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This is the pronunciation key for IPA transcriptions of Japanese on Wikipedia. It provides a set of symbols to represent the pronunciation of Japanese in Wikipedia articles, and example words that illustrate the sounds that correspond to them.
For example, the Japanese word for "to do" (する suru) is written with two hiragana: す (su) + る (ru). Katakana are generally used to write loanwords , foreign names and onomatopoeia . For example, retasu was borrowed from the English "lettuce", and is written with three katakana: レ ( re ) + タ ( ta ) + ス ( su ).
Gairaigo are Japanese words originating from, or based on, foreign-language, generally Western, terms.These include wasei-eigo (Japanese pseudo-anglicisms).Many of these loanwords derive from Portuguese, due to Portugal's early role in Japanese-Western interaction; Dutch, due to the Netherlands' relationship with Japan amidst the isolationist policy of sakoku during the Edo period; and from ...
Many generalizations about Japanese pronunciation have exceptions if recent loanwords are taken into account. For example, the consonant [p] generally does not occur at the start of native (Yamato) or Chinese-derived (Sino-Japanese) words, but it occurs freely in this position in mimetic and foreign words. [2]
The 1603–1604 bilingual Japanese-Portuguese Nippo Jisho or Vocabvlario da Lingoa de Iapam dictionary is still cited as an authority for early Japanese pronunciation. The year 1604 was at the beginning of the Edo Period and also, as Nakao (1998:37) points out, the date of the first monolingual English dictionary, the Table Alphabeticall .
Easy Japanese (やさしい日本語, yasashii nihongo) refers to a simplified version of the Japanese language that is easy to understand for children and foreigners who have limited proficiency in the Japanese language by using simple expressions, simplified sentence structure, and added furigana (kana indicating pronunciation) to kanji characters.
The Nippo Jisho (日葡辞書, literally the "Japanese–Portuguese Dictionary") or Vocabulario da Lingoa de Iapam (Vocabulário da Língua do Japão in modern Portuguese; "Vocabulary of the Language of Japan" in English) is a Japanese-to-Portuguese dictionary compiled by Jesuit missionaries and published in Nagasaki, Japan, in 1603.
Japanese does not have separate l and r sounds, and l-is normally transcribed using the kana that are perceived as representing r-. [2] For example, London becomes ロンドン (Ro-n-do-n). Other sounds not present in Japanese may be converted to the nearest Japanese equivalent; for example, the name Smith is written スミス (Su-mi-su).