# Latin alphabet words in Japanese publications



## duckie

I'm not sure if this is the right place to ask this, but it something I've been pondering for a while.

Whenever I see something written in Japanese, be it an instruction manual or a website, or sometimes the sign on a store in Japan, a few tidbits are often written with Latin alphabet (typically in English). I'm a little confused about this, is it because it's difficult to translate some words to Japanese or because most people in Japan are used to reading both alphabets? I have noticed it in other Asian languages as well, but it seems most prevalent in Japanese..

In contrast, I never see another sign/alphabet system used in countries that use the Latin alphabet, thus my curiosity..


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## uchi.m

In Japanese, Latin alphabet is often used in acronyms.


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## Captain Haddock

There are a few widely-known acronyms or shorter loanwords that might occasionally appear in Japanese materials to look fresh or trendy. You'll see Latin and even Greek letters as well. This isn't the same stumbling-block to a Japanese reader as it might be to an English reader, since they're used to seeing thousands of different characters on a page instead of our 52 anyway.

Now store signs, labels, etc. are a different matter. You'll see lots of Latin letters, usually English but sometimes French or German or another language — or even a mixture. At least half the time, it's incomprehensible. What I've noticed, though, is that in Japan, non-Japanese characters are _decoration_; they don't notice them, and generally can't read them. I'll ask a friend what a store with an "English" name is called, and she won't know. Baskin Robins 31 is called "san-juu-ichi" because no one notices the "Baskin Robbins" part.


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## duckie

Ah - that's exactly how I see Japanese (or other Asian writing) as well, essentially as decoration. Of course I know it means something, but since I cannot decipher it and know that I'm not expected to, it just ends up being decoration in some contexts.

So what you are saying is that the average Japanese reader will memorise some acronyms and words as if they were a symbol (and therefore know the meaning), but won't be able to actually _read_ the words?

I don't really understand the store sign concept though, if most of them don't make sense and are just seen as decoration, how are they told apart? What does 'san-juu-ichi mean', 31? Then all stores with a Latin name would be recognized by its number, that doesn't seem very practical?

On another note, it always strikes me as a somewhat aesthetically poor choice to mix in a few Latin words with the Japanese, the flow seems so different that it seems all wrong somehow, but clearly the Japanese don't see it the same way.. The arab numbers also look a little clumsy with Japanese, I'm surprised they haven't been reshaped to fall more in line aesthetically..


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## Beejay

duckie said:


> The arab numbers also look a little clumsy with Japanese, I'm surprised they haven't been reshaped to fall more in line aesthetically..


I don't know how they would even do such a thing. The beauty of the arab numbers is that they are all distinct and only require one stroke (sometimes two, depends on you). 

They also fit great numbers into a smaller number of characters. I was actually so bored at work one day that I wrote from 1 to 200 in chinese characters. It made me appreciate the arabic numerals even more.


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## duckie

Yes, the Arab numbers are great, I didn't mean to change them as such, just to stylize the typeface (font) when used with other writing.. they always seem to use some standard and rather dull font for the numbers that often clashes with some elegant Japanese symbols.. just like there are endless ways to write the Latin alphabet and still not actually changing anything, the same goes for the numbers. There's no rule the line thickness has to be identical throughout and so forth.

Anyway, that was just a little aesthetic issue, the common use of Latin (or Greek as was mentioned) words in Japanese contexts is what I'm really interested in


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## Captain Haddock

duckie said:


> So what you are saying is that the average Japanese reader will memorise some acronyms and words as if they were a symbol (and therefore know the meaning), but won't be able to actually _read_ the words?



Any such words could also be written in katakana, so Japanese will know the pronunciation. For example, the word AIDS might appear in a sentence as either 'AIDS' or エイズ. If a Japanese reader is unlikely to know the pronunciation, there will be furigana. You see this commonly with product brand names that use Latin letters — there will be smaller katakana characters somewhere providing the pronunciation.



> I don't really understand the store sign concept though, if most of them don't make sense and are just seen as decoration, how are they told apart?



Good question! I guess the people who already shop there already know where it is, and not knowing the name doesn't bother them.



> What does 'san-juu-ichi mean', 31? Then all stores with a Latin name would be recognized by its number, that doesn't seem very practical?



Yes, it means '31'. The big sign over Baskin Robbins says "Baskin Robbins 31" with the 31 in a circle, and the 31 bit is the only part Japanese people notice. (You know, they have 31 flavours of ice cream.)



