The most commonly occuring vowel correspondences are as follows.
Japanese corresponds to the English
vowel or diphthong of:
i 'sit' (or 'seat')
ii 'seed'
u 'look' (or 'Luke')
uu 'mood'
e 'let' (or 'late')
ee or ei 'laid'
o 'cot' (or 'coat')
oo 'mode' or 'Maud'
ou 'mode'
oi 'boy'
a 'pat' or 'pad' or 'putt'
aa 'ma'
ai 'my'
au or ao 'cow'
In spite of all the adjustments required, katakana representing loanwords based on English borrowings will, in most instances, be immediately identifiable to speakers of English as to its origin. In some cases, however, identification is difficult, particularly for a student with only limited experience in reading such items. When problems are encountered, the following procedures (the procedures covered here apply to the examples introduced in this lesson) are often helpful in providing clues that will make recognition possible.
1. Write out the unidentified item in romanization.
2. Are there any short u vowels following consonants? Try eliminating them.
Examples:
misu *
'miss'
hosutesu
*'hostess'
3. Are there any r's? Check them out for representation of English 'l' as well as 'r'.
Examples:
arisu
'Alice'
hoteru
'hotel'
arasuka
'Alaska'
sukuuru
'school'
rookaru
'local'
terii
'Terry' or 'Telly'
rarii
'Larry' or 'rally'
4. Are there any s's? Check them out for representation of English 'th' (as in 'thin') as well as 's'.
Examples:
sumisu
'Smith'
ruusu
'ruse' or 'loose' or 'Ruth'
And are there any Japanese si syllables? Check the consonant out for representation of English 'sh' as well as 's'.
Examples:
takusii
'taxi'
siria
'Syria'
rosia
'Russia'
5. Are there any occurrences of aa ? Check them out for representation of English vowel + 'r' of 'far' or 'fir' (note the variety of English spellings that represent these sounds, in words such as 'bar', 'her', 'sir', 'fur', 'purr', 'hard', 'herd', 'bird', 'word', 'urban', 'lighter', 'color') as well as of long 'a'.
Examples:
misutaa
'mister'
raitaa
'lighter'
miraa
'Miller'
tawaa
'tower'
kuraaku
'Clark' or 'clerk'
kaaru
'Karl'
karaa
'color'
mootaasukuutaa
'motorscooter'
Additional procedures will be furnished in subsequent lessons. However, the student must always bear in mind that the Japanese word-borrowing system is not completely regular: it is usually possible to predict exactly how an English item will be borrowed into Japanese, but there are exceptions. Fortunately, even the exceptions usually contain enough evidence of regularity to make possible the identification of the English source, given the Japanese, and this is sufficient for reading.
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