Comments on: Foreign Words That Japanese Borrowed or Stole

By: Shollum

Shollum — Thu, 07 Feb 2013 19:25:00 +0000

The ‘li’ part gets kind of cut, so it sounds more like ‘luh’ with the ‘uh’ being kind of like how, in US English at least, we say ‘what’.

And then you forgot the ‘fra’ and just put ‘フ’. In my small amount of experience, things that have ‘fra’ in them get turned into ‘フラ’.

The ‘ショス’ is better. I wasn’t really thinking about diphthongs by that point. However, there shouldn’t be any extension on the ‘ド’ since it’s artificially extended in the song for the rhythm, like the following ‘atrocious’.

Good job though.

By: Raphael Barros

Raphael Barros — Wed, 06 Feb 2013 21:08:00 +0000

I kinda think more like スーパーカリフジリスティクエスピアリドーショス。

By: Lưu Vĩnh Phúc

Lưu Vĩnh Phúc — Fri, 11 Jan 2013 08:48:00 +0000

http://jisho.org/lite/words?jap=%E3%82%A4%E3%82%AE%E3%83%AA%E3%82%B9
“英吉利
イギリス
Great Britain (por: Inglez); United Kingdom”
according to jisho.org

By: Rienk

Rienk — Wed, 19 Dec 2012 13:02:00 +0000

らんがく (蘭学; rangaku ) comes from oranda gaku, or Dutch learning. Dutch as in The Netherlands (commonly, though incorrectly, referred to as Holland). During the Edo period, all Christian foreigners were expelled from the country, with the exception of the Dutch. The Dutch were the only European power still allowed to trade with Japan, from the trading post called Dejima. It is through trade with the Dutch that a lot of germanic words entered the japanese language. Even コーヒー. Now, a lot of dictionaries do not readily make the distinction between old german and dutch, even though during the rangaku period these were already two separate, germanic languages.

By: Kaimax

Kaimax — Wed, 31 Oct 2012 23:07:00 +0000

Instant Mary Poppins Nostalgia.

By: Phil Bone

Phil Bone — Sat, 27 Oct 2012 20:37:00 +0000

Actually to correct the comment that English doesn’t borrow, English consists of about 30% French! Think about any words that end in -ary e.g. secretary, library, vocabulary and words that end in -tion e.g. conversation, supposition. Note also the English spelling of colour and many other instances of the diphthong “ou”.