were all Western words that did not exist in Japan - but were essential to bring Japan up to speed with the rest of the world to resist foreign colonialization.

The English word "Democracy" phoneticized into Japanese is pronounced "De-mo-ku-ra-shi-i."
The English word "Capitalism" phoneticized into Japanese is pronounced "Kya-pi-ta-ri-zu-mu"

...and so on. These foreign words and ideas were new to Japanese that did not exist in their language. Hence, they pronounce it as similar to how they heard foreigners saying such words, and replace them with their existing katakana - which was the norm for all gairai (foreign-born) words. Hence:

"Democracy" = "Demokurashii" = デモクラシー
"Capitalism" = "Kyapitarizumu" = キャピタリズム

As such words became more prevalent as Japan caught up with the West, Japanese scholars then decided to create a Japanese alternative for such words. Hence:

"Democracy" in English was originally spelled デモクラシー in katakana, was then altered into Japanese by using four kanji letters: 民 (people) 主 (centered) 主義 (policy) to be read "minshu-shugi."
"Capitalism" in English was originally called キャピタリズム was then altered into Japanese by using four kanji letters: 資本 (what you own) 主義 (policy), pronounced as "shihon-shugi."

These Japanese invented kanji words were then re-imported back to China.

And as time progresses, so does new technologies and new ideas evolve. The Japanese government annually gives out alternative kanjis that best suits for those words, but it is left open to the public whether they want to use that or not.

For example, "the airplane" may have succeeded in being called "hikouki" which is made up with kanji representing 飛行 (flying) and 機 (machine). On the other hand, they have flubbed in "the television" in being called the "juzouki," which is made up of the kanji representing 受 (receiving) 像 (video) 機 (machine). People opted to use a shortened katakana テレビ (terebi) for the original extended word of テレビジョン (terebijon).

So will common business words such as "mutual funds" and "stock options" (which are currently known in Japan in their katakana phonetics "myuchuaru fando" and "sutokku opushon") be changed over to the government's alternative 投資信託 (toushi shintaku) and 自社株購入権制度 (jisha kabu kounyuu-ken seido)? Perhaps people might be willing to use 投資信託 for "mutual funds," but I doubt anyone wants to remember and write 自社株購入権制度 for "stock options." But thanks to ideals of a foreign word called 民主主義 (democracy), people can decide which to choose, and it's their choice.