# Standard Katakana spellings



## kewongjapan

Hi guys, thanks for taking time to read this. I wanted to ask if anyone knew of dictionaries (as in physical ones eg; books) that exist for standard writing for Katakana. Perhaps the education board in Japan have such publications? I ask because I find difficulty sometimes in translating certain words into Katakana as the same word could sometimes be spelt differently depending on the writer.

For example, the word "Management"　which is written 
マネッジメント 

To me it would make sense to write it as メネッジメント as people pronounce more closely as MENEGEMENT in english despite its spelling. 

Another example would be the words "Through" and "True". Both have almost the same sound in english, yet I have seen them being written in Katakana as "ツルー" and "トゥー" respectively.


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## Beejay

kewongjapan said:


> To me it would make sense to write it as メネッジメント as people pronounce more closely as MENEGEMENT in english despite its spelling.
> 
> Another example would be the words "Through" and "True". Both have almost the same sound in english, yet I have seen them being written in Katakana as "ツルー" and "トゥー" respectively.


Sorry, but please don't assume your accent represents the accents of english speakers world-wide. I've met an Irish person who pronounced "Through" and "True" exactly the same, so I know what you mean about them sounding almost the same, but for me, they are distinctive.

Also, I don't pronounce the "ma" in "management" as "me". I don't know the linguistic name for the vowel, but it's not quite the same as the Japanese あ sound. It's probably the closest I'd find though. So, I'd have written management exactly as you found in the dictionary.


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## Ocham

Hi,
We usually write "マネージメント" for management, "スルー" for throught, 
and "トゥルー" for true.

As you mentioned, we have no standard to write loan words in
_katakana_ writing system, but there is a way a majority of people
are in favor of.


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## kewongjapan

Beejay said:


> Sorry, but please don't assume your accent represents the accents of english speakers world-wide...
> 
> ...Also, I don't pronounce the "ma" in "management" as "me". I don't know the linguistic name for the vowel, but it's not quite the same as the Japanese あ sound. It's probably the closest I'd find though. So, I'd have written management exactly as you found in the dictionary.



Thank you for your answer Beejay. I definitely don't assume everyone speaks the same way I do. That would be ignorant. My question was not on how to write the word management. I was merely observing that the "Ma" in Management sounds alot closer to メ "Me(h)" sound than マ "Ma"

My question was whether there was a standardized way to write Katakana. Also, are American pronunciations to way to go when writing a word phonetically.


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## Beejay

kewongjapan said:


> Thank you for your answer Beejay. I definitely don't assume everyone speaks the same way I do. That would be ignorant.


Your post did state that "people pronounce more closely as MENEGEMENT in english" and then expressed that the katakana spelling of the word should reflect english with an accent like yours. Thus, I inferred that you thought your pronunciation is the most common, and therefore the pronunciation that the Japanese should aim for with their use of katakana.

I can't say what the most common pronunciation is, but I understand that the Japanese have a certain fascination with America; so maybe that is the pronunciation they would aim for.


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## kewongjapan

Beejay said:


> Your post did state that "people pronounce more closely as MENEGEMENT in english" and then expressed that the katakana spelling of the word should reflect english with an accent like yours. Thus, I inferred that you thought your pronunciation is the most common, and therefore the pronunciation that the Japanese should aim for with their use of katakana


 
I just asked my friends (including one of them who lived in the States and speaks like an American) to say the word Management and listened to how their pronounced it. When I wrote the word as メネッジメント, it wasn't based on my own accent but how I had heard others say it Me(h)-nege-ment.



Beejay said:


> but I understand that the Japanese have a certain fascination with America; so maybe that is the pronunciation they would aim for


 
Thank you for your answer. Thank you also Ocham for yours. Will keep them in mind.


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## Flaminius

I am wondering to what extent detailed analyses of the original pronunciation can explain katakana transcriptions.  My tentative answer is maybe not so much.  No major English varieties that Japanese is likely to have been in contact with pronounce "preview" as /prevju:/ but this is the "reconstructed" pronunciation from which the Japanese プレビュー or プレヴュー looks as if originated.  "Report" and "reporter" can be either レポート, リポート and レポーター, リポーター.  To the dismay of the Japanese and foreigners alike,  レポート is generally preferred over リポート but リポーター is slightly preferred over レポーター as per Google (this small research benefited from their search engine's inability to factor in this kind of variations but usually I find it troublesome to search twice).

Transcription of imported words are based on the pronunciations that the Japanese think are correct.  As their understanding of foreign languages deepen, the "expectedly correct" pronunciations have changed over time.  Different sectors of the Japanese speech community have devised different transcriptions, which sometimes resulted in curious crossovers.  Strike was imported at least twice, for example.  Once as a baseball term (ストライク; _sutoraiku_) and  once as an organised protest by labourers (ストライキ; _sutoraiki_).

Words from different languages follow different transcription conventions.  Since each convention was devised within a different discipline, little attention has been paid on the relations between transcription systems.  French _de_ is either ド or ドゥ and one has to know the given transcription in question is French in order not to confuse it with the German _du_ or Italian _do_.

The Ministry of Education, the Cabinet or institutions that report to either do not exercise much control over all this.


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## SpiceMan

Other weird variations over the same word that I can think of:

ガラス - glass (as in a glass window)
グラス - glass (as in glass of wine... a cup made of ガラス)

ハンバーグ hamburger (the patty)
ハンバーガー hamburger (the "sandwich")


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## mgwls

A quick search on Google has returned this page. I don't know if you were already aware of it, it's a dictionary of loan words written in katakana. Although I don't know how reliable it is and seems like it isn't very complete it may prove useful to you.


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