Quote:
Originally Posted by Nagoyankee
MMM is right as usual.
Japanese is a phonetic langauge. When the Japanese transliterate a foreign word into katakana, we go by the 'sound' of it, and not the 'spelling' in its original language. So the silent letters in the original language will be completely omitted in the katakana transliterations.
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while i'm not complaining about MMMs answer as well, i agree completely i have to get a little anal about this blanket statement you have made Nagoyankee. if you look at many brands in Japan that are written in Katakana you can see they translated the name into katakana by the letters and not the sound. Another example is that just about every international student in Japan will have their name on their student card written in Katakana and it will have been done in the office by people who have never heard the persons name pronounced, thus they go by the spelling and this can lead to some pretty bad conversions.