> On another note, it always strikes me as a somewhat aesthetically poor choice to mix in a few Latin words with the Japanese, the flow seems so different that it seems all wrong somehow, but clearly the Japanese don't see it the same way..



I agree it looks clumsy. In a book or newspaper with vertical text columns, Latin words will actually be printed sideways.


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## Flaminius

duckie said:


> So what you are saying is that the average Japanese reader will memorise some acronyms and words as if they were a symbol (and therefore know the meaning), but won't be able to actually _read_ the words?


I am probably not able to describe what an average Japanese reader is but still I have to object that words written in Latin alphabet are largely understood as symbols only.  Latin alphabet has made inroads to Japanese written texts far deeper than sporadic signs on the street fraught with funny errors.  Business enterprises are changing their names from kanji to alphabets, often resulting in something more original than a mere transcription of the former names.  New companies and brands are in alphabet officially and katakana is provided only for pronunciation aid.  Song lyrics are sprinkled with English words (often badly spelled, though).  CD jackets are full of alphabets, so are music magazines.  Another gold mine for proper name alphabets is the whole IT industry.  Lately, URLs are everywhere.



> I don't really understand the store sign concept though, if most of them don't make sense and are just seen as decoration, how are they told apart? What does 'san-juu-ichi mean', 31? Then all stores with a Latin name would be recognized by its number, that doesn't seem very practical?


Many international fashion brands with exotic spellings in French and Italian are well-recognised here.  Not that everyone can spell them correctly or people who are not "in the know" complain endlessly, but they are clearly meant to be understood by themselves since oftentimes no katakana is provided to aid pronunciation.



> On another note, it always strikes me as a somewhat aesthetically poor choice to mix in a few Latin words with the Japanese, the flow seems so different that it seems all wrong somehow, but clearly the Japanese don't see it the same way.. The arab numbers also look a little clumsy with Japanese, I'm surprised they haven't been reshaped to fall more in line aesthetically..


Change of the flow in fact provides a good clue for reading through Japanese text with speed and ease.  Even within a conservative alphabet-free passage, kanji, hiragana and katakana have different functions.  Kanji portions of a passage tend to express concepts while hiragana parts are usually grammatical devices that string the kanji concepts together.  Katakana is for either foreign words or extra-linguistic exclamations or onomatopoeia.  In this regard, Latin alphabet is just a fourth player that perhaps signifies highbrow Western concepts.  These so-called functions are by no means an accurate science but they surely help readers decompose texts and understand them.  I often wonder how speakers of other languages speed-read through texts that looks to me  too monotonous to provide enough clues.  In the final analysis, aesthetics is not the only concern for text reading even if it plays an important rôle.  

There have been efforts to reformat Arabic numerals and Latin alphabets into something more in tune with the Japanese scripts.  The results have become part of the international encoding system (Cf. this page until U+FF60).  My opinion for them is as high as snow is hot but this is going to be rather too off-topic.


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## duckie

Very interesting information, thank you! Are English classes standard in school? It sounds like the younger generation are familiar with English while the older may not be, similar to many other countries that only recently started focusing on learning other languages..?

On the aesthetics I wasn't thinking of redesigning the letters, but more of using (or designing) a font that uses a similar flow and/or variation of line thickness and such.. in the same way that similar fonts are usually used to complement each other rather than pull in vastly different directions. Of course since I don't know any Japanese my view is completely one-sided..

About speed reading, for me it's not a conscious process, patterns just emerge on their own because some words stand out as being important, while most are mostly used to link the keywords and concepts. I can see how it would be easier to speed read if the 'link' words were of one type and the 'concept' words were of another! But in speed reading I'll usually see a bunch of words together, like many pieces of a puzzle, and then the brain picks out the important pieces while I don't actually notice the others.

Similarly, when we read Latin words it doesn't really matter how they are bundled together because we see the entire word and not one letter at a time. All we need is the first and last letter to be in the right place and the puzzle comes together, like so:

Aoynne can raed tihs raergdelss of the oerdr of the wdros as lnog as the frist and lsat ltteer are in the rhigt palce


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## Beejay

duckie said:


> Aoynne can raed tihs raergdelss of the oerdr of the wdros as lnog as the frist and lsat ltteer are in the rhigt palce


My ability to read this as easily as anything else never ceases to amaze me.


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