# Gondomar



## nuno

Are there any rules to translate words from another language, in this case Portuguese, to katakana? I mean, the sounds we have and Japanese doesn't. For example, how is Gondomar (portuguese city) translated to katakana?


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## Aoyama

I would say _transcribe_ rather than translate. No kanas on this PC but someone will hopefully come by with the kanas :
*gon do ma ru* (5 kanas -s on purpose- *go n do ma ru*) japanese always vocalize the ending, so* mar* becomes *maru* .


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## lazarus1907

Aoyama said:


> ...japanese always vocalize the ending, so*  mar* becomes *maru* .


Except with the "n", right?


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## Aoyama

Mochiron. *N *being in japanese an ending consonant, no vowel possible, different from *na,ni,nu,ne,no*.


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## nuno

I said translate, but it was transcribe that I meant 
So Gondomar would be ゴンドマル right?

Thanks.

Edit: What about nunovski (my nickname)? Would it be ヌノヴスキ ?


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## Aoyama

Sorry, can't read kanas on that machine (not mine), BUT, Nunovski would certainly be : *nu no bu su ki ,* *vu *also possible, written with *u"+u* but it will end up a bit strange because of the two u's (but still possible). You would get a better deal writting it in _kanjis_ like *nu nobu suki* or else ...


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## nuno

What's the problem with the *vu*? There is a katakana with that sound, so why writing *bu* or *u"+u* (I didn't understand this one)?


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## Aoyama

*V *(or here *vu*) is not originally a japanese sound. Modern japanese uses *u* + 2 dots (like here *u"*) to render this sound.  It is then quite acceptable but not really "japanese". Older people have trouble pronouncing the v sound, b is easier.


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## timpeac

How about the name "Tim" or "Timothy" given that "ti" isn't a kana?


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## konungursvia

I would say "transliteration to Katakana".


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## nuno

timpeac said:


> How about the name "Tim" or "Timothy" given that "ti" isn't a kana?



チム　chimu maybe? I'm very new at this


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## Whodunit

nuno said:


> So Gondomar would be ゴンドマル right?
> 
> Edit: What about nunovski (my nickname)? Would it be ヌノヴスキ ?


 
Nunovski = nu no bu su ki = ヌノブスキ (or if you wish it with "vu," which looks kind of weird to some older natives, as Aoyama already pointed out: ヌノヴスキ  )



Aoyama said:


> You would get a better deal writting it in _kanjis_ like *nu nobu suki* or else ...


 
Not always. Maybe most of the natives are able to read 濡信隙 (not sure if that is correct and readable), but it is extremely hard for beginners to guess the meaning of some kanji that don't make much sense. Therefore, I like the invention of katakana, with which you can immediately see that the word is not originally Japanese.



timpeac said:


> How about the name "Tim" or "Timothy" given that "ti" isn't a kana?


 
I'd write チム (= chimu) for "Tim" and チモーシ (= chimooshi) for "Timothy," provided the "o" in Timothy is long. The sound "thi" doesn't exist in Japanese, for which we should use "si," which in turn is assimilated to "shi." 



nuno said:


> チム　chimu maybe? I'm very new at this


 
Very good.  By the way, I'm also new at this, but it's relatively easy to get used to the system how one transcribes something in katakana.


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## timpeac

Whodunit said:


> I'd write チム (= chimu) for "Tim" and チモーシ (= chimooshi) for "Timothy," provided the "o" in Timothy is long.


It's not actually - the stress of "Timothy" is on the "tim" so the "moth" part is pronounced with a short o like the animal "moth".


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## Whodunit

timpeac said:


> It's not actually - the stress of "Timothy" is on the "tim" so the "moth" part is pronounced with a short o like the animal "moth".


 
Okay, then just leave out the katakana lengthening symbol ー. 

By the way, before you use it in an official document, please have the natives checked my proposals.


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## Flaminius

timpeac said:


> How about the name "Tim" or "Timothy" given that "ti" isn't a kana?



Tim: ティム
Timothy: ティモシー

where ティ (input sequence being t, h, i: strangely) is for [ti].


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## Whodunit

Flaminius said:


> Tim: ティム
> Timothy: ティモシー
> 
> where ティ (input sequence being t, h, i: strangely) is for [ti].


 
Interesting, I didn't know that it was possible to represent [ti] in Japanese. Anyway, I just thought about something else. What do you think about this version, Flam?

ティ*ッ*ム, since the "i" is short?


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## timpeac

Flaminius said:


> Tim: ティム
> Timothy: ティモシー
> 
> where ティ (input sequence being t, h, i: strangely) is for [ti].


Thanks - so Japanese people could pronounce [ti] ok then?


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## Flaminius

If a Japanese sees ティ, he usually construes it as /ti/ and realises it as [ti] ~ [te].  Younger generation can almost always pronounce /ti/ as [ti].

However, that does not mean _all_ the English /ti/ is realised as [ti] in Japanese.  Old loan words such as "team" tend to be pronounced "chiimu"  as dictated by the conventional spelling チーム.


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## Flaminius

Whodunit said:


> ティ*ッ*ム, since the "i" is short?


 
Who, ティッム is rather strange. A very long explanation follows.

The use of ッ (ちっちゃいツ  ) works fine in transcribing "tick":　ティック. When ッ appears in the middle of a word, it is construed as geminating the consonant that follows it. It seems to me that gemination is used in transcribing many monosyllabic words primarily because it can stress the accent on the the first syllable against that of the second syllable. The latter is introduced in Japanese loan words in order for them to conform to the CV constraint (Thou shalt not end a syllable with a consonant).

Phonetically, geminated stops have prolonged stopping of air current by slight constriction of the throat. When the current is released, the succeeding vowel is unstressed due to the influence of the constriction. This way, geminated stops are used to transcribe foreign monosyllabic words in order to render some semblance to the original in terms of accent, while at the same time satisfying the draconic CV rule.

Yet, non-obstruent consonants have little effect in unstressing the following vowel because there is no constriction involved in their gemination process. Monosyllabic words ending with a non-obstruent are transcribed as follows:

テス for Tess (/tesu/)
トム for Tom (/tomu/)
キス for kiss (/kisu/); キッス (kissu) has been tried but rare now.
バッハ for Bach (/bahha/); There is a slightly different issue involved since the sound value of "ch" is not /h/.
サン for sun (san)

In these words, the word initial accents are only inferred.  Yet they seem to be more persistent than those represented by geminated obstruent.  But this is an entirely different matter.


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## Aoyama

For *Ti* ,it is true that *chi *appears obvious, in the "Hepburn" transcription, so much so that very often, names of shops etc appear with that transcription. The french *petit* , very common in contemporary japanese, becomes *puchi* (puchi tomato etc), undergoing attraction by other "real" japanese words like *fuchi, kuchi, muchi* etc.
But, going back to *ti* , without looking very far, *ice tea *(*aisu te*_) is very common in japanese ( as lemon tei etc). If it is true that older people might pronounce *tei* (almost like french *thé*), *ti* like *tea* in english is very common._


